Been praying for Christian unity? I hope so. After all Jesus said this in prayer with the Father: I pray that they all may be one, just as you and I are one. Jn. 17:21 Christian unity seems like a tough sell these days. It is hard to believe that some religious experts number various and sundry Christian denominations at 30,000. I've often thought that number to be way too high, yet the fact that it is a number north of the number 1 is enough for scandal. Clearly, Jesus came to establish a religion based on His teachings and His truths collected in a single Church. And that is just how the plan was working for over 1,000 years of Christianity. If you were Christian for 10 centuries, a millennium by the way, you were a member of the Catholic Church. No matter how the new age churches want to spin it, this is a statement of fact. The great Western Schism occurred around 1054 A.D. and some split off from Rome over the authority of Rome. The more eastern minded religious, hanging out in Constantinople, which today is not Constantinople and not very Christian, became the Orthodox faith. Here I am not speaking of Eastern Orthodox Catholics who are very much aligned with Rome, no, I am speaking about a whole new religion. And while there is always great hope for reunion between Catholics and Orthodox, the simple truth remains this was a schism, a fancy word for split. So not until this split did we have denominational Christianity.
And these two Christian religions were all that existed for the next 500 years so let's summarize again: if you were Christian for 10 centuries, you were Catholic, if you were Christian for the next 5 centuries you were Catholic or Orthodox, although the raw numbers would greatly favor Catholic. Fast forward to the 16th century and along comes Catholic Priest, Martin Luther. He had issues with the Church, and many of those issues were not without some merit. As he posted his 95 theses to the door of a church in Germany, those calling themselves reformists began to split away from Catholicism, a goal by the way that Martin Luther did not envision. Soon we have a Lutheran religion, by the way, reserved to a very small portion of the world. Not long after Luther along comes good old King Henry in England, very desirous of a nasty divorce and remarriage all approved by the Catholic Church. And the Church said no!!! So King Henry did what was now becoming popular, he said to hell with the Catholic Church, I'll start my own and appoint me and my successors, kings and queens of England, as it's head. Nice, huh. The Church of England, AKA Anglicans AKA Episcopalians on this side of the Atlantic, all have their start not in Christ's divine mandate, but because their king was a scoundrel.
And of course along came Calvin and Wesley and dozens of others and we have now Baptists Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, Churches of Christ, 7th day Adventists, Evangelicals of hundreds of stripes, we follow a man or a woman and not a Church, and on and on it goes!
Yet 2,000 years later, here we stand, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church; Roman Catholics! But believe me, w have some house cleaning to do ourselves. We indeed pray for Christian unity for one only need be a nominal Catholic to understand that Christian unity can never occur without the Catholic Church. So should we not be a beacon of unity within our own body? Indeed we should, yet we are not. We as Catholics are too divided along lines like conservative or liberal, pastoral or traditional, pre-Vatican II or post-Vatican II, adherents of one Pope over another Pope, happy with parish X but unhappy with parish Y, can only follow Dominicans or Jesuits or Benedictines or Franciscans or whatever; you get the picture.
In recent memory, not just the now 50 years since Vatican Council II, but especially the last decade, even the last few weeks, has there been so much disunity publically discussed in very open forums. Perhaps this is nothing more than the signs of the times but it can't possibly bode well for Christian unity, especially if the Catholic Church is going to be the great leader in any effort at real Christian unity.
As Catholics I believe we need to avoid labels as conservative or liberal. First of all, most of us use those labels, especially here in America, as a political identifier. When we do, and we allow these labels to bleed into our Catholic faith, we are telling the world what kind of person we are politically and what kind of leader we want in a Pope, Bishop and local Pastor. Then there is the huge rivalry between adherents to the traditional Mass, sometimes referred to as the Tridentine Mass or the Mass celebrated with the 1962 missal of St. Pope John 23rd, and those who have come to love, or at least know as normative, the Novus Ordo Mass, the Mass most of us have participated in since the end of Vatican Council II. Surely the differences in the rubrics and liturgy are very different. Pope Benedict XVI made sure the traditional Mass could be celebrated with more regularity wherever it could be identified that there was demand. He issued a moto proprio called Summorum Pontificum. It was hailed by most in the church, especially those desirous of the older liturgy. But Benedict himself predicted the unwanted possibility of rivalry between adherents of one mass over the over and even said that the Church has but one Mass, with two liturgies. Soon, his predictions came true as the most ardent fans of the Tridentine Mass openly criticize the Novus Ordo and in some rare but well documented cases declare "their" mass as more better than your mass. You get the drift. And some Novus Ordo devotees go on record as saying the old mass is just a throwback to old times in the Church. Pope Benedict must be grieved.
Recent events from the Archdiocese of New York and even some interpretations of Pope Francis' words give rise to a new cottage industry with the likes of Michael Voris clamoring and calling Cardinals and Bishops evil and apparently blessed with special power to declare who is in hell. And on the other extreme are those soft squishy Catholics with a anything goes attitude declaring almost no one goes to hell and denying the existence of sin. The church often stand divided brother vs. brother, sister vs. sister on core value issues of life like abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, immigration and boy could I go on. Families in Catholic school district one after another call for high intensity meetings when pastors and principals close a school with no one willing to blame ourselves as for 5 generations now we have contracepted ourselves almost out of existence. You need a reason for a decline in vocations, look at Catholic families over the past 50 years.
By now you get my point! We have lots of house cleaning to do to be unified as Catholics; a unity demanded by God Almighty so we can turn our efforts to unifying all of Christianity!
Can you pray with me this month of September, for Christian unity yes, but for unity in the Catholic Church; for the greater glory of God and to serve Jesus Christ by serving each other here on Earth?
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