In an essay published in 1994, titled “Why I Signed It,” he defended the statement and his continuing involvement in the project. “I am a Protestant who thanks God for the wisdom, backbone, maturity of mind and conscience, and above all, love for my Lord Jesus Christ that I often see among Catholics, and who sometimes has the joy of hearing Catholics say they see comparable fruits in Protestants.”
Source: J.I. Packer - As quoted by Timothy George in "Packer at Ninety", First Things, October 2016, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/10/packer-at-ninety
The Churches Should Face The Challenge Together
Many people in Germany today have no real knowledge of the Christian faith, and they do not seem interested in understanding, let alone embracing it. If the churches take their mission seriously to “go to all nations and make them my disciples” (Mt 28:19), it should be a priority for them to engage these people in dialogue. Instead of dealing with this challenge by themselves, churches should face it together, learning from each other’s experience and encouraging each other. Focusing on their common faith can only strengthen the bond among the churches. Also, trying together to communicate the Christian faith in an understandable way can lead the churches themselves to a deeper understanding of their own faith. The 500th anniversary of the Reformation can be seen as an opportunity to remind the public—Christians and non-believers alike—of what the Christian faith is all about: God’s love in Christ for us humans and for all creation. That is why the churches in Germany have decided to make the anniversary a celebration of Jesus Christ (“Christusfest”).
Source: Council of Churches in Germany (ACK) - "The Ecumenical Situation in Germany", republished by Gramoor, http://geii.org/week_of_prayer_for_christian_unity/prayer_worship/ecumenical_situation_in_Germany.html
The Slaughter of Amish Schoolgirls
[Referring to the 2006 Pennsylvania slaughter of Amish schoolgirls]
But as far as open anger or hostility goes, the Amish hold, as they have for centuries, that it is destructive - a waste of energy that will hold them hostage and ultimately kill them, just as their daughters were held hostage and killed by someone else's anger. To these devout followers of Jesus, the only answer is the one he offered on the Cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Source: Johann Christoph Arnold - Why Forgive?, pp.210
The Lord's Prayer - Do We Really Mean It?
Recited by millions from childhood on, the Lord's Prayer includes the plea, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Familiar as it is, I often wonder whether we really mean what we say when we repeat these words, and whether we sufficiently consider their meaning. To me, at least, they imply that once we recognize our own need for forgiveness, we will be able to forgive. This recognition does not come to most of us easily, because it demands humility. But isn't humility the essence of forgiveness?
Source: Johann Christoph Arnold - Why Forgive?
Where is our Repentance as Christians?
We sinned, but where is our repentance as Christians? The Lord expects us to face up to facts. ... We Christians need to face our catalogue of failures squarely. The scandal of division. Impenitance for our crime against Israel. Complacency and self-righteousness.
Source: M. Basilea Schlink - Repentance: The Joy-Filled Life, p. 35
Both Victim & Victimizer Are Prisoners
To make matters worse, some people claim that when a victim forgives an abuser, he is implying that he - the victim- is at least partly to blame. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Forgiveness is necessary simply because both victim and victimizer - who in most cases know one another (or are even related) - are prisoners of a shared darkness in whcih both will remain bound until someone opens the door. Forgiveness is the only way out, and even if an abuser chooses to remain in the darkness, that should not hold the victim back.
Source: Johann Christoph Arnold - Why Forgive?, pp.136-137
Jesus Prayed It ... So Can We
In 1935, Abbé Paul Couturier, a priest of the Archdiocese of Lyons, sought a solution to the problem of non-Roman Catholics not being able to observe the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. He found the solution in the Roman Missal as the Association for Promotion of the Unity of Christians had done seventy-eight years earlier in England. Couturier promoted prayer for Christian unity on the inclusive basis that “our Lord would grant to his Church on earth that peace and unity which were in his mind and purpose, when, on the eve of His Passion, He prayed that all might be one.” This prayer would unite Christians in prayer for that perfect unity that God wills and by the means that he wills. Like Fr. Paul Wattson, Abbé Couturier exhibited a powerful passion for unity and had sent out “calls to prayer” annually until his death in 1953.
Source: Rev. Thomas Orians, S.A. - "BACKGROUND: Brief History of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2017", by Rev. Thomas Orians, S.A., Associate Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, http://geii.org/week_of_prayer_for_christian_unity/background/brief_history.html
US Anti-Catholicism 100 Years Ago
Anti-Catholicism stretches back to the nation's colonial times, when some states barred Catholics from holding office, and continued through the mid-1800s, which saw the Know-Nothing party's campaign against Catholic politicians. Lynch mobs killed Italian immigrants and arsonists burned down Catholic churches.
Perhaps no publication captures the animus toward Catholicism at the start of the 20th century as vividly as the Menace, launched in an old opera house in Aurora in 1911, when the city's population was only a little over 4,000.
The Menace wasn't the country's first anti-Catholic newspaper, but it quickly became one of the biggest, eventually selling anti-Catholic books and launching a lecture series. Its editor, the Rev. Theodore C. Walker, claimed its target was not rank-and-file Catholics but the Catholic Church itself.
Source: Matt Pearce - "A century ago, a popular Missouri newspaper demonized a religious minority: Catholics", LA Times, 9 Dec 2015, http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-catholic-scare-20151209-story.html
JRR Tolkien
This dwarf-elf alliance may well be a paradigm of a Jewish-Christian friendship. Interestingly, as Saks and others have noted, Tolkien’s correspondence during World War II reveals that he himself fell into an unplanned interfaith friendship. Too old to serve in the war, he was asked at Oxford to serve on air-raid duty, keeping watch in order to alert denizens of the university town if there was a bombing and they needed to seek shelter. While on duty, he was paired with one of the most esteemed Jewish historians and Zionists then in Britain. Tolkien wrote:
I was in the small C33 room: very cold and damp. But an incident occurred which moved me and made the occasion memorable. My companion in misfortune was Cecil Roth (the learned Jew historian). I found him charming, full of gentleness (in every sense); and we sat up till after 12 talking. He lent me his watch as there were no going clocks in the place: —and nonetheless himself came and called me at 10 to 7: so that I could go to Communion! It seemed like a fleeting glimpse of an unfallen world. Actually I was awake, and just (as one does) discovering a number of reasons (other than tiredness and having no chance to shave or even wash), such as the desirability of getting home in good time to open up and un-black and all that, why I should not go. But the incursion of this gentle Jew, and his somber glance at my rosary by my bed, settled it. I was down at St Aloysius at 7.15 just in time to go to Confession before Mass.
Source: Meir Soloveichik - The Secret Jews of The Hobbit, Commentary Magazine, 11 August 2016, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-secret-jews-of-the-hobbit/
"There was greed and lust for power"
Last June, Pope Francis went so far as to praise Luther — once deemed a heretic by the Catholic Church — as a great reformer.
On his flight back to Rome from Armenia, the pope told reporters: "The church was not a role model, there was corruption, there was worldliness, there was greed, and lust for power. He protested against this. And he was an intelligent man."
Source: Pope Francis - As quoted on National Public Radio, 28 Oct 2016, "The Pope Commemorates The Reformation That Split Western Christianity", http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/10/28/499587801/pope-francis-reaches-out-to-honor-the-man-who-splintered-christianity
Amber Hunter
Our dad has the sweetest smile. Cliff says that it’s his favorite thing about our [jail] visits. This time, dad shared stories from his childhood that made our hearts hurt, and helped us to understand him so much more. He sang for us a new song he had written. Yep, it turns out all three of us are songwriters! His song was gentle and emotional, and his tears made his chin quiver as he sang. He said it was the best [jail] visit ever, and that he felt like “a free man, outside of the fences.” We all agreed together that God is restoring so much in our family.
As we were leaving, and he was headed back to his cell, I got this urge and I ran back over to give him
another hug. It caught him off guard, and he smiled.
We left that prison with a mix of joy and sorrow in our hearts.
Source: Amber Hunter - "Picture Day at Polansky", A2J blog, 31 Oct 2016, http://www.a2jphoenix.org/blog/picture-day-at-polunsky
"Both Sides Missed Something"
Gerard O'Connell, Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit magazine America, says the pope's participation in commemorating the Reformation is proof of the extraordinary change in Catholic-Lutheran relations.
"A recognition, perhaps, that both sides missed something at the time of the Protestant Reformation," says O'Connell. "The Catholic Church missed ways of reforming itself. Luther and those around him pressed in a way that just couldn't be taken on board, so, in a way, both sides misspoke."
Source: Gerard O'Connell - As quoted on National Public Radio, 28 Oct 2016, "The Pope Commemorates The Reformation That Split Western Christianity", http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/10/28/499587801/pope-francis-reaches-out-to-honor-the-man-who-splintered-christianity?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2054
Charismatic Ecumenism
Despite the embraces of Karl Rahner and Yves Congar, theologians in the 1980s and 1990s were suspicious that charismatic ecumenism was insufficiently ecclesial and too “emotional,” a fear that only began to disappear after St. John Paul II’s 1999 Ut Unum Sint.
Now, says Hocken, Pope Francis in both word and action “is bringing to an end the lack of connection between official ecumenism and charismatic ecumenism. This is very significant.”
Source: Austen Ivereigh - Quoting Fr. Peter Hocken in "Jubilee in Rome highlights charismatic fruits in Francis’s Pentecost papacy", Crux, 3 June 2017, https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/06/03/jubilee-rome-highlights-charismatic-fruits-franciss-pentecost-papacy/
Agree With Each Other!
(2) I plead with Euodia and Syntyche to agree with each other (be of the same mind) in the Lord. (3) Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women because they have labored side by side with me for the cause of the gospel (good news) of Christ, along with Clement and the rest of my ministry partners, whose names are written in the book of life!
Source: The Apostle Paul - Philippians 4:2-3 (IEB)
Thomas Campbell
Like Thomas Campbell, we are open to and we seek a better way toward Christian unity and maturity. Whatever that way is, it will not succeed if it is simply another method. As long as humans are involved and have their way, even the best way can end in division. Rather, the help of the Holy Spirit is needed to grant knowledge, wisdom, perspective, humility, and love, all of which are necessary if Christians are to be one.
Source: Keith D. Stanglin - "The Restoration Movement, the Habit of Schism, and a Proposal for Unity", by Dr. Keith D. Stanglin, in Christian Studies, Volume 28, August 2016, http://austingrad.edu/Christian%20Studies/CS%2028/Proposal%20for%20Unity.pdf
"We ignored our own doctrines"
Conservative Christians, and especially Southern Baptists, must be careful to remember the ways in which our cultural anthropology perverted our soteriology and ecclesiology. It is to our shame that we ignored our own doctrines to advance something as clearly demonic as racial pride. And it is a shame that sometimes it took theological liberals to remind us of what we claimed to believe in an inerrant Bible, what we claimed to be doing in a Great Commission.
Source: Russell Moore - "How Martin Luther King Jr. Overcame ‘Christian’ White Supremacy", TGC - The Gospel Coalition, 2 Feb 2015, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-martin-luther-king-jr.-overcame-christian-white-supremacy
"Directing our critical glance first at ourselves and not at each other"
Both as individuals and as a community of believers, we all constantly require repentance and reform - encouraged and led by the Holy Spirit. "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said 'Repent,' He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." Thus reads the opening statement of Luther's 95 Theses from 1517, which triggered the Reformation movement. Although this thesis is anything but self-evident today, we Lutheran and Catholic Christians want to take it seriously by directing our critical glance first at ourselves and not at each other.
Source: Lutheran - Roman Catholic Commission on Unity - Conflict to Communion: Report of the Lutheran - Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, p. 7
"... continue on the road to full unity."
Greeting the German delegation in his private library, Francis sought to give new impetus to the effort toward Christian unity. He encouraged evangelicals and Catholics, when considering an ecumenical initiative, to ask themselves: “Can we share it with our brothers and sisters in Christ? Can we do another stretch of the road together?
“We have the same baptism: We must walk together, without growing tired,” Francis said. There is no going back on the road to unity he assured the delegation; Catholics and evangelicals must “continue to witness together to the Gospel and to continue on the road to full unity.”
Source: Pope Francis - As quoted by Gerard O'Connell in "German Evangelical Church issues historic invite to Pope Francis", America : The Jesuit Review, 6 Feb 2017, http://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/02/06/german-evangelical-church-issues-historic-invite-pope-francis
What happens when the emphasis is on Jesus
In 1517 Martin Luther raised concerns about what he saw as abuses in the Church of his time by making public his 95 theses. 2017 is the 500th anniversary of this key event in the reformation movements that marked the life of the Western Church over several centuries. This event has been a controversial theme in the history of inter-church relations in Germany, not least over the last few years. The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has been building up to this anniversary since 2008, by focusing each year on one particular aspect of the Reformation, for example: the Reformation and Politics, or the Reformation and Education. The EKD also invited its ecumenical partners at various levels to help commemorate the events of 1517.
After extensive, and sometimes difficult, discussions, the churches in Germany agreed that the way to commemorate ecumenically this Reformation event should be with a Christusfest – a Celebration of Christ. If the emphasis were to be placed on Jesus Christ and his work of reconciliation as the center of Christian faith, then all the ecumenical partners of the EKD (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Methodist, Mennonite and others) could participate in the anniversary festivities.
Given the fact that the history of the Reformation was marked by painful division, this is a very remarkable achievement. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity has worked hard to produce a shared understanding of the commemoration. Its important report, From Conflict to Communion, recognizes that both traditions approach this anniversary in an ecumenical age, with the achievements of fifty years of dialogue behind them, and with new understandings of their own history and theology. Separating that which is polemical from the theological insights of the Reformation, Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognising him as a “witness to the gospel” (From Conflict to Communion 29). And so after centuries of mutual condemnations and vilification, in 2017 Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.
Source: Vatican - "Resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2017", Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/weeks-prayer-doc/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20160531_week-prayer-2017_en.html
"Choose to prevent spiritual injury"
Quoting Steven McDonald, a NYPD officer shot by a teenager and paralyzed:
I forgave Shavod because I believe the only thing worse than receiving a bullet in my spine would have been to nurture revenge in my heart. Such an attitude would have extended my injury to my soul, hurting my wife, son, and others even more. It's bad enough that the physical effects are permanent, but at least I can choose to prevent spiritual injury.
Source: Johann Christoph Arnold - Why Forgive?, pp.180