
Vatican City, Jun 21, 2018 / 08:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking to ecumenical leaders Thursday, Pope Francis said Christian unity in many ways depends on a willingness to go out of oneself to meet the needs of others, and called for a “new evangelical outreach” among Christian communities.
In a June 21 speech, the pope voiced concern over what he said is a growing impression that ecumenism is divorced from missionary outreach, saying the mission aspect of Christianity “cannot be neglected nor emptied of its content.”
Missionary outreach, he said, “determines our very identity,” since the preaching the Gospel is core to the Christian identity. And while the ways in which this mission is carried out might vary, we must constantly remind ourselves that Christ’s Church grows by attraction.”
To this end, Francis said a “new evangelical outreach” is needed among Christians of different confessions, who are called to be one people that “experiences and shares the joy of the Gospel, praises the Lord and serves our brothers and sisters.”
Francis voiced his conviction that “an increased missionary impulse” would spur Christians toward greater unity, leading to an “ecumenical spring” which, despite the “constant vacillations” among different denominational communities, would allow them to gather together around Jesus Christ.
The pope spoke during a June 21 ecumenical meeting in Geneva to mark the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches.
Founded in 1948, the World Council of Churches (WCC) is a global fellowship of churches whose goal is to promote unity among different Christian confessions. With some 348 members worldwide, the organization has long been a driving force for ecumenism in Europe.
Members are present in 110 countries and represent over 500 million Christians, including Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran and Methodist churches, as well as many Reformed, United and Independent churches.
The majority of the founding members initially came from Europe and North America, however, today the bulk of the WCC membership is in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific. The Holy See is not a member of the WCC, but it is an observer, and collaborates with the organization in several areas.
Pope Francis visited the WCC headquarters during his June 21 daytrip to Geneva, which he made specifically for the 70th anniversary celebrations.
After his arrival, the pope met with the President of the Swedish Confederation, Alain Berset, and led an ecumenical prayer encounter, telling attendees that their love for Christ must overcome divisions rooted in party preferences and differences in belief.
Francis then lunched with ecumenical leaders from around the world before returning to the WCC headquarters for his ecumenical meeting. After the gathering, Pope Francis will celebrate Mass for Switzerland’s Catholic population before returning to Rome.
In his address at the ecumenical meeting, Pope Francis pointed to the biblical significance of the number 70, noting how in the Gospel Jesus tells his disciples to forgive one another “not only seven times, but seventy times seven.”
That number, the pope said, is not a limit and nor does it quantify justice, but rather, it “opens up a vast horizon” and “serves as the measure of a charity capable of infinite forgiveness.”
After centuries of conflict among Christian communities, this charity “now allows us to come together as brothers and sisters, at peace and full of gratitude to God our Father,” he said, adding that the day’s gathering is the fruit of the forgiveness and efforts toward unity of many who have come before them.
“Out of heartfelt love for Jesus, they did not allow themselves to be mired in disagreements, but instead looked courageously to the future, believing in unity and breaking down barriers of suspicion and of fear,” he said.
Those working in the ecumenical field today are heirs to the “to the faith, charity and hope of all those who, by the nonviolent power of the Gospel, found the courage to change the course of history,” Francis said.
While in the past this history “had led us to mutual distrust and estrangement, and thus contributed to the infernal spiral of continual fragmentation,” the Holy Spirit has changed the route, “and a path both old and new has been irrevocably paved: the path of a reconciled communion aimed at the visible manifestation of the fraternity that even now unites believer.”
Pope Francis also noted that the number 70 reflects the number of disciples Jesus sent out two-by-two in the Gospel, which implies that in order to be a true disciple, one must “become an apostle, a missionary,” going beyond division to spread the Good News.
Pointing to the theme of the day’s meeting, “Walking, Praying and Working Together,” the pope said walking is a two-fold movement which implies both going “in and out,” which means going in toward the center, which is Christ, and out toward “the existential peripheries” of the world.
Prayer is “the oxygen of ecumenism,” he said. “Without prayer, communion becomes stifling and makes no progress, because we prevent the wind of the Spirit from driving us forward.” The pope then urged attendes to ask themselves how often they pray for one another, and for unity.
On the point of walking together, Francis pointed to several ongoing initiatives in which the Holy See already collaborates with ecumenical leaders, including the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism; collaboration with the Office for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation and the joint preparation of texts for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, among others.
He also praised the WCC’s Bossey Ecumenical Institute for their work in training both pastoral and academic leaders for different Christian churches throughout the world.
“The work of our Christian communities is rightly defined by the word ‘diakonia,’” a Greek term meaning service to others, he said, adding that credibility of the Gospel “is put to the test by the way Christians respond to the cry of all those, in every part of the world, who suffer unjustly from the baleful spread of an exclusion that, by generating poverty, foments conflicts.”
With vulnerable populations becoming increasingly marginalized and the rich becoming more wealthy, and with Christian persecution increasing throughout the world, Christians themselves are called to draw near to those who suffer, remembering that unity is already established in the “ecumenism of blood,” he said.
Pope Francis closed his address urging attendees to encourage one another while avoiding the temptation “to absolutize certain cultural paradigms and get caught up in partisan interests.”
“Let us help men and women of good will to grow in concern for events and situations that affect a great part of humanity but seldom make it to the front page. We cannot look the other way,” he said, adding that “it is problematic when Christians appear indifferent towards those in need.”
More troubling still, he said, is the certainty shown by some, “who consider their own blessings clear signs of God’s predilection rather than a summons to responsible service of the human family and the protection of creation.”
Asking what each community can concretely do together, the pope urged participants not to hesitate in putting a plan together when ideas arise, so as to “experience a more intense fraternity in the exercise of concrete charity.”
[…]
Has anyone seen the this Christmas’s Nativity scene in the Vatican?!
That is exactly what I was going to ask. I can think of nobody sane who would think that is art that transmits truth and beauty.
Yup. I was thinking that too.
Artist and teacher ROBERT HENRI: “Art appears in many forms. To some degree EVERY HUMAN BEING is an artist, dependent on the quality of his growth. Art need not be intended. It comes as inevitably as the tree from its roots, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig [….] The whole value of art rests in the artist’s ability to see well into what is before him.”
“Those who have lived and grown at least to some degree in the spirit of freedom are our creative artists [….] They must leave their trace in some way, paint, stone, machinery, whatever [….] I have met masters now and again, some in studios, others ANYWHERE, working on a railroad, running a boat, playing a game, selling things [….] a carpenter or a gardener” (The Art Spirit, 1960).
ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA explains further: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) combines with “the Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk:20-1) to mean that the pure of heart is blessed even now to “see the image of the divine nature in THE BEAUTY OF HIS OWN SOUL.”
Would that Pope Francis knelt at the Vatican Christmas creche and experienced deep remorse. Beauty finds its fountainhead in God’s essence. All that is ordered in truth, physically and spiritually. Visual art all the arts are art when they convey that to the senses. Sensible knowledge of spiritual beauty, God expressing his perfect beauty in the created world. Man creatively filtering it through his unique prism giving a new insight of the same creation. Somewhat like Man expressing to the world Christ through the facets of his rare unique prism. Why the saints are so varied. Art possesses that continuity. Unlike last years and this years creche all since 2013. What’s conveyed are personalistic inventions of what is unknown. The truth of the divinity. Visions of entrapped creatures void of humanness. A something perhaps angel in a space helmet. A moon faced dummy child meant more for the capricious play of children, rather than the infant that inspires love in men. Effrontery at a time of spiritual want. Weep and repair. Recapture the beauty conveyed during 2000 years of magnificent art.
Fully considering Pope St. Paul VI has to say about beauty and truth, we notice the DIVORCE of beauty from truth that occurs when the conjugal principles of Humanae Vitae are violated.
He warns: “Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon peoples […] the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious” (n. 17). Rulers? How about Shepherds???
When gone viral, the moral tailspin opens the door to the James Martins and Cardinal Paglias of this world, who now ENABLE/IMPOSE unnatural aberrations upon the flock, as by Paglia’s homoerotic and in-your-face wall mural (art!) at the cathedral church of the Diocese of Terni-Narni-Amelia. Said Cardinal Paglia’s mural artist Cinalli: “The one thing that they didn’t permit me to insert [in the catch-all mural] was the [natural] copulation of two people within this net where everything [else !!!] is permitted.” Maybe Cardinal Paglia should clean things up—surely in the interests of Pope St. Paul VI’s truth and beauty?
Oh, but wait, Paglia now is too busy to mess with interior decorating (or the interior life), having been PROMOTED as the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Grand Chancellor of the (renamed, etc.) John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. Besides, the mural includes (inclusive!) his own self-referential portrait…
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/leading-vatican-archbishop-featured-in-homoerotic-painting-he-commissioned
Maureen Mullarkey, artist, writer for the Federalist states it well, “Paglia’s narcissism—the urge to flaunt his liberation from the moral considerations he is pledged to honor—is stunning. It is a finger in the eye of congregants who trust in a priest’s fidelity to his vows. To place it in a public house of worship is treachery. It is also a declaration of Paglia’s own trust in his immunity from reprimand. Let a priest, bound to celibacy, keep his sexuality to himself. Apart from all else, that is elementary manners. It is uncivilized to trumpet what any primitive tribesman understands: that there exists an inviolable boundary between what can be seen and what should be kept hidden. By forcing congregants to peep through a keyhole at his sexual inclinations—and suggested behavior—he mocks the moral sensitivities he is pledged to protect. Abandoning reticence, Paglia disdains his own flock. He is taunting them. There is malice in that”(Maureen Mullarkey in Studio Matters). Cardinal Paglia is one among many who manifest evil within the Church, evil tolerated in measure to adherence. We must be aware. Tolerance is the entree into darkness.
Catholics, indeed all with faith in Christ, all decent men must ask this question, Why would this Roman Pontiff, elected to defend the faith appoint reprobate Cardinal Paglia President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and Grand Chancellor of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences? Priests, bishops have a duty to their faith in Christ, their ordination in Christ to respond candidly first for their own integrity, and certainly for the faithful.
They inspire. They are doing fine but they can do much more. Artists, sportspersons, film stars, and musicians are yet to do justice to their enormous potential in the task of world-rebuilding.
“The bishop of Rome then led his artist visitors to the 2020 creche in St Peter’s Square where Francis then, reportedly, sat in Santa’s lap.”