A Healing of Memories in the Name of Christian Unity
A dialogue meeting co-sponsored by the Catholic Church and the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) was held in Strasbourg, France, on 14-18 October 1998. This was the first international meeting formally co-sponsored by these two bodies. It was apparently also the first international dialogue between the Catholic Church and one of the "historic peace Churches".
In the 16th century Mennonites first supported reformers such as Luther and Calvin. But wanting to root their lives more deeply and radically in biblical values than they perceived in the views of Luther and Calvin, they eventually clashed with these reformers.
For example, Mennonites are of the "Anabaptist tradition". The term "anabaptist" means "re-baptizer". Believing that there was no biblical warrant for infant Baptism, they would rebaptize those who joined them. Here they differed significantly from the Catholic Church as well as from Luther and Calvin. They were criticized and persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics.
Today member Churches of MWC throughout the world add up to about 1,000,000 people, a good percentage of which are in Canada, USA, Zaire (Congo), India, Indonesia and Russia. Their historic centres in Europe are in Switzerland, France and the Netherlands.
The decision to hold this dialogue session, and eventually a series of others stretching over the next several years, grew out of contacts made with Dr Larry Miller, General Secretary of the Mennonite World Conference, during recent annual meetings of the Conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions (CWC) attended by Bishop Pierre Duprey, who was accompanied by Mons. John Radano. Dr Miller suggested several years ago that Mennonites and Catholics share some common roots in the medieval Church which could be explored together. More recently, in January 1997, for the first time the MWC invited the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) to send a fraternal delegate to its world assembly in Calcutta, India. Mons. John Mutiso-Mbinda represented the PCPCU there and brought a message from Cardinal Cassidy; both were deeply appreciated. Previously, a Mennonite representative (a previous General Secretary) had taken part in the Assisi Day of Prayer for Peace in October 1986, called for by Pope John Paul II. The invitation to Calcutta helped in opening the way to dialogue.
In recent years the MWC, whose member Churches stress local commitment, has deepened its ecumenical commitment at the national and international level. Two sessions of dialogue with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches took place in 1984 and 1989. Four sessions of dialogue with Baptists were held 1989-1992, co-sponsored by MWC and the Baptist World Alliance. The MWC has participated in the "Prague Conferences" between "Radical Reformation" Churches and the Magisterial (Lutheran-Reformed) Reformation Churches during the 1980s and 1990s. Recently these have been coorganized with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. The PCPCU was invited to send a participant for the last two Prague Conferences (1994, 1998).
With the dialogue with the Catholic Church on the horizon and helping to prepare the constituents for it, the MWC Executive Committee issued a statement on 22 July 1998, entitled "God Calls Us to Christian Unity". This very affirmative statement indicates clearly that there is a responsibility for working for Christian unity rooted in a biblical basis (including John 17:20-23 and other texts). It affirms the strong conclusion that "we see Christian unity, therefore, not as an option we might choose or as an outcome we could create, but as an urgent imperative to be obeyed".
The general theme selected to describe this dialogue was "Towards a Healing of Memories". With little official contact between Mennonites and Catholics since the 16th century, bitter memories of conflicts at that time are still strong especially among Mennonites. Even today, a certain number of Mennonites are still suspicious about contacts with Catholics.
With the theme of the healing of memories in mind, and the fact that this was the first international encounter between Catholics and Mennonites, two sets of papers were prepared, with presentations from each side. "The first set described profiles of our respective communities". On the Catholic side this profile was presented by Rev. Dr James Puglisi, S.A. (Centre Pro Unione) and on the Mennonite side by Dr Howard J. Loewen (Fresno Pacific University, California, USA).
The second set of papers discussed conflicts between Mennonites and Catholics in the 16th century. On the Catholic side, Dr Peter Nissen (Catholic University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands) presented a paper entitled "The Catholic Response to the Anabaptism Movement in the 16th Century". He stated that most of the Catholic theologians had limited knowledge of the history of the Anabaptist movement. Some of the Catholic critique of Anabaptists was similar to Protestant (Lutheran and Reformed) critiques. The main theological problem seen by Catholic theologians was the Anabaptist rejection of infant Baptism. Concentrating on this, the Catholics did not give much attention to the Anabaptist vision of God, man, Church and world. According to Nissen, if the Catholic theologians had known the Anabaptism movement better, they would perhaps have recognized it as a radicalization of late-medieval piety, as a movement of conversion and penance, of inner birth and of the merciful renewal of creatures by the imitation of Christ.
The Mennonite paper, given by Prof. Neal Blough (France), was entitled "Anabaptist Images of Roman Catholics during the 16th Century: Towards a Healing of Memories". Memories from the painful rupture of the 16th century, he said, even if most contemporary Mennonites and Catholics no longer have any firsthand knowledge of them, "still operate in how we understand and look at each other". Blough examined the way 16th-century Anabaptist writers understood the Roman Catholic Church of their time. Some of their literature takes its point of view from Martin Luther's description of the Roman Catholic Church as the "Babylonian Whore". But eventually Anabaptists became disenchanted with Luther and the Reformation, who they felt, was not radical enough. Luther, they thought, accepted what they considered "errors", namely infant Baptism and the doctrine of the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Anabaptists also rejected the papacy as "marrying" temporal authority at the time of Constantine, and "from this marriage the Antichrist was born". Blough also presented a series of graphic illustrations, including those from the Martyrs Mirror (17th-century Anabaptist anthology of martyr stories), illustrating the persecution and death of Anabaptists for their faith, part of the "bitter memories" of today's Mennonites vis-a-vis Catholics.
In the press release, the purpose of this first consultation was described thus: "to promote better understanding of positions about Christian faith held on each side and to contribute to overcoming prejudices that have long existed between Mennonites and Catholics". The presentations given at the meeting were a good start in this direction.
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