Doesn’t this make it quite clear that brother Roger indeed must have been a catholic, but that he didn’t want to reveal it in order not to endanger Taizé’s credibility as an ecumenical community? That must be the same reason for which brother Aloïs is denying that brother Roger “converted”. But the Catholic Church never officially speaks about protestants “converting”. You are “received into the full communion of the Church”. As I see it, there is no doubt that this is exactly what brother Roger did in 1972. I understand why he and the Taizé community was and still is so eager to underline that this doesn’t mean he was refuting his protestant origins. But brother Roger was in full communion with the Catholic Church, and he received Holy Communion every day. That is a fact.
There is an article on the Zenit site about this
From the article:
In an article concerning Brother Roger, the French daily Le Monde of Sept. 6, 2006, gave credence to and reproduced the claims of a small newsletter issued by Catholic traditionalist circles that misrepresents his true intentions and defames his memory.
A document of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in Rome is used to support the thesis of a “conversion” undertaken by Brother Roger, although the text says nothing of the kind. As for the bishop emeritus of Autun, Raymond Seguy, he has already qualified his words. Rejecting the term “conversion,” he declared to France Presse: “I did not say that Brother Roger abjured Protestantism, but he showed that he subscribed fully to the Catholic faith.”
This is the kind of sophistry that gets ecumenism a bad name for dishonesty and insincerity. Perhaps those converts who miss being Anglicans should return to Anglicanism, and carry on going to Mass and receiving Catholic Communion. Why not ? If that’s good enough for Brother Roger, how is the same conduct not good enough for less famous Christians ?
The martyrs could have saved their lives & avoided immense suffering, if they had engaged in the same cowardly & deceitful refusal that is involved in going under one identity, while having another. The old-fashioned name for it is hypocrisy. The martyrs were not hypocrites - it has been left to our our own times for hypocrisy to be regarded as a virtue among Christians. To live a lie is downright dishonest, and is blatantly contradictory to Catholic moral teaching, which utterly refuses to allow that the end can justify the means - except in matters ecumenical, apparently. Even popes cannot change this basic moral perception; they ought to be its champions. ##
From a Protestant background, Brother Roger undertook a step that was without precedent since the Reformation: entering progressively into a full communion with the faith of the Catholic Church without a “conversion” that would imply a break with his origins. In 1972, the bishop of Autun at the time, Armand Le Bourgeois, simply gave him Communion for the first time, without requiring any other profession of faith from him besides the creed recited during the Eucharist, which is held in common by all Christians. Several witnesses were present and can attest to this.
zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=94878
IOW - OTOH, the Vatican goes ballistic whenever the “wrong” kind of Protestant is given the Blessed Sacrament - but if it’s someone Rome admires, the Church’s discipline suddenly becomes irrelevant. All that goes for nothing, if the person involved is admired by Rome - only the small fry have to do anything so inconvenient to themselves as obey the rules. If you’re admired at Rome, the Church’s discipline doesn’t apply.
Rome is speaking out of both sides of its mouth - and as long as it continues to do so, it will be sowing contempt for the very principle of Church law which it (sometimes) claims is so very important. No army or business can be governed uprightly if it is sent mixed signals - and neither can a Church. If there is chaos in the Church, it is very largely because of the ambiguous, contradictory, & inconsistent signals from the very top. After all, very few Catholics are canonists - we simply aren’t equipped to understand why Rome contradicts itself, or how it does not, if it does not. If the Pope wants to uproot relativism, he could do worse than begin here. ##
- it is precisely this lack of honesty about where one stands that makes one wonder whether modern ecumenism is honest or not