Bridgefolk is a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics who come together to celebrate each other's traditions, explore each other's practices, and honor each other's contribution to the mission of Christ's Church.
Press release
Catholic Nonviolence Initiative
12 December 2016
Today in his message “Nonviolence: A style of politics for peace,” for the 50th World Day of Peace, celebrated each year on 1 January, Pope Francis urges people everywhere to practice active nonviolence and notes that the “decisive and consistent practice of nonviolence has produced impressive results.”
The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International will convene an international conference on Nonviolence and Just Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence, to be held in Rome, Italy, 11-13 April, 2016.
In recognition of the Year of Mercy declared by the Pope Francis, this carefully planned Catholic conference on nonviolence and just peace will take place in Rome. Invited participants will represent a broad spectrum of Church experiences in peacebuilding and creative nonviolence in the face of violence and war. Among the participants will be Bridgefolk co-founder and long-time co-director Gerald Schlabach of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
The conference seeks to initiate a conversation about Catholic teaching on war and peace, including explicit rejection of “just war” language in favor of an alternative ethical framework for engaging acute conflict and atrocities by developing the themes and practices of nonviolent conflict transformation and just peace. It will develop clearer Scripture-based Catholic teaching and an action plan to promote such teachings in seminaries, Catholic educational institutions, Catholic media, Catholic dioceses and parishes.
WASHINGTON — I’m sure I was the only Mennonite there.
It was a cool, clear morning, with stars visible even through the urban twilight, as I cruised the six-mile bicycle ride from northeast Washington to downtown at 5 a.m. Sept. 23. I had been to 17th and Pennsylvania Avenue dozens of times before, but this time felt different. My adrenaline was pumping. The combination of streetlights and flashlights created a mixture of illumination and shadow. Cutting through the darkness, bodies were moving, directions were being given, expectations were high.
When I covered President Obama as a senior at Goshen (Ind.) College during his visit in 2009 to Elkhart County, his first speech outside of Washington as president, I learned how political reporting can be memorable, and an honor, yet not especially dignifying. I was reminded of this recently while at the White House.
I.D., please, the Secret Service officer said. I showed it to him. He motioned for me to pass. It was really happening.
Continue reading “The pope’s arrival and the only Mennonite in the room”
LAWRENCE JENNINGS of Infinity Mennonite Church in New York City has been involved in community and economic development for more than three decades. Since 2013, he has been affiliated with GreenFaith, first as a Fellow, and currently as a lead organizer of the new Restoration Nation faith communities/green jobs initiative. A member of the Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue at Iona College, he was one of the key organizers of the People’s Climate March faith contingent, and has ongoing involvement with the People’s Climate Movement, the organizing body that took shape after the March. In these involvements, as well as his work with The Groundswell Group and Moral Mondays, he works closely with faith communities and inner city and “frontline” groups that often are overlooked or excluded. He authored the Open Letter from African American clergy on Climate Change as part of the “Our Voices” campaign, and is on the Steering Committee of Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, both of which aim to encourage people of to speak out about the moral and scientific urgency of the environmental crisis. Lawrence was asked by GreenFaith to write a response to the Pope’s newly released environmental teachings from the Anabaptist/Mennonite perspective. His article originally appeared in two parts on the Mennonite Church USA website (here and here). Continue reading “A papal encyclical, a Mennonite resolution, and the relevance of Anablacktivism”
Vatican City, 15 June 2015 (VIS) – This morning Pope Francis received in audience the representatives of the Czech Hussite Church and the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, in Rome to celebrate a liturgy of reconciliation on the occasion of the 600 th anniversary of the reformer Jan Hus, distinguished preacher and rector of the University of Prague, whose execution was lamented by St. John Paul II in 1999, who included him among the reformers of the Church. Continue reading “Francis commemorates the reformer Jan Hus on the 600th anniversary of his death”
For decades now, popes and episcopal conferences have been insisting that to work for peace is the vocation of all Christians. Too often, however, peacemaking seems the domain of special vocations or technical specialists. This is certainly not the church’s hope. As Pope John Paul II proclaimed in his World Day of Peace message at the opening of Jubilee Year 2000: “The church vividly remembers her Lord and intends to confirm her vocation and mission to be in Christ a ‘sacrament’ or sign and instrument of peace in the world and for the world. For the church, to carry out her evangelizing mission means to work for peace…. For the Catholic faithful, the commitment to build peace and justice is not secondary but essential” (No. 20).
Yet peace often seems an activity only for those who are “into that sort of thing.” Many associate peacemaking mainly with protesting war and injustice. If they know a little more, they may think policymaking. If they know even more, they may think of on-the-ground practitioners in the developing field of peace-building. But even if all these associations are positive, peacemaking can still seem like other people’s business. Protest requires a certain disposition. Policymaking requires expertise. Peace-building practitioners need training in techniques like conflict resolution.
Pope Francis would change this by widening our focus in a way that places every vocation, technique or tactic in the wider context of God’s overarching strategy in history. Continue reading “Signs of that peace: peacemaking is everybody’s business”
Vatican City, 8 September 2014 (VIS) – This Sunday the Holy Father sent a video message to all the representatives of the Christian Churches, ecclesial communities and all heads of world religions who will meet in the Belgian city of Antwerp from 7 to 9 September for the International Meeting for Peace organised by the Sant’Egidio Community. This year’s theme, “Peace is the Future”, commemorates the dramatic outbreak of the First World War one hundred years ago, and evokes a future in which mutual respect, dialogue and cooperation will help banish the sinister phantom of armed conflict.
“In these days, in which many people throughout the world need help to find the way to peace, this anniversary teaches us that war is never a satisfactory means of redressing injustice or reaching balanced solutions to social and political discord. In the final analysis every war, as Pope Benedict XV stated in 1917, is a ‘useless massacre’. War drags populations into a spiral of violence that is then shown to be difficult to control; it demolishes what generations have worked to build and paves the way for injustice and even worse conflicts.”
Pope Francis stressed that “we cannot remain passive” when faced with “the innumerable conflicts and wars, declared and undeclared, that nowadays afflict the human family and ruin the lives of the youngest and of the elderly, poisoning long-standing relationships of co-existence between different ethnic groups and religions.” He remarked that with the power of prayer “our various religious traditions are able, in the spirit of Assisi, to offer a contribution to peace. … I hope that these days of prayer and dialogue will serve to remind us that the search for peace and understanding through prayer can create lasting bonds of unity and prevail over the passions of war. War is never necessary, nor is it inevitable. There is always an alternative: the path of dialogue, encounter and the sincere search for truth.”
“The moment has arrived for the heads of all religions to cooperate effectively in the task of healing wounds, of resolving conflicts and seeking peace. Peace is the sure sign of commitment to God’s cause.” The Pontiff concluded by encouraging all those present to be “builders of peace” and to convert communities into “schools of respect and dialogue with those of other ethnic or religious groups, places in which we learn to overcome tensions, promote equitable and peaceful relations among peoples and social groups, and build a better future for the generations to come.”
by Josephine McKenna
Religious News Service
CASERTA, Italy (RNS) Pope Francis sought forgiveness for decades of persecution of Italian Pentecostals when he met with around 300 evangelicals from the U.S., Argentina and Italy in the southern town of Caserta on Monday (July 28).
The pope made his second visit in as many days to the Mafia stronghold near Naples, this time to meet evangelical pastor Giovanni Traettino, whom he befriended while he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.
During the visit, Francis apologized for the persecution suffered by Pentecostals under Italy’s fascist regime in the 1920s and 1930s and urged Christians to celebrate their diversity and unity. Continue reading “Pope Francis apologizes for persecution of Pentecostals”
Mennonite church planter Timothy Colegrove, in a recent entry on Patheos’ Slow Church blog, reflects on Pope Francis’ engaging and relational approach to spreading the gospel, and how this meshes with the “Slow Church” concept. Giving particular attention to Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Colegrove muses:
As Alice and I move forward in our mission to plant a church with the Conservative Mennonite Conference in Boston, I find myself in strange unity with the Pope. Who would have imagined that a Mennonite would find such agreement with the head of the Catholic Church, an institution that viciously oppressed early Anabaptist disciples? Yet while reading the Evangelii, I could feel my heart breaking out in applause and spirit-filled agreement at his call to greater connection with other disciples and with the communities around us. Undoubtedly this is the Church that a relationally starved culture needs so badly.
The full article is available here.