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April 19, 2005

I Like Big Hats and I Cannot Lie

When Tim Conder was here in Charlotte last week, we were joking about how the emerging church in its desire to be "ancient future" should throw back to the Catholic Church and have lots of robes and those big freaking hats!

Seriously though, I think it's fascinating to be alive as the new Pope comes into power, as it were. Christianity Today has an interesting critique from 1998 of then-Cardinal Ratzinger's book Salt of the Earth, reviewed by Richard John Neuhaus. In it Neuhaus writes,

In 1995, John Paul II issued the encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be One). In an unprecedented way that astonished many (including many Catholics), he invited non-Catholics to join in rethinking the exercise of the papal office so that it might become an instrument of, rather than an obstacle to, Christian unity. As Ratzinger notes, the invitation is addressed first of all to the Orthodox East, but it also has large ramifications for the separated communities of the West. It is a source of considerable disappointment in Rome, a disappointment reflected in this book, that other Christians have not taken up that invitation. But, as it is said, Rome thinks in terms of centuries—and, as is evident in this book, in terms of millennia. (emphasis mine)

It makes me wonder: What role will the emerging church have in respondng to this invitation and further dialoguing with Catholics at the highest levels to reach a deeper bond of unity in the global Church?

Note: Ancient-Future.net is a Catholic site!

Posted by Steve K. at April 19, 2005 09:50 PM

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