New Evangelization should be ecumenical effort, Pope says
November 15, 2012
Ecumenical work is a key component of the “new evangelization,” Pope Benedict XVI told the Pontifical Council on Christian Unity in a November 15 address.
All Christians should be concerned by “the crisis of faith affecting vast areas of the world, including those where the proclamation of the Gospel was first accepted and where Christian life has flourished for centuries,” the Pope said, at a private audience held in the Clementine Hall of the apostolic palace. “The spiritual poverty of many of our contemporaries, who no longer perceive the absence of God in their lives as a form of deprivation, poses a challenge to all Christians.”
Pope Benedict said that ecumenism calls for “patience, humility, and abandonment to the Lord’s will.” However, he said, Christians must be persistent in the effort to overcome divisions, never accepting the fractures within the Christian community as “something normal or as the best that can be obtained.”
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Further information:
- Ecumenism?in the time of the New Evangelization (L’Osservatore Romano)
- The Aim of Ecumenism Is the Unity of Divided Christians (VIS)
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Posted by: Justin8110 -
Nov. 15, 2012 8:35 PM ET USA
We should certainly pray ardently that those who profess Christ outside the Catholic Church may return to her, especially the self professed Orthodox. The problem more than anything else is until we clean up our own house the call to bring those who are cut us from the Catholic Church by schism or heresy will fall on deaf ears. How can we provide a credible witness when our own house in in shambles? First things first.