Letters

Ecumenism?

Peter Davidson

Contents - Mar 2007 - Buy a copy now Editorial: How we can help young East Timorese - Peter Westmore WYDSYD08: Salesian provincial urges parishes to sponsor Timorese to World Youth Day 2008 - Peter Westmore News: The Church Around the World Sandhurst: Goddess worship at Victorian education conference? - Michael Gilchrist Formation: Continuing growth of Sydney's Catholic Adult Education Centre - AD2000 Report Catholicism flourishes in South Korea - Richard Stokes Leadership: The scandal of Australia's anti-life Catholic politicians - Marcel White 'Professional', a lá carte Catholicism and its papier màché schools - Andrew T. Kania Survey of Catholic teachers The changing panorama of Victoria's historic 'Rupertswood' - Michael Moore Catholic religion courses and the challenge of relativism - Audrey English Letters: Reform needed - T. Kalotas Letters: Catholic schools - Kevin McBride Letters: Null and void - Fr. G.H. Duggan SM Letters: Presumption - John H. Cooney Letters: Suitable wedding attire - Tom and Barbara Phillip Letters: Modesty of dress - Greg Byrne Letters: Ten Commandments - Arthur Hartwig Letters: Abortion counselling - Frank Bellet Letters: Leadership needed - Anne Lastman Letters: Human embryos - Rebecca Soares Letters: Ecumenism? - Peter Davidson Books: The Glory of These Forty Days, by Fr James Tolhurst - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: LISTEN MY SON: St Benedict for Fathers, by Dwight Longenecker - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Books: SEEKING THE ABSOLUTE: The Founders of Christian Monasticism - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Media: The Rosary of the Virgin Mary - 4 DVD or 4 CD set - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) DOES YOUR PARISH STOCK AD2000? Books: Order Books from freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: The Holy Trinity - source of true Christian unity - Fr John O'Neill

Whatever happened to the Reformation? It seems that the pursuit of ecumenism at any cost has resulted in the total suppression in our "mainstream" (pardon the expression) Catholic media of any honest discussion about the origins of the divisions among the Christian churches.

Yet I cannot see how any genuine unity can be achieved by a denial of the past and the pretence that we all believe, more or less, in the same things. We must be honest about our differences.

The post-Reformation churches owe their very existence to the total repudiation of the "blasphemous fable" of the Mass and the most fundamental Catholic belief that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ at the moment of Consecration.

Following the Reformation, former Catholic churches were stripped of altars, tabernacles, statues and every vestige of Catholic belief and practice, and the Mass could only be said in secret under penalty of death. For hundreds of years it remained so, and Protestantism, as its name implied, defined itself more in terms of what it did not believe than in any clear doctrine of faith.

Growing up in England, I often visited these cold, empty shells of churches where the Mass had once been celebrated. Their ministers were known as vicars or parsons, never priests, and nothing resembling a Mass was ever celebrated in those churches.

While Christian unity is a worthy goal, it is a fanciful notion that we can have genuine unity among those who disagree on the most fundamental beliefs. True unity of belief from a Catholic viewpoint would need to involve an acceptance of the whole Catholic faith by all concerned, especially its sacramental life and the Mass - beliefs which set Catholics apart from Protestant Christians.

PETER DAVIDSON
Ashgrove, Qld

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 20 No 2 (March 2007), p. 16