Are there any historical precedents for ecumenism?

[Contarini]

JSmitty2005:

Ecumenism promotes doctrinal relativism which was at the very root of the Heretical Revolt, better known as the ‘Reformation.’

Quite the contrary. The Reformers were the very opposite of doctrinal relativists. They were confident that their reading of Scripture was clearly the right one and anyone who opposed their interpretation opposed Scripture.

Relativism was a result of the Reformation, not its cause. It created competing claims of authority, which led many people to question Christian revelation altogether.

The problem with all the posts on this thread is that you’re assuming that there is one monolithic thing called “ecumenism.” This just isn’t true.

I’ve had the good fortune to have some contact with one of the leading Protestant ecumenists, Prof. Geoffrey Wainwright of Duke Divinity School . I’m not a student of his but I did sit in on his introductory theology class and I’ve had a few conversations with him. He’s anything but a doctrinal relativist–he’s totally committed to the heritage of orthodox Christianity and he’s extremely pro-Catholic. The “ecumenism” being discussed on this thread has nothing to do with the ecumenism advocated by Wainwright–but Wainwright is recognized as one of the leading names in Protestant ecumenism.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

TNT:

Notice that 2 points are equated that are in the negative but have NO connection!

1. Ecumenism of Return
2. Deny AND reject your faith History.
   However, one does not in ANY way reject his own history by returning. History is a FACT. One’s history of Faith can indeed be cherished, as many prot converts so clearly admit. It was part of their Faith journey!

I’m sorry, but they do reject it. They don’t do so as angrily and contemptuously as those who convert the other way commonly do (for reasons outlined by the Anglican Dr. Johnson in the 18th century!), but they do reject it. I hear them talk on “The Journey Home” and other places, and they are all suffering from “convert amnesia.” They cannot any longer speak of their original traditions fairly or accurately, not because of lack of good will but because they have cut themselves off from those traditions and have begun to assimilate themselves to a different paradigm.

When one returns, one simply and honestly rejects ONLY the ERRORS of one’s former beliefs. But B16 somehow cannot say that. For that would in fact be giving validity to the necessity of “Ecumenism of Return”.

He’s not saying that error mustn’t be renounced. And he’s certainly not saying that doctrinal unity is not necessary.

I do wish he had explained a little more fully what he means by “ecumenism of return.” I could tell you what I understand by it but I have no business putting words in the Pope’s mouth.

Edwin

 

[Sacramentalist]

It should be noted that, since long before Vatican II, the Church in her matyrologies commemorates saints of the separated Eastern Churches (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East), even when they lived and died after said Churches went into schism. This is especially true of martyrs.

Some of these saints have found their way into the Roman calendar (again, long before Vatican II), but most are found in the calendars of the various Eastern Catholic Churches, who upon their reunions with Catholicism were allowed to keep all but the most anti-Catholic of their post-Schism saints.

If that’s not Ecumenism, I don’t know what is!

 

[TNT]

Sacramentalist:

It should be noted that, since long before Vatican II, the Church in her matyrologies commemorates saints of the separated Eastern Churches (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East), even when they lived and died after said Churches went into schism. This is especially true of martyrs.

Some of these saints have found their way into the Roman calendar (again, long before Vatican II), but most are found in the calendars of the various Eastern Catholic Churches, who upon their reunions with Catholicism were allowed to keep all but the most anti-Catholic of their post-Schism saints.

If that’s not Ecumenism, I don’t know what is!

This doesn’t drive you nuts? I’m not saying it didn’t happen. BUT how would I illustrate it to some who dared doubt it?
All these examples and no references, no names, no dates?
Here’s today’s Ecumenism Without Return
Bishop approves Episcopalian (bring yur own bread) communion at Catholic Mass
***Is that BYOB? **
*

 

[barsapp]

Bishop approves Episcopalian (bring yur own bread) communion at Catholic Mass

“At each Catholic school Mass, the child brings a blessed host from his Episcopalian service, which he presents for the Eucharistic minister to administer back to him. The bishop granted permission for the child to continue this practice.”
is it too difficult to understand that:

1. the boy can convert to Catholicism or
2. the boy can receive his episcopalian bread during an episcopalian service???
   but to receive the episcopalian bread during a catholic mass is pure nonsense, the boy is condemning himself worst. Also the bishop.

 

[JSmitty2005]

JSmitty2005:

C’mon, that is such a cool picture! But I do respect your request, however, I don’t know how to remove it. Sorry

By the way, if anyone is curious about that picture, you can find it on my website: www.myspace.com/jsmitty2005

 

[Maranatha]

JSmitty2005:

Here is the link to an mp3 lecture by Peter Kreeft entitled “Ecumenism without Compromise”:

peterkreeft.com/audio/03_ecumenism/ecumenism.mp3

I found it helpful in understanding true ecumenism.

Let me know what you think of what he says.

I just listened to this talk. It was excellent.

 

[barsapp]

JSmitty2005:

Here is the link to an mp3 lecture by Peter Kreeft entitled “Ecumenism without Compromise”

only a weak faith needs to compromise…
Luke 18:8: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
how far we are from the end?
salt salts no more… (Matt 5, 13)

 

[JSmitty2005]

barsapp:

only a weak faith needs to compromise…

I know, that’s why I don’t understand why people have a “give a little, take a little” attitude towards ecumenism. We don’t need to “give” any if Catholicism really is the True Faith.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

JSmitty2005:

The hardest thing that I struggle with is ecumenism in the post-VII Church . Is there any historical/traditional precendent for ecumenism/interfaith dialogue? It seems as though the Church adopted this liberal stance out of nowhere at the Second Vatican Council. If it truly did change the Church’s stance, then how can the council not be heretical? God never changes and likewise, neither does His Church.

The Church is constantly changing - which is why so much of what is in the Catholic Encyclopedia is of purely historical interest. Christ grew, developed, matured - which means that He changed; so why should the Church not undergo change ? It is not superior to its Lord & Master.​

Adaptation, missionary or otherwise, is a form of change - and change is not identical with corruption; it is neither good nor bad, in itself. It all depends on what is changing, why, how, to what extent, in what respects. There could hardly be a more revolutionary change than the admission to the Church of the Gentiles - in comparison with that, ecumenical dialogue with our fellow Christians is a mere nothing.

Changelessness is fine for God and fossils - for different reasons: but not for a Church, which is an organic thing, and must either grow (and so, change) or rot. ##

I may sound critical, but I actually would really like to hear that there was some sort of ecumenism in the past in order to calm my worries. I once heard that the Church invited Luther and the other heretical revolutionaries (better known as “reformers”) to the Council of Trent. Is this true?

Yes, it is true: Protestants were invited, to the second session, but did not attend - see the links:​

historylearningsite.co.uk/council_of_trent.htm

boisestate.edu/courses/reformation/rcc/trent.shtml

Whether this counts as ecumenism, is another matter.

There are precedents for dialogue between Catholics & Protestants, however: at the end of the 17th century, for example. ##

Also, where does the Church draw the line between ‘true’ and ‘false’ ecumenism? I have heard the terms thrown around, but no one ever really defines what they mean. Thanks!

Image laughingly removed by moderator

 

[USMC]

##
Changelessness is fine for God and fossils - for different reasons: but not for a Church, which is an organic thing, and must either grow (and so, change) or rot. ##

What you have described is exactly what Pope St. Pius X condemned.

*Pope St. Pius X: "To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we have still to consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about the development of the one and the other. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death – dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself… "[according to the modernist] the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change…Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists…

“We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason” [CONDEMNED PROPOSITION] and condemned still more solemnly in the [First] Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a deeper understanding."(Vatican I) (Pascendi).

The following is a link to the entiire encyclical where the heretical ideas of the modernists were officially condemned.

kensmen.com/catholic/pascendidominicigregis.html*

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

USMC:

What you have described is exactly what Pope St. Pius X condemned.

Pope St. Pius X: "To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we have still to consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about the development of the one and the other. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death – dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself… "[according to the modernist] the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change…Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists…

"We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason" [CONDEMNED PROPOSITION] and condemned still more solemnly in the [First] Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a deeper understanding."(Vatican I) (Pascendi).

The following is a link to the entiire encyclical where the heretical ideas of the modernists were officially condemned.

kensmen.com/catholic/pascendidominicigregis.html## None of that can alter the fact that the Church through the centuries has changed its rites, liturgical languages, doctrinal formulations, theological methods, and other things too numerous to mention.

Or do those who reject all talk of change suppose that St. Peter chanted the Roman Canon in Latin at High Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, while vested in cope, mitre, rochet, buskins, maniple, amice, chasuble, dalmatic, and all the other vestments worn by Catholic bishops of Rome in the Roman Rite ? Maybe they imagine that St.Peter was a graduate of the Angelicum or one of the other Pontifical Universities in Rome. Doubtless, had he been spared, he would have written an inspired commentary on the Summa Theologiae of St.Thomas Aquinas - in Latin, naturally.

Presumably we are to take it that St. Paul was Apostolic Delegate of His Holiness, with appellate jurisdiction over all the Churches from Bithynia to the West.

I don’t think so.

If a single one of these suggestions or statements does not apply to the Church both as it was in the days of St.Peter, & as it was in the pontificate of Pius X, then change in the Church is a reality. ##

 

[JSmitty2005]

Discipline/tradition can change but doctrine/Tradition is unchangeable.

“If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church, let him be anathema.” -Fourth Anathema of the Second Council of Nicaea (787A.D.)

 

[JSmitty2005]

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFECUM.HTM

 

[JSmitty2005]

USMC:

Bite your tongue. That was “expressly abandon at Vatican II”

“Today we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of the ecumenism of return, by which the others would ‘be converted’ and return to being ‘Catholics’… each church has its own riches and gifts of the Spirit, and it is this exchange that unity is trying to be achieved, and not in the fact that we should become ‘Protestants’, or that the others should become ‘Catholics’ in the sense of accepting the confessional form of Catholicism. This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II” (Cardinal Kasper, February 2001)

I think that Kasper was wrong. Here’s what Pope Benedict XVI said to the World Methodist Council yesterday (Dec. 9,2005):

“I have been encouraged by the initiative which would bring the member churches of the World Methodist Council into association with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999. Should the World Methodist Council express its intent to associate itself with the Joint Declaration, it would assist in contributing to the healing and reconciliation we ardently desire, and would be a significant step toward the stated goal of full visible unity in faith.”

I found this at: zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=81405

Regarding the JDDJ, what exactly did that establish? Who compromised, the Church or the Lutherans?