christian unity

Bishop Loverde Concelebrates Mass for Christian Unity

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 2/8/07)

During his homily at a Mass at Georgetown University’s Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart last week, Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde said advocates must “persevere” when it comes to fighting for Christian religious unity.
The Mass, sponsored by the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (CADEIO), closed out the second day of a four-day National Workshop on Christian Unity held at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington.
Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl was the principal celebrant; concelebrating were Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar General of Milwaukee Richard J. Sklba and Bishop Brian Farrell, L.C., secretary for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Bishop Loverde said that among the obstacles to Christian unity are pride, self-importance, pretension and indifference, as well as, what Pope Benedict XVI called a “convenient deafness” to non-Catholic Christians.
“We do not deny the reality of the obstacles and hurdles which we have long encountered in running the race whose goal is Christian unity,” the bishop said. “But, precisely because ecumenism is God’s work entrusted to us, we do not give in nor do we give up.”
The key is “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus,” who is strength, through prayer, he said.
“In this journey, which we are undertaking with other Christians, prayer must occupy the first place,” the bishop said, quoting John Paul II.
Garland Pohl, a member of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and recent past president of CADEIO, went a step further, saying that separate Christian communities have to reach unity through a “great emphasis on spiritual ecumenism.”
According to A Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism published in late 2006 by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, spiritual ecumenism is the result of separate denominations coming together to pray, worship, and fight for peace and social justice.
Through spiritual ecumenism “we should be looking prayerfully to our conversion — whatever the church will be in the future in the time of unity,” Pohl said.
Archbishop Wuerl offered a “word of solidarity” with those gathered for their ecumenical and interreligious work.
“As Bishop Loverde pointed out in his homily, we need to continue to persevere,” he said. Some of the more challenging times are ahead, he added.
Jeff Bolling, a freshman at Georgetown University, is Episcopal, but attended the Mass after receiving a broadcast e-mail from the university.
“I really liked the message of the homily today,” he said. “I think sometimes we get caught up in a lot of the details.” Bolling said he encourages interfaith dialogue among his friends and tries to participate in interreligious activities to “develop some understanding” of other faiths.
Christian Brother Jeffrey Gros, a theology professor at Memphis (Tenn.) Theological Seminary who spent a quarter-century as a national ecumenical officer, first for the National Council of Churches and then for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, delivered the keynote address earlier that day to 400 national and local ecumenical officers of the Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian and other Christian churches.
Brother Gros opened his address by thanking God for recent ecumenical advances, and said that one challenge ecumenical leaders still face is integrating the many solid ecumenical advances of the past half-century into the life of their churches, especially in an age where general religious illiteracy is on the rise.
"We are challenged by both an ecumenical overload of agreements to integrate into the mainstream of Christian piety and consciousness and a looming religious illiteracy in our churches," he said.
He said Archbishop Wuerl, a noted expert in catechetics, described the phenomenon of growing religious illiteracy in a recent speech. The archbishop said many young people in the 1990s and the current decade are significantly different in their religious attitudes from earlier generations: "They often do not contest what the Church teaches. They simply do not know it."
The religious illiteracy Archbishop Wuerl referred to includes "ecumenical illiteracy," Brother Gros said. "This situation challenges us to work together and not to retreat from our commitments to one another in sectarian isolation.
"We have a common task of translating our ecumenical achievements into educable components, teachable content and methodology," he said.
CADEIO also honored Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore for his extensive contributions to ecumenical and interreligious relations.
No living bishop has done more for the ecumenical movement, said Msgr. Dennis L. Mikulanis, association vice president, in presenting the cardinal with the association's James Fitzgerald Award.
"He has served on numerous dialogues, 12 (three-year) terms on the bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and on the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He has been a leader in promoting ecumenical relations as a significant aspect of his ministry as bishop," Msgr. Mikulanis said. "Our honoree leaves a deep personal imprint on and an unmatched legacy for Catholic involvement in ecumenism as well as in relations with Jews and in interreligious relations in the United States.”

Contributing to this report was Jerry Filteau from CNS. Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.