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.
Our Moments and Our Days
An Anabaptist prayer book
Arthur Paul Boers, Eleanor Kreider, John Rempel, Mary H. Schertz, Barbara Nelson Gingerich, editors
Co-published by Institute of Mennonite Studies and Herald Press
The new version of Take our moments and our days is a four-week cycle of prayers for ordinary time. Lying behind the prayers is a pattern of themes that are especially important in the Anabaptist tradition. Continue reading “Anabaptist Prayer Book revised”
Making Peace: At Table, In the World
June 29 – July 2, 2006
Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota
Calling ourselves a “movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics,” Bridgefolk has often examined the challenge of peacemaking. We have also encountered the pain of brokenness that prevents us from fully sharing at the table of the Lord. At the 2006 Bridgefolk gathering, therefore, we will continue to keep peacemaking in focus while frankly and lovingly facing the challenge of Eucharistic communion.
As Virgil Michel OSB of Saint John’s Abbey reminded Catholics decades ago, liturgy and social justice belong together. Nowhere is the scandal of Christian disunity greater than when Christians depart from the Lord’s Table to kill or exploit one another. Nowhere is the promise of God’s kingdom more tangible than when people from estranged nations and communities share a meal together. Through formal presentations, storytelling and discussions, we will explore peacemaking at tables set in various places — from the Eucharist, to the family, to communal and global settings.
(The 2006 Bridgefolk conference is being held just prior to the summer Monastic Institute at Saint John’s Abbey. Entitled “One Heart, One Soul: Many Communities,” this week-long institute will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Benedictines in Minnesota by discussing “intentional communities” and other new monastic models as they are springing up in unexpected forms, places and denominations. Bridgefolk participants are encouraged to attend some or all of this event if they are able.)
Check http://bridgefolk.net/conferences for
further information in early 2006.
In defence of the Sacred Heart
by Jim Loney
Catholic New Times, Sept 26, 2004
(Jim Loney is one of the four Christian Peacemaker Team members missing in Iraq. Thanks to Tom Finger, Mennonite theologian and Bridgefolk participant, for drawing this reflection to our attention.)
I was never a big fan of the Sacred Heart. In fact, the Sacred Heart used to make me see red: white-bread, saccharine-soaked images of Jesus staring into the blue with puppy-dog eyes; robes and hair flowing in pious cascades; stow-book religious “camp” for the spiritually infantilized.
But, on a high summer Sunday morning in ordinary time, in a little country church located on the banks of the Saugeen River (back in the days of our failed attempt to begin a rural Catholic Worker community, but that’s a whole other story), it happened. The Sacred Heart changed my heart….
To continue, go to
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_14_28/ai_n6245080
Bridgefolk:
Many of you have been following news from Iraq about the four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams who went missing more than a week ago. Rooted in the Mennonite Church and other historic peace churches, CPT is now a broader ecumenical effort to develop and practice active nonviolent alternatives amid conflicted situations. One of the missing CPTers is a Catholic peace activist from Ontario, Jim Loney.
While Bridgefolk does not have a direct affiliation, many of us have followed its work with interest and a few of us have been directly involved. Most notably, board member Weldon Nisly was part of a delegation to Iraq at the time the war broke out.
Below you will find two short news releases from earlier today, one from the Mennonite Church USA, and the other from CPT itself.
Please join with many others around the world in praying for the safety of the CPT team members, for the witness of creative nonviolence that they seek to extend, and for the suffering people of Iraq.
Gerald W. Schlabach
Executive Director, Bridgefolk Continue reading “A Call to Pray and Fasting for CPT”
World Council of Churches – Update
Contact: + 41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release – 22/11/2005
A TRIED AND TRUE EXPRESSION OF PARTNERSHIP AND COLLABORATION, THE JOINT WORKING GROUP BETWEEN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE WCC SET TO TACKLE NEW CHALLENGES
Becoming a “trusted partner” for one another “has been perhaps the most enduring achievement of the past four decades” of collaboration between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches (WCC), and this continued cooperation “must be considered one of the significant achievements of the modern ecumenical movement”. Continue reading “Roman Catholic Church & World Council of Churches recommit to dialogue and collaboration”
All of the presenters at the July meeting of the Mennonite Catholic Theological Colloquium have now provided text versions of their presentations. You can find them by going to the newly re-designed section of our website for Theological Dialogue and Reflection: http://www.bridgefolk.net/theology/colloquia/2005theology.
The topic of the colloquium was “How Are We ‘Called Together?'” A Mennonite and a Catholic panel was asked to comment on the final report of the international dialogue between Mennonite World Conference and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity by answering the question, “What have we learned and what’s next?” Mennonite panelists were Nancy Heisey and Earl Zimmerman; Catholic panelists were Margaret Pfeil and Drew Christiansen SJ.
The event began with a keynote address by John A. Lapp, church historian and former Executive Secretary of Mennonite Central Committee on “Ecumenical Dialogue as a Ministry of Reconciliation.”
More than a 100 Mennonites and Catholics in the Northern Indiana area came together for centering prayer last summer, contributing to the formation of one of the first local Bridgefolk groups. Marlene Kropf, Bridgefolk co-chair notes that “one of the good things that came out of this experience was becoming friends and realizing how many interests and visions we have in common. Though we come from very different traditions, our vision for the church and for spiritual growth and renewal is remarkably similar.” The newspaper of the Fort Wayne – South Bend diocese has done a feature on the summer meetings. Here are the opening paragraphs, and a link for the entire story.
Continue reading “Michiana Bridgefolk forms around centering prayer in Northern Indiana”
Tne “New Monasticism Project” seeks to bring together Christian communities — Catholic, Protestant, and often Evangelical — that are seeking to be “schools of conversion” to lives of discipleship and that drawing on ancient monastic traditions to do so.
Recently Christianity Today magazine featured a cover story on the “New Monasticism” movement, highlighting the commitment of many of these communities to “blighted urban settings all over America.” You can read the article at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/009/16.38.html.
Also recently published is a book entitled School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of New Monasticism. Bridgefolk co-founder Ivan Kauffman contributed a chapter to the book. More information and links for ordering is available at http://www.thesimpleway.org/index.php/store/product/schools-for-conversion.
Here is a news story that is 6 years old, reporting on events 55 years old. So why share it now?
During one of the discussion periods at our Bridgefolk conference in July, there was a question about the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and a comment about “liberals” and “conservatives.” I offered a further comment reminding the group that those standard labels can be surprisingly unreliable. To illustrate I mentioned the example of an influential cardinal and Vatican official who has a reputation as an ultraconservative. After all, he led a group of bishops at the Second Vatican Council that tried hardest to put a brake on the reforms we associate with the council. I could not remember his name, but I recalled that his support for the section of the Pastoral Constitution (Gaudium et spes) concerning war played a key role in garnering support for the council’s harsh judgment on modern war and groundbreaking support for pacifism as a legitimate option for Catholics.
The cardinal was Alfredo Ottaviani, and an account of his role and his reasons appeared in the magazine Salt of the Earth, published by the Claretians, who also publish U.S. Catholic. The article, by Tom Cornell, is entitled “How Catholics Began to Speak Their Peace.” It is available online at http://salt.claretianpubs.org/issues/chistory/peace.html. Opening paragraphs appear below.
Continue reading “Cardinal Ottaviani and why the labels don’t work”