Revolution in Church history: Pope Francis to attend Protestant Reformation commemoration

 In a path-breaking move, Pope Francis will travel to Sweden in October for a joint ecumenical commemoration of the start of the Reformation, together with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation and representatives of other Christian Churches.

 The event will take place on October 31, 2016 in the southern Swedish city of Lund where the Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947. While kicking off a year of events to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, it will also highlight the important ecumenical developments that have taken place during the past 50 years of dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans. The one-day event will include a common worship service in Lund cathedral based on a Catholic-Lutheran “Common Prayer” liturgical guide, published earlier this month by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

 The commemoration in Lund follows on directly from the publication in 2013 of a joint document entitled ‘From Conflict to Communion’, which focuses on the themes of thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness. While asking for forgiveness for the divisions of past centuries, it  also seeks to showcase the gifts of the Reformation and celebrate the way Catholics and Lutherans around the world work together on issues of common concern.

 On October 31, 1517, the former Catholic priest Martin Luther (d.1546) nailed his 95 theses (disputations about Catholic Church practices, including indulgences) on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, an action that helped launch the Reformation.Two of the major Protestant teachings established by Luther include the belief that the Bible is the only source of faith, and that one can save one’s soul through faith in God alone. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued a document, Exsurge Domine, condemning what the Catholic Church viewed as the errors of Martin Luther and called upon him to “cease from all preaching or the office of preacher.”

 In a joint press release, the LWF and the PCPCU  said Pope Francis, LWF President Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan and General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge will lead the Ecumenical Commemoration in cooperation with the Church of Sweden and the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm.

 "The joint ecumenical event will take place in the city of Lund in anticipation of the 500th Reformation anniversary in 2017. It will highlight the solid ecumenical developments between Catholics and Lutherans and the joint gifts received through dialogue. The event will include a common worship based on the recently published Catholic-Lutheran “Common Prayer” liturgical guide," the release said.

 “The LWF is approaching the Reformation anniversary in a spirit of ecumenical accountability,” says LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge. “I’m carried by the profound conviction that by working towards reconciliation between Lutherans and Catholics, we are working towards justice, peace and reconciliation in a world torn apart by conflict and violence.”

 Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) explains further: “By concentrating together on the centrality of the question of God and on a Christocentric approach, Lutherans and Catholics will have the possibility of an ecumenical commemoration of the Reformation, not simply in a pragmatic way, but in the deep sense of faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ."
“It is with joy and expectation that the Church of Sweden welcomes The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church to hold the joint commemoration of the Reformation in Lund,” says Church of Sweden Archbishop Antje Jackelén. “We shall pray together with the entire ecumenical family in Sweden that the commemoration will contribute to Christian unity in our country and throughout the world.”

 “The ecumenical situation in our part of the world is unique and interesting. I hope that this meeting will help us look to the future so that we can be witnesses of Jesus Christ and His gospel in our secularized world,” says Anders Arborelius OCD, Bishop of the Catholic Church in Sweden.

 The Lund event is part of the reception process of the study document ' From Conflict to Communion' which was published in 2013, and has since been widely distributed to Lutheran and Catholic communities. The document is the first attempt by both dialogue partners to describe together at international level the history of the Reformation and its intentions.

 Earlier this year, the LWF and PCPCU sent to LWF member churches and  Catholic Bishops’ Conferences a jointly prepared “Common Prayer”, which is a liturgical guide to help churches commemorate the Reformation anniversary together. It is based on the study document From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, and features the themes of thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness with the aim of expressing the gifts of the Reformation and asking forgiveness for the division which followed theological disputes.

 The year 2017 will also mark 50 years of the international Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, which has yielded notable ecumenical results, of which most significant is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ). The JDDJ was signed by the LWF and the Catholic Church in 1999, and affirmed by the World Methodist Council in 2006. The declaration nullified centuries’ old disputes between Catholics and Lutherans over the basic truths of the doctrine of justification, which was at the center of the 16th century Reformation.

The institution of marriage faces the biggest challenge

 Is the institution of marriage facing the biggest challenge? It appears so if the situation in many countries is anything to go by.

 The Economist says in an article, “as couples wait longer to marry, and fewer eventually do, the number of countries where more births are out of wedlock than in it has risen to more than 20.”
Rates across the OECD group of 34 mostly rich countries vary hugely, from 2 per cent in Japan to 70 per cent in Chile. But overall the average is 39  per cent — more than five times what it was in 1970, it says.

 According to Roman Catholic norms, marriage is a sacrament. Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church, says the Catechism of Catholic Church (CCC).

  But people care two hoots about the biblical proposal on marriage. Gay marriages have already become a challenge and now the number of births of wedlock is rising. Divorces, once unheard of in the Catholic Church, are also on the rise. Inter-caste marriage has become a big issue in many dioceses of India, leading to the possibility of a decline in faith in the next generations.

  The Economist says unmarried parents are more likely to split up. Their children learn less in school and are more likely to be unhealthy or behave badly. It is hard to say how much of this difference is due to marriage itself, however, because unmarried parents differ a great deal from married ones. They are poorer, less well-educated and more likely to be teenagers, for example. But efforts to persuade people who otherwise would not marry to do so have generally failed, it says.

 The Catholic Church teaches: "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage."  The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. What's happening around the world is against the teachings of Bible.

  Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. “Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures,” The Economist says.
  In Brazil, where two-thirds of children are born to unmarried parents, couples whose relationship is “public, permanent and intended to form a family unit” are regarded as being in a “stable union”. Some countries allow couples to opt out of some of the provisions of de facto marriage by signing a contract, for example if one partner wishes to exclude property, or money for offspring from a previous relationship.

 CCC says that every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. "Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character," it says.
Catholic Church teaches very clearly. According to faith, the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust; and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.

 Nevertheless, the order of creation persists, though seriously disturbed. To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them.99 Without his help man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them "in the beginning." This is the bottom line.

The Christian purge in Middle East

 Two thousand years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Christianity is facing its biggest crisis in Middle East, the very place it was born.
 
 The followers of Christ are on the verge of extinct in Middle East after a series of religious cleansing, killings and exodus. The painful saga of exodus in Bible is being reenacted in Middle East, one of the cradles of Christianity in the world. 

A year ago, I wrote Christians were fleeing on foot with no food, money or water to escape the wrath of ISIS militants. It’s a pity that the conscience of the world has still not woken up. Today the story of Christianity is finished in Iraq, Libya and Syria. People can’t stay in these regions because there is death for whoever stays.

 "Most victims of war and terrorism in the Middle East are Muslims, since they are by far the majority of the population. But the tiny Christian minority often feels singled out. Their numbers are declining where the fighting is worst (see chart). Overall, the proportion of Middle Easterners who are Christian has dropped from 14 per cent in 1910 to 4 per cent today. Church leaders and pundits have begun to ask whether Christianity will vanish from the Middle East, its cradle, after 2,000 years," The Economist magazine said in an article titled "And then there were none". 

 This reminds one of the great mystery novel by Agatha Christie by the identical tile  "And then there were none". This novel is about of ten people who were involved in murders and all them got killed mysteriously in an island. Christians are getting killed in the Middle East, but there's a difference: Christians are innocent and not involved in any murders like the ten murders in Christie's novel.

 No doubt, an exodus is under way. Many Christians feel more at home in the West and have the means to get there. "Some are leaving because of the general atmosphere of violence and economic malaise. Others worry about persecution. A recent video of three Assyrian Christians in orange jumpsuits being made to kneel before being shot in the head by Islamic State (IS) jihadists fuelled this fear—though IS treats many other groups equally badly," the magazine said.  

 Mosul, in northern Iraq, was once home to tens of thousands of Christians. Perceived as supporting the Americans, they were targeted by insurgents after the invasion. A wave of killings in 2008, including that of the local Chaldean archbishop, seemed to mark the low point for the community. Then came ISIS. When the jihadists entered the city in 2014, they reportedly tagged Christian houses with an “N” for “Nazarene”, and gave their occupants a choice: convert, pay the jizya, a tax on non-Muslims, or face possible death. Most fled. In July 2014 IS announced that the city was free of Christians.

 "Many who left Mosul went to Erbil, the Kurdish capital of northern Iraq, where they have trouble finding work or obtaining public services. Even there, some refugees chafe at the enforcement of Muslim customs. In general, Christians complain that their Muslim neighbours are growing increasingly intolerant," says the article. In the decades before the Arab spring, many Christian leaders lent their support to authoritarian rulers in return for the protection of Christians —and their own lofty status. But the deals broke down when the dictators fell or wobbled, leaving Christians in a predicament. This happened in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was removed. This is not because the regime fell, but because there was no more authority, there was a vacuum. In Syria, it’s the same thing, Christians do not back the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but they are afraid of what may come next.

 The Economist says Christian leaders have often supported whichever strongman is in power. The late Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic church, the largest in the Middle East, backed Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former dictator, and discouraged Copts from joining the protests that would eventually topple him. In 2012 Shenouda was succeeded by Tawadros II, who supports the current strongman, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. The Copts have gained little from their leaders’ loyalty. Mubarak stood by as relations between Christians and Muslims deteriorated and sectarian violence increased. Sisi is seen as better than the Islamist government that he toppled. A draft law would make it easier to build churches. But Copts are still expelled from villages for such crimes as falling in love with a Muslim.

 According to the magazine, even in Lebanon, where Christians were once a majority and still hold considerable power, their political leaders have disappointed. Under the country’s unique system, government posts are shared out based on sect. The presidency goes to a Maronite, the largest group of Christians. But in recent decades many Christians have left. Muslims are now a majority, and want power to match their numbers. Christian political leaders complain of persecution, but many seem more concerned with enhancing their own power. Bickering between politicians has left the presidency vacant for 18 months.

 Interestingly, the Gulf, home to the most conservative brand of Islam, which has welcomed the largest number of Christians recently, though not from Iraq or Syria. "A wave of migrant labourers from the Asia-Pacific has dramatically increased the share of Christians in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had few before. Tolerance varies between countries. Saudi Arabia, for example, bans the practice of Christianity (though many Christians worship in private). The UAE restricts proselytisation, but has otherwise supported its Christians. The number of churches in the country has grown from 24 in 2005 to 40 today. The emirate’s rulers often provide churches with free land, water and electricity. But these new Christian enclaves may not last. Migrant workers in the Gulf cannot easily become citizens or put down roots," it says.