Author: gws

Salvation and peace: bridging another divide

An artificial divide

by Darrin Snyder Belousek

[The following article by Bridgefolk’s Executive Director appeared recently in PeaceSigns, the online magazine of the Mennonite Church USA Peace and Justice Support Network]

 

There were several things that attracted me to the Mennonite-Christian tradition-discipleship, community, simplicity, service, and, of course, peace. In my fifteen years among the Mennonites, however, I have observed two disconcerting tendencies in the Mennonite peace ethic.

First, too often we practice peacemaking as if peace were the fruit of our good intentions and hard work. We thus neglect two things: the reality of the persistence of sin in ourselves and our world despite our best intentions, and the need for divine grace to sustain the spiritual fertility of human effort. Consequently, Mennonite peace activism can often be a cause of frustration (when our intentions falter) or an occasion for pride (when our efforts “succeed”).

Second, too often we think and talk about peace in ways that reflect our national contexts and reveal our political commitments. We thus forget two things: that our hope for peace is to be set on God’s purposes for the world, and that our commitment to peace is to be aligned with the priorities of God’s kingdom. Consequently, Mennonite peace rhetoric can often be hardly distinguishable from a national “peacekeeper” identity (Canada) or a left-wing partisan agenda (United States).

Please join in prayer for Margaret O’Gara

Margaret O'GaraWe are sad to have to share news of the declining health of Margaret O’Gara.  Bridgefolk has been exceptionally blessed to benefit from Margaret’s friendship and wisdom as one of the leading Catholic ecumenical thinkers on the scene today.  Margaret is a theologian at the University of Toronto, a member of the Collegeville Institute Board of Directors, and a recent president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, as well as a member of the Bridgefolk Board.  A private person, Margaret has not wished to call attention to her cancer.  But a letter from Donald Ottenhoff, executive director of the Collegeville Institute, updating colleagues on Margaret’s condition, has begun to circulate widely among theologian friends.  So it seems appropriate to share excerpts with Margaret’s friends in Bridgefolk as well:

I write to inform you that our friend and colleague Margaret O’Gara has entered hospice care during this past week.  As many of you know, Margaret has undergone treatment for cancer over the past two years, even as she has continued to pursue her teaching schedule as her medical regime has allowed.  Margaret’s husband Michael reports that Margaret is still functioning pretty well, but that it became clear to them that the time had come for Margaret to benefit from professional care. …

Michael tells me that he and Margaret are of course sad about this turn in Margaret’s condition, but that they are “feeling calm and collected at the most fundamental level,” and that they find themselves “greatly consoled by our Christian hope in the resurrection, and by support from family and friends.”

Please keep Margaret and Michael in your prayers.

Let us join with others in this prayer and concern.

Gerald W. Schlabach

Ivan Kauffman surveys 50 years of Mennonite-Catholic dialogue

Earlier this month Bridgefolk co-founder Ivan Kauffman spoke at Assembly Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana.  His talk offers a succinct overview of how Mennonite-Catholic dialogue has unfolded in the last 50 years. 

Called Together to Be Peacemakers
Mennonite Catholic Dialogue 1962-2012

Ivan J. Kauffman
Assembly Mennonite Church
Goshen, Indiana
July 8, 2012

It has been said we over-estimate what can be changed in one year, and under-estimate what can be changed in ten years. My life experience confirms that. But I would add that we can not even imagine the change that can take place in 50 years.

When the Second Vatican Council opened 50 years ago this October I was a student at Goshen College, at a time when Carl Kreider was still wearing a plain coat, and Mary Oyer was still wearing a covering. None of us then had any idea this event would affect us—that it would permanently change relationships between Mennonites and Catholics and launch us into a new era in the Church’s peace witness—but that is what has happened.

I could keep us here for hours telling stories about how this happened but I will briefly mention only a few. Continue reading “Ivan Kauffman surveys 50 years of Mennonite-Catholic dialogue” →

The anguish of imperfect communion

by Julia Smucker

(Our friends at the Ekklesia Project recently posted the following reflection by Julia Smucker on Bridgefolk experiences with the challenge of sharing communion.) 

For about the past five years, I have been a participant in the Mennonite/Catholic ecumenical movement known as Bridgefolk – first as a Mennonite drawn toward communion with the Catholic Church but also strongly connected to my ecclesial heritage, and now as a Catholic seeking to maintain that connection with the church that formed me.  I had agonized over the choice I was presented with in the unavoidable reality that joining with one communion would mean breaking with another, and wondered whether I could do so without it being tantamount to a rejection, a cutting off of my roots.  And then I discovered a group of people who had been agonizing over this division for years before me.  Continue reading “The anguish of imperfect communion” →

The Mennonite features Mennonite Catholic visionary Gene Herr

Holy restlessness leads to home in Christ:
Gene Herr became a spiritual father to many people in his lifetime.

by Laurie Oswald Robinson

Cover story, The Mennonite, June 2012

 
June 2012 cover of The MennoniteA few days before he died on Jan. 1 in Hesston, Kan., the late H. Eugene (Gene) Herr said to his daughter, Ellen Awe, “I don’t understand why I am not going anywhere.”

The comment didn’t surprise Awe. Her father, a leader and visionary in the Mennonite church, had always lived with a holy restlessness. It was born from his passion to follow God’s call, even when to do so required leaving safe and familiar lands for  daring and new territories.

To his family and friends, he seemed he was moving as a pilgrim on his way to the promised land. They saw his movement as not born of one who was lost and trying to find his way “home” alone. They believed it as born out of passion for being truly found in Christ. He desired to give himself so fully to Jesus that no mile of God’s intended journey for him would be left untraveled.

But on this day, it was time for him to rest a bit before traversing the final leg of his earthly trek.

Awe replied to her father, “It’s because you    really can’t go anywhere right now, Dad. It’s OK for you to just be here and to let us love you. …”

“He accepted this and put his trust in us and graciously let us make decisions for him,” she says. “The concept of his ‘terminal’ illness included both moving and resting. … He was terminal but not as in an end. He was in a terminal, the place where one waits for the next leg of one’s travels.”

As he battled brain cancer for two years, it seemed God was calling Herr in his final days to integrate his doing with being. The integration was a model of the Christian discipleship Gene and Mary, his wife of 56 years, shared with fellow believers in the Mennonite church and beyond. Continue reading “The Mennonite features Mennonite Catholic visionary Gene Herr” →

Catholics remember Anabaptist martyr

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. Continue reading “Catholics remember Anabaptist martyr” →

“Spirituality versus Religion: Or maybe it’s not new….” commentary by Jana Bennett

Current debates over “traditional religion” sometimes track partially with ecumenical dialogue between Mennonites and Catholics.  The following blog by University of Dayton theology professor Jana Bennett may therefore be of interest to Bridgefolk.  

I’ve been reading a lot lately around the blogosphere from people who find themselves at odds with “traditional Christianity,” by which seems to be meant “the version of Christianity I grew up with.”  One of the most interesting is here at Rachel Held Evans’ blog: Kim Van Brunt describes leaving traditional worship services, in part because she felt the traditions themselves – the bulletins and Wednesday night prayer services and so on – were stilting her family’s ability to hear and live the gospel.  Many of the commenters complained that she seemed to be advocating a church of one, an individual’s paradisaical version of Christ’s body – so before readers here jump to that conclusion, let me just say that in her own response to the comments, she now belongs to what would probably be called a “house church” – an informal gathering of people meeting to support and witness to each other.

There are others feeling compressed by “tradition”.  One of the big ones, of course, is the viral video “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus” which was followed up with numerous posts about being spiritual but not religious.  In another vein, there have been Catholics thinking through the contraception debates in relation to feeling like the “hierarchy”.  In still another vein, members of the “emergent church” who feel that “traditional” forms of Christianity are increasingly irrelevant.   Continue reading ““Spirituality versus Religion: Or maybe it’s not new….” commentary by Jana Bennett” →

Naming the pain: a Lenten reflection on transforming the wounds of war

Carolyn Holderread Heggen

chapel address
Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary
February 28, 2012

 

Carolyn Holderread Heggen
Carolyn Holderread Heggen

PeaceSigns, a publication of the Peace and Justice Support Network of Mennonite Church USA, recently published the following chapel address by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, psychotherapist specializing in individual and communal trauma healing.  The article caught our eye because Holderread Heggen dedicated her address to Fr. William Mahedy, a former military chaplain who experienced a “profound crisis of conscience and dedicated the rest of his life as a social worker in San Diego, starting Veterans Centers and writing profound pieces about the spiritual woundedness of Veterans.”  Her talk does more than illustrate a profound “exchange of gifts” between Mennonites and Catholics seeking peace and reconciliation in the world.  As we enter more deeply into the Paschal mystery during Holy Week, it also serves as an appropriate Lenten reflection.  


Years ago a Vietnam Christian Vet came into my therapy office, carrying a Bible, and he said, “If you want to know what it feels like to be me, read these verses.” He started pointing to some of these verses Michele read this morning (Psalm 38). I don’t know specifically what precipitated the Psalmists despair that caused him to write these verses, but I do know that I have been told by numerous Vets that it’s a good description of what they feel like. Thousands of years after those words were written psychiatrists and psychologists came up with an official diagnosis, and a new name for an old malady, a malady as old as war itself. And in 1980 the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD as we commonly call it, was coined and since then has become part of our medical and lay vocabulary.

Throughout history, different names have been used to describe the effects of the emotional and spiritual pain people who have been asked to kill experience. Continue reading “Naming the pain: a Lenten reflection on transforming the wounds of war” →

Please pray for Br. Jeffrey Gros, FSC

Recently we posted a news article on the Bridgefolk website: “Leading ecumenist Br. Jeffrey Gros, FSC, highlights Lutheran-Mennonite footwashing in keynote address.”  Brother Jeffrey has asked for the prayers of Bridgefolk as he prepares for surgery to treat a pancreatic tumor this month.  He writes:

I am doing very well and the MDs are optimistic. I am in chemo, will go into chemo+radiation in March in preparation for an April removal of a contained pancreatic tumor. Prognosis sounds good for now, though I have had to drop my classes at Lewis and at Catholic Theological Union, as well as miss my presidential meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies.

May God grant our friend and colleague peace to face surgery in hope and confidence in God’s merciful care.