Robbing Abraham to Pay Bartholomew
The professional ecumenical class claims a common Easter would promote “Christian witness, unity, and evangelization.” The claim leaves me unconvinced because it does not address calendar differences.
The professional ecumenical class claims a common Easter would promote “Christian witness, unity, and evangelization.” The claim leaves me unconvinced because it does not address calendar differences.
Catholics, especially younger Catholics, are urged under the name of charity to be more open to Protestants, which is difficult if not impossible to delineate from simply being less Catholic.
The pope’s comment that “All religions are a path to God” was another instance where he says something which sounds charitable—and was likely meant charitably—but, in the end, turns out not to be so.
The Old Ecumenism has failed. What we need today is a New Ecumenism, dedicated to unity via full communion with the Catholic Church.
Fiducia Supplicans causes the Coptic Orthodox to suspend their ecumenical dialogue with Rome, citing the declaration’s change to the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality.
Fiducia Supplicans exposed deep divisions within the Catholic Church, and now it is reaching its tentacles beyond the Church to scuttle attempts at union with non-Catholic churches.
For the past sixty years, Catholics have been imitating Protestants in our liturgy, youth outreach, and other aspects of Catholic life. How has this impacted the Church, and is there a better way forward?
There’s a movement afoot to fix a common date for Easter by 2025. It’s a movement fraught with problems.
In a recent article in Crisis Magazine, “How the Modernists made ‘Ecumenical’ a Dirty Word,” Joseph Pearce argues that ecumenism has become a synonym for modernism in the Church today. After describing the noble history of the term from the original Greek to the Roman Empire and its early adoption by the Catholic Church, he … Read more
It is important to have a clear understanding of the meaning of a word before we use it. The word ecumenical is a case in point. Throughout history, until very recently, its meaning was connected to its etymological roots in Greek (oikoumene), in which it means literally “the inhabited (world)”, or more generally “the whole … Read more
First Things has been running a fascinating and provocative series of articles that question the principles and beliefs of most of its readers. In May, it published “Why I Became Muslim” by one Jacob Williams, a Brit who grew up Anglican and then converted to Islam. More recently, the magazine published “Catholicism Made Me Protestant,” … Read more
One of the most common criticisms of the Second Vatican Council is that it changed the teaching regarding the relationship between the idea of the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the debate among interpreters (and detractors) of Vatican II has centered around the phrase subsistit in, found in the conciliar … Read more
The German bishops are at it again. They are pushing the controversial agenda of intercommunion in certain instances for “mixed marriages” of Catholics with Protestant spouses. Accordingly, the German bishops published guidelines entitled: “Walking with Christ—tracing unity. Inter-denominational marriages and sharing the Eucharist.” It was released even after Pope Francis sent a letter, via the … Read more
Protestantism comes from Germany, its original spark with Martin Luther, and its earliest excesses with the Anabaptist rule over Münster; the latter crushed finally by the prince-bishop’s army, the former however enjoyed enduring success. From Germany, Reformation ideas spread to other European countries, and from there into the whole world, creating new epicenters of Protestant … Read more
On November 9, 2017, the Holy Synod of the Macedonian Orthodox Church—Ohrid Archbishopric sent a letter to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church with three requests: 1) recognition of the Macedonian Orthodox Church by other Eastern Orthodox Churches; 2) recognition of Macedonian Orthodox Church autocephalous status (canonical independence); and 3) readiness to recognize the Bulgarian Orthodox Church … Read more
One of the big mysteries of our day is how so many supposedly enlightened Catholics have managed to get it so wrong about Islam for so long. It’s understandable that in the 1960s, when the Islamic world was relatively quiescent, Catholics might entertain the high hopes for Islamic-Catholic relations expressed in Nostra Aetate. But this … Read more
Recently, La Civilta Cattolica ran an article by that journal’s editor-in-chief, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, and by Marcelo Figueroa, the Argentinian Presbyterian minister chosen by Pope Francis to be the editor of the Argentinean edition of L’Osservatore Romano, which subsequently republished the article. Since articles in La Civilta Cattolica are vetted by the Vatican secretary of … Read more
Jesuit Antonio Spadaro and Protestant Marcelo Figueroa recently published what can only be described as a diatribe against my friends and me. It was highly personal because it was directed right at a coalition of believers who have banded together to advance what a previous pope referred to as a Culture of Life. The column … Read more
Traditionally, Catholics have viewed Luther as a heresiarch, and the Lutheran break from Rome as a religious and civilizational catastrophe. More recently, in line with current ecumenical and pastoral initiatives, that view has softened. The softening has been quite noticeable during the current pontificate. The pope recently took part in a joint liturgy with the … Read more
I have encountered serious Catholics who have invoked the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions) as seemingly discouraging or even reproving any kind of searching public examination and criticism of Islam. What exactly does this short statement of the Vatican II Fathers have to say about … Read more