Collegeville, Minnesota (BRIDGEFOLK) – On May 20 a Benedictine abbot whose ancestors had once been Dutch Mennonites, led in commemorating the 485th anniversary of the martyrdom of Michael Sattler. Sattler had been a Benedictine, but left during the Peasants War of 1525 to become an Anabaptist leader. He is regarded as the primary author of the Schleitheim Confession.
The Abbot was Fr. John Klassen, the leader of the largest Benedictine monastery in North America, Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota.
The commemoration on May 20 affirmed both the nonviolent witness of Michael Sattler, and his willingness to die for the principle of religious freedom—positions now widely accepted in the Catholic community. Fourteen members of the monastic community participated, along with two Mennonite pastors.
The program opened with an invocation by Rev. Weldon Nisly, pastor of Seattle Mennonite Church, and the singing of a hymn written by Menno Simons, “We Are People of God’s Peace,” which now is included in one Catholic hymnal.
The event was based on more than a decade of conversation between Mennonites and Catholics at Saint John’s in annual Bridgefolk conferences. It also followed the formal ecumenical dialogue which began at roughly the same time, and which produced the document, Called Together To Be Peacemakers, published jointly by the Vatican and the Mennonite World Conference in 2004.
A Benedictine commemoration of the martyrdom of Michael Sattler was first suggested 25 years ago in a leading Catholic scholarly journal by an Irish Catholic abbot, Fr. Eoin de Bhaldraithe. De Bhaldraithe had become acquainted with Mennonites through their peacemaking work in Northern Ireland. Inspiring his suggestion was the work of the Canadian Mennonite historian, Prof. C. Arnold Snyder, who published a biography of Michael Sattler in 1984. Snyder’s work in turn had drawn on the research of John Howard Yoder, published a few years earlier.
In 2003 and 2004 two scholarly conferences were held at Saint John’s Abbey to discuss the martyrdom of the 16th-century Anabaptists from an ecumenical perspective. The papers from these conferences have been published.
Founded by German missionaries more than of 150 years ago, Saint John’s now includes a university, a high school, a publishing company, a seminary and school of religion, a guesthouse, and the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. The monastery now has about 170 members.
This year’s commemoration took place at the recently established Michael Sattler House, located immediately adjacent to the Saint. John’s campus. Although independent of the monastic community this new effort has close relationships to it. Its founders, Lois and Ivan Kauffman, describe it as “a place where the 500-year Mennonite and Amish tradition of lay discipleship, which Michael Sattler did so much to initiate, can be combined with the 1500-year Benedictine tradition in which he was formed.”
An open letter written for the event states, “We at the Michael Sattler House have come to believe that Catholics can now regard Michael Sattler as an early martyr witness to the principles of social justice and freedom of conscience which became official Catholic doctrine at Vatican II—in the Declaration on Religious Liberty, and in The Church in the Modern World.
“We also believe Mennonites and Amish can now view Michael Sattler not only as one of their major founders, but as one who brought with him the riches of the pre-Reformation Benedictine tradition in which he was formed, and on which many of their own traditions are based.”
Plans are now being made for a second commemoration of Michael Sattler’s martyrdom on May 20, 2013.
Further information is available on the Michael Sattler House website, www.MichaelSattlerHouse.org.
For additional commentary and online discussion concerning the Michael Sattler Day event see the following blogs: