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Can Religions of the World Unite for World Peace?
Feb 19th, 2007 | 8 responses
Will the Protestant and the Catholic churches be able to heal their centuries old rift and unite under the Papal authority in Rome? Difficult to say but some interesting developments are taking place in that direction.
Writes Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of The Times: “Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year. The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches.
“In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope. The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response…
“There are about 78 million Anglicans, compared with a billion Roman Catholics, worldwide. In England and Wales, the Catholic Church is set to overtake Anglicanism as the predominant Christian denomination for the first time since the Reformation, thanks to immigration from Catholic countries.”
This is fine. But the humanity needs to take another vital step. In our lifetime will we ever be able to hear the resounding clarion call: “Religions of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but terrorism”?
8 Responses to “Can Religions of the World Unite for World Peace?”
This seems to be much more about a schism beginning to occur in Anglicanism than about a real move toward ecumenism. The Pope has shown signs of working toward the latter as well, but that’s most likely to bear fruit with relations with the Orthodox churches.
Still, interesting to see that some church groups are seeing value in a hierarchial Church rather than considering doctrine to be a matter for democratic debate. On the other hand, it would be a positive move if the Catholic Church would learn from the Anglicans in accepting involvement of the laity in administrative oversight.
The problem does not lie with religion per se. It is exclusively muslims who refuse to coexist with others. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Budhists are living in peace with each other. It is only muslims who are waging jihad against the rest of the world.
The reunification of orthodox Christianity has been a major project of the last four popes. The project was well underway for an agreement between the three largest orthodox Christian groups i.e. Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the Anglican Communion when the Anglican Communion derailed the project in the 1970′s by ordaining women. In 1994 JP II closed the subject: Catholicism will never accept the ordination of women (Orthodox bishops had long previously pronounced that they found the practice unacceptable).
The rapprochement between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is proceeding quite well. As noted above further progress is most likely by continuing in that direction and by splitting the Anglican Communion.
This is most worrisome.
Linked
omg wtf?
*smh*
ChuckPrez, I think Laura was responding to the implied conflating of all religions with terrorism at the end of Swaraaj’s post. Certainly not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslim. More troubling is that the most prominent and powerful Muslim theologians currently preach a theology which embraces violent jihad. There is no parallel with the other major world religions.
As for all of Christianity uniting under the Pope, that will be impossible for Protestants as long as the doctrines such as confession and Papal infallibility exist.
While Christianity today can not be accused fo sponsoring terrorism, it has a pretty ferocious past. Great portions of Europe were convinced to convert by Church armies of knoghts, who conquered lands with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. Fortunately, they didn’t have explosives at their disposal, and while willing to die for the cross, they were not suicidal.
The Muslim jihadists have more destructive weapons at their disposal, and their ‘love of death’ is a new twist. The amount of destrucion they can cause is, therefore, hugely more extensive.
The ‘convert or die’ mentality is very similar, however.
Still, it’s possible they will eventually go through a transformation similar to that in Christendom. I hope my descendants are around to see that happen.
Christians not only have undergone a transformation toward rejecting violent conversion, but also have come to understand that Church and state must be separate (that this is good for secular society AND better for the faith). Islam has seemingly not come to terms with either concept (at least not universally: I’m not saying that there isn’t a sizable percentage of Muslims who want secular govt and nonbviolence, but they don’t seem to see the need to hold the extremists accountable for their unwillingness to accept these concepts.)