Bergoglian False Ecumenism

The Cross of Wales has been blessed at a special service at Holy Trinity Church in Llandudno.

The Cross is a gift from King Charles to Wales and will be carried in the Coronation procession. It contains two relics from the True Cross, given to The King by Pope Francis. pic.twitter.com/EWPxCPEye3

— Coronation News & Updates (@Coronation2023) April 19, 2023

How Close are Constantinople and Rome?

Pope Francis meets with a delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, and speaks of the importance of Christian communion as we seek global communion after the pandemic.https://t.co/CSCEgVTMW1

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) June 28, 2021

How long before Constantinople begins to mouth Great Reset language?

Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at the Thronal Feast of the Church of Rome#orthodox_timeshttps://t.co/sSklPTpV0x

— Orthodox Times (@orthodox_times) June 29, 2021

A Good Ecumenism

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But will they take a public stand against feminism?

And if Bergoglio is the Obstacle to Unity?

And is he really looking for unity in Liberalism instead?

During this time of serious hardship, this #Prayer is even more necessary so that unity might prevail over conflicts. Our good example is fundamental: it is essential that Christians pursue the path toward full visible unity. #ChristianUnity

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 22, 2021

A Messenger who Conflicts with His Own Message

What of the devil's temptations to power, which can be found in imperial conceptions of the Church, one of which is Latin ultramontanism? Francis is the consequence of that and he embodies it.

Pope Francis: The devil does not tempt us with high theology, but with the weaknesses of our brothers and sisters. He is astute: he magnifies others’ mistakes and defects, sows discord, provokes criticism and creates factions. God has another way.https://t.co/OheUunTYeX

— America Magazine (@americamag) January 21, 2021

Christianity Unity? Or One World Religion?

By @eliseannallen, Pope’s push for Christian unity doesn’t stop for COVID https://t.co/kxMcKvnSon

— Crux (@Crux) January 18, 2021

No Thanks

World Council of Churches (WCC) interim general secretary is inviting the global ecumenical family and friends to join the WCC for a livestreamed public prayer service on 25 January#orthodox_timeshttps://t.co/g47cpyL6fU

— Orthodox Times (@orthodox_times) January 15, 2021

False Ecumenism?

When the representatives of a jurisidction do not disavow heterodoxy or scandalous behavior on the part of bishops or patriarchs with whom they are associated, how can one pretend that there can be fraternal relations with them? Fraternity requires accountability.

Deep condolences to the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate remembering the meeting with the great Patriarch Irinej, who passed away pic.twitter.com/hww5IgSHNm

— Leonardo Card.Sandri (@CardinalSandri) November 20, 2020

The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt

The beginning of German ethnomasochism?

German church commemorates 1945 declaration that “opened the door” to reconciliation with former enemies https://t.co/WynKOuu1bV #WCC

— Marianne Ejdersten (@MarianneEjder) October 19, 2020

Ioan Sauca - Interim General Secretery




As the director of the Bossey Institute, Ioan Sauca is dressed like an abbot or something. Why? Especially when the WCC and the institute have embraced feminism:

"Bossey student Quantisha Mason gives a blessing at the end of thanksgiving prayer in the Bossey chapel. All photos: Albin Hillert/WCC"

Churches need to confront the world’s divisions, says WCC interim general secretary https://t.co/tD9VEsU8U3 #WCC

— Marianne Ejdersten (@MarianneEjder) October 19, 2020

Orthodoxy in America Lecture by Archbishop Elpidophoros

Solidarity? Setting aside the theological issues that do divide Chalcedonian East and West, there is certainly unity in clericalism, liberalism, feminism, and some version of statism among the Latin and Greek hierarchs.

Using the Pope for Their Agenda

Disappointing to see a Coptic bishop participating in this as well. How much material heresy Anglicans have held in the first 300 years of their existence is up for debate, as far as I am concerned, but it's unquestionable that many of them are heretical now with respect to Christian moral teaching.



Thy Kingdom Come

The Pope's Pentecost Tweet

How I desire that we Christians be more deeply united as witnesses of mercy for the human family so severely tested in these days. Let’s ask the Spirit for the gift of unity, for only if we live as brothers & sisters can we spread the spirit of fraternity. https://t.co/iylzrGvG3F

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) May 31, 2020

Living as brothers and sisters sometimes requires fraternal correction and maybe even recognition that some have cut themselves off from the life of Christ.

Impatient But Without the Theological Acumen

Pope Francis marked the 25th anniversary of “Ut Unum Sint” (“That all may be one,”) by reaffirming the church’s “irrevocable” commitment to work for Christian unity among the world’s roughly 2.3 billion Christians. @gerryorome reports:https://t.co/iH9SBi5RdV

— America Magazine (@americamag) May 27, 2020

Still Fighting the Reformation

Crisis: Reflections on the Protestant Revolution by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

[B]but in the 19th century, when the study of history became professionalized, it was mostly Protestant scholars in Germany who led the way. They got to name names, including “Protestant Reformation.” The British picked it up automatically, and so did the Americans. Now it is applied universally.

And it makes sense to many. The Catholic Church is allegedly retrograde, reactionary, and incapable of change. It is only fit to launch a Counter-Reformation. Really? What of the Cluniac Reform? If we agree about the truth of this Catholic reformation, on the one hand, and the Protestant revolution on the other, we will be mentally equipped to acknowledge that what we were dealing with was not a “Catholic Counter-Reformation” but, rather, a Catholic counter-revolution. Let’s get it straight.

This is an uphill battle, but someone’s got to do it.

"Revolution" instead of "Reformation." I have heard Latin traditionalists and even some conservative Latins advocate the same thing before. Even if such rhetoric might be effective, its effectiveness would have been 500 years ago, not now, and I don't think the rhetoric would have been effective with the reformers nor with the Christians who thought they had a point. Pope Francis doesn't talk about the Protestant Revolution, and some may be critical of his overtures to Protestants. Certainly there may be excesses in his sort of ecumenism, such as meeting with female "bishops" like Antje Jackelén, the Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala in the Church of Sweden, who said of Pope Francis, “Living in a single-sex environment may not make it so easy to in all aspects achieve a balanced view of humankind.”

Now his defenders will say that as the leader of the Church who is interested in ecumenism, he must maintain relations with the Lutherans, and this includes meeting with their leaders, regardless of their gender identity. The original protestors against Rome would probably be shocked by the deviations from the primitive Gospel that their various confessions have undergone. What, then, is the point of an aimless ecumenism that seeks to be friendly with all, while reconciling none? Benedict XVI was able to restore communion with traditional Anglicans, and some were hoping that there would be similar overtures to traditional Lutherans. Apostolic Christians, especially Latins, can reach out to traditional Protestants who have not traded in the Gospel for heretical liberalism, and those who are not traditional need to be evangelized or be left behind in their "town." What other action is possible? Whether the "Christian" believes in feminism, the liceity of homosexuality or same-sex marriage, abortion, fornication, or a host of other errors pertaining to the Divine Law, I don't see how they cannot be corrected. Is it an act of mercy to leave them in ignorance? But what if their ignorance is culpable?

Back to Chodakiewicz's polemic -- I don't believe the Protestants were completely wrong in their protests, and Louis Bouyer points to the fundamental intuitions which were correct in his The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism. If the Latins had not been estranged from the rest of the Church Universal, would they have been in an intellectually better state to dialogue with the Protestants, instead of enshrining scholastic theology as dogma? I do think the separation that the Apostolic Churches suffered and maintained did weaken all of them, and we should take care to heal those divisions.

Related:


Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the World Communion of Reformed Churches

The "MacIntyre" Approach to Ecumenical Dialogue

One must show how the Apostolic Tradition (not neoscholasticism or a dogmatic tradition based upon it) is able to explain the meaning of Scripture better than a Protestant alternative, and not only explain but embodies it, so that one can see how an Apostolic Church is in continuity with the early Church.

Even Latin Progressives Are Focused Exclusively on Rome

Pray Tell: An Ecumenical Spring Time in the Vatican? by Brian Flanagan

WCC: The Church: Towards a Common Vision (other languages)

Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity: The Catholic Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision" (the document: 2019 Catholic Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision")

The typical Roman Catholic continues to conflate the patriarchate of Rome with the Church Universal, just as Latin progressives are ultramontanists when the occupant of the "see of St. Peter" suits them.

I note that the WCC started off as a Protestant endeavor and even today, the patriarchate of Rome is not an official member of that body. Maybe this is to put it in wordly terms, but it is rather presumptuous for Protestants to put themselves on a equal level with Apostolic Churches, when their dispute is first of all with the patriarchate of Rome. Do any of them recognize their denomination in the early Church? Can any of them say that their doctrines are from the Apostles, when there are other Apostolic Churches, not just Rome, that objects to them? Maybe paradoxically they are tied as partners, even if as unequal partners, to the patriarchate of Rome when it comes to engaging the other Apostolic Churches.

When the WCC has as members Christians who are heretical on one or more points that are not included in statements of mere Christianity (which may be reconcilable with Roman Catholicism), do these documents really matter? Orthodoxy with no orthopraxy does not matter. There will be no real reconciliation with Christians who are actually liberals and feminists -- their communities will disintegrate, even those that profess to be "Catholic." (Take a look at the leadership for the Anglican Diocese of London. An ecclesial community that has no future.) There can be reconciliation with conservative and traditional Protestants who have rejected liberalism and feminism, and perhaps the key is not further "agreements" between them and Latins but to take fresh look at Scripture and Tradition, and not through the lens of medieval Western Christianity, whether it is in the form of scholasticism or in a form that rejects scholasticism but doesn't go far enough to question other parts of the inheritance from late medieval Latin ecclesial tradition. Let Protestants recognize the insufficiency of "sola scriptura"  and the need to engage in a discussion about Tradition with the other Apostolic Churches, who need to be recognized as senior members in the dialogue.

Heresy needs to be recognized as heresy, even if this offends the world, and there need to be consequences for those "ecclesial communities" which persist in heresy. I'm not referring to disputes about sacraments or justification or ecclesiology, as those need to be revisited, but that which should be beyond doubt, the commandments revealed by God to His Church, including those commandments pertaining to "gender roles." If an "ecclesial community" embraced same-sex "marriage," but professed a "mere Christianity" that was compatible with Roman Catholic teaching, could there still be dialogue? Or should such denominations be left to wither?

This is a great expression of why ecumenism is so valuable – in addition to following the will of Christ that we would all be one, that the world might believe, our dialogue provides ways for the Catholic Church to more easily receive the practices and wisdom of synodally experienced churches, even as we might share some of the gifts of structures of primacy. But, in the meantime, we can see here more clearly how and where Pope Francis is leading the Catholic Church back to the renewal of synodal structures first renewed in modern Catholicism at the Second Vatican Council.

Maybe synodality needs to be recovered in the west, but what has passed for synodality since Vatican II is really not. Eastern Catholics need to recover synodality as well, but be willing to hold to their synods against any possible interference from Rome.

If we do this – and this, perhaps, is where you the reader come in – if we make TCTCV an object of study beyond academics and ecumenical specialists; if ecclesiologists explore how ecumenical convergence statements like these have a kind of magisterial authority analogous to that of conciliar, papal, and other forms of ecclesial teaching; if pastors and liturgists renew or return to liturgical practices of doing all thing we can do together, together; if parish book clubs and college courses, seminary formation programs and priest study days, take this text seriously – if we do all this, then we might help better form our Catholic Church for dialogue with our fellow Christians, for renewing our Church, particularly as a synodal community that listens to each other and to the Spirit together, and for the day when a common vision of the church will allow it to be more fully a sign of unity and an instrument of God’s peace.

Latins should first reconsider their ecclesiological presuppositions as they relate to other Apostolic Christians, instead of assuming their presuppositions are of Tradition. (They can't help it given their beliefs about the papacy.) More and more non-Latin Catholics will disagree with them. What will Rome do at that point? Start excommunicating them again?

Academics who are insulated in their ivory towers are probably the last ones who should be engaged in any sort of ecumenical dialogue. Perhaps the same could be said of monastics who are completely cut off from the world as well. What skin in the game do any of them have? They can defend themselves by  arguments from authority, and in practice cannot be held accountable by other Christian faithful.

Ecumenism as Purification

It requires a healing of memories but more generally, a purification of hearts and minds, especially with respect to inculcated habits of opinion that is ecclesiastical triumphalism. Glory to God and His works, not to men and their achievements.

"Christians can be unite by converting to liberalism and becoming practicing liberals."

Pope Francis: Christians can unite in welcoming migrants, each other

Pope Francis calls on all Christians to show hospitality to each other—and to migrants




But Malta was part of the Roman Empire...

Related:
Pope’s point man on migrants – made a cardinal in October – takes over titular parish

On the wrong tack...

"Let's all get closer to unity by being wrong on the order of charity!"

The last symposium for the Huffington Ecumenical Institute: Immigration and Healing with Ecumenical Dialogue: West, East, Orient, and Refugees

More Franciscan Ecumenism