The Marian Shrine at Kevelaer in Germany was the site of a Vatican-sponsored Congress in autumn 2004 that called for the incorporation of ecumenism into pilgrimages and shrine programs.
The Latest in Continuous Aggiornamento
Catholic Shrines
and Pilgrimages Worldwide
to be
Ecumenized
by John Vennari
Bishop António Marto, the newly-appointed Bishop of Leiria-Fatima said last month that the church at Fatima will not be an ecumenical temple. He qualified this saying that the identity of Fatima “allows space for universal and interreligious dialogue.”[1]
Puzzled? Here’s the translation: The church at Fatima will not be an interreligious shrine, but a “Catholic” shrine where ecumenical activity occasionally occurs.
This new interreligious role of the Catholic Shrine is not limited to Fatima. All of the world’s Catholic shrines have received a virtual “mandate” to become centers for ecumenical activity. This was the main topic at a little-known Vatican-sponsored conference held in autumn, 2004.
The Ecumenical Congress
On September 20-23, 2004, the Fourth European Conference of Directors of Pilgrimages and Rectors was held at the Marian Shrine in Kevelaer, Germany. The theme was The Ecumenism of Holiness – Pilgrimage at the Beginning of the Third Millennium. Promoted by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itin-erant People (PCPCMI),[2] the purpose of the conference was to advance the practice of ecumenism in Catholic shrines and pilgrimages throughout Europe.
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The Marian Shrine at Kevelaer in Germany was the site of a Vatican-sponsored Congress in autumn 2004 that called for the incorporation of ecumenism into pilgrimages and shrine programs. |
Representatives from 21 countries attended, including Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, then-President of the PCPCMI; Bishop Brian Farrell, Secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; Greek Orthodox Archimandrite Spyridon Katramados; Anglican Rev. Dean Keith Jones; Evangelical Protestant Pastor Paul Martin Clotz; Rector Luciano Guerra of Fatima; Father Patrick-Louise Desprez (Vice-Rector of Lourdes); and bishops and shrine rectors from all of Europe.
This Congress made clear the new program of incorporating ecumenism into Catholic shrines and pilgrimages.
Why is the focus on shrines and pilgrimages?
Because our ecumenical leaders lament that ecumenism is practiced almost exclusively by clergymen and theologians, but generally ignored by laity. And since the Vatican’s 1993 Directory for the Appli-cation of the Principles and Norms of Ecumenism, virtually mandates ecumenism into every aspect of Catholic life, this lack of interest of the laity calls for correction. In his address at the Congress entitled, “Spiritual Ecumenism, the Inescapable Way Forward”, the Vatican’s Bishop Brian Farrell said:
“... while the Ecumenical Directory mentions and encourages ‘spiritual sharing between the members of different confessions in the form of days of recollection, spiritual exercises, groups for the study and sharing of traditions of spirituality, and more stable associations for a deeper exploration of a common spiritual life’, it does not mention pilgrimages. This is surely a lacuna that has to be set right.”
The Ecumenical Directory that Bishop Farrell refers to is a radical document that seeks to incorporate ecumenism into every aspect of the Church. It encourages numerous interfaith practices that have always been condemned by the Church as grave sins against Faith.[3]
The Directory:
● allows Protestants to conduct the readings (except the Gospel) in a Catholic Church [#133];
● encourages common “spiritual exercises” and “retreats” between Catholics and Protestants [#114];
● allows non-Catholics to lecture in seminaries [#81];
● commands that young children be taught ecumenism in the schools [#68];
● mandates ecumenism for priests and religious in their years of formation [#’s 51, 70];
● commands priests to take part in the “continuous aggiornamento” of ecumenical teaching and practice [#91];
● encourages diocesan bishops to lend their parish churches to non-Catholics for their prayer services [#137];
● promotes interdenominational prayer-services among Catholics and Protestants in each other’s churches [#112];
● encourages the joint publication of an interdenominational Bible between Catholics and Protestants [#185];
● discourages Catholics from attempting to convert non-Catholics [#’s 23, 79, 81, 125];
● encourages Catholics to “rejoice in the grace of God” [sic] in Protestants [#206];
● recommends the construction of a single church to be owned and used by both Catholics and non-Catholics [#138];
● further recommends that in these joint churches, the Blessed Sacrament be placed in a separate chapel or room so as not to offend non-believers. [#139]
Yet this is not enough, says Bishop Farrell, who works closely with the World Council of Churches. The laity still are not showing enough interest. So pilgrimages and shrines are now to be considered necessary vehicles to integrate the Catholic laity into the ecumenical sphere. Bishop Farrell explains:
“Pilgrimages can be ecumenical in many ways. They can be made up of people from different traditions, thus offering an opportunity for meeting and learning about one another’s history, piety, liturgical life; they can be visits to holy places of a church not one’s own. If they are anything, pilgrimages are occasions for prayer, and common prayer for unity.”
Bishop Farrell again bemoans that the laity are not enough involved:
“While official contracts and theological dialogues retain all their value for the restoration of unity among Christians, they are not sufficient in themselves. They do not reach the hearts of people. The ecumenism of holiness — prayer and conversion of life and acts of reconciliation — this is the obligatory way forward. By becoming intense experiences of ecumenical encounter, formation and celebration, pilgrimages can play a unique role in shaping and spreading the spirituality of communion that is the best antidote to all our divisions.”[4]
He emphasizes:
“It seems to me that shrines and pilgrimages offer a unique opportunity for teaching and fostering a lively grass-roots movement of conversion and purification of memory, essentials to the ecumenism of holiness.”
The ecumenism in which Bishop Farrell wants all Catholics immersed is the very interdenominational ecumenism condemned by Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical Mortalium Animos. Pius exclaimed:
“It is clear that the Apostolic See can by no means take part in these assemblies. Nor is it any way lawful for Catholics to give such enterprises their encouragement and support. If they did so, they would be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”[5]
Pius further explained that the only true unity that can be sought is the return of dissidents to the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church.
This is not the goal of today’s ecumenism, which as Cardinal Kasper rejoiced, does not seek the “return” of non-Catholics to the Catholic Church.[6] Rather, today’s ecumenism seeks a World Council of Church’s style of “unity without uniformity” among the various denominations.
Yet the ecumenical program, roundly condemned by all the popes throughout the centuries, and particularly by Pope Pius XI, is what Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao now refers to as “a sign of hope”. In his opening address at the Kevelaer Congress, the Cardinal called ecumenism “one of the great gifts of the Holy Spirit for a continent like Europe.”[7]
Cowardice and Cruelty
Ecumenism is not a “gift of the Spirit,” but a manifestation of cowardice and cruelty.
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Bishop
Brian Farrell of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, who works closely with the World Council of Churches,
lamented at the Kevelaer Congress that the laity are not enough
involved in ecumenism. Thus, he said, pilgrimages and shrines must
become more ecumenical so as to get the laity involved at the grass-roots
level. |
It is cowardice on the part of Church leaders to refuse to proclaim the Catholic truth about false religions. Blessed Pope Pius IX taught clearly in his 1864 Syllabus of Errors that it is an error to believe “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.” (n.18) Now it may not be pleasant to tell this to a Protestant, and a true Catholic will do so with gentleness and firmness.[8] But today’s Catholic leaders have effectively abandoned this teaching, and engage in an ecumenism that — in a poke in the eye to Pius IX – regards Protestantism as “nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.”
It is also a lying cruelty for Church leaders to engage in ecumenism, as it tells non-Catholics immersed in the fatal illness of false religion that their sickness is actually a sign of health, and their souls are in no mortal danger.
The practice of ecumenism is cruel to Catholics as well. It pretends that the infallible dogma “Outside the Church there is no salvation” can be either discarded, or given a different understanding from what it had always meant. This is in direct defiance of Vatican I’s infallible dogma that Catholic doctrine must be believed as it has always been taught “in the same sense and in the same sentence (eodem sensu eodem que sentia).”[9]
Today’s ecumenism also kills the Catholic missionary spirit. If members of false religions are in an acceptable position before God, then why try to convert them? This is a recipe for the spread of religious indifferentism, a bedrock error condemned consistently by the Popes of all time. Pope Gregory XVI denounced this iniquity in strong language:
“Now we come to another very fertile cause of the evils by which, we are sorry to see, the contemporary Church is being afflicted. This is indifferentism, or that wicked opinion which has grown up on all sides through the deceit of evil men. According to this opinion, the eternal salvation of the soul can be attained by any kind of profession of Faith, as long as a man’s morals are in line with the standard of justice and honesty. You must drive out from the people entrusted to your care this deplorable error on a matter so obviously important and so completely clear. For since the Apostle has warned that there is one God, one Faith, one baptism, those who pretend that the way to [eternal] beatitude starts from any religion at all should be afraid, and should seriously think over the fact that according to the testimony of the Savior Himself, they are against Christ because they are not for Christ, and that they are miserably scattering because they are not gathering with Him; and that, consequently, they are most certainly going to perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic Faith and keep it whole and inviolate.”[10]
Likewise, Blessed Pius IX taught in Qui Pluribus:
“Also perverse is the shocking theory that it makes no difference to which religion one belongs, a theory which is greatly at variance even with reason. By means of this theory, those crafty men remove all distinction between virtue and vice, truth and error, honorable and vile action. They pretend that men can gain eternal salvation by the practice of any religion, as if there could be any sharing between justice and iniquity, any collaboration between light and darkness, or any agreement between Christ and Belial.”[11]
Pius IX elsewhere insisted:
“In particular, ensure that the faithful are deeply and thoroughly convinced of the truth of the doctrine that the Catholic Faith is necessary for attaining salvation.”[12]
The practice of ecumenism tramples these Papal teachings underfoot, and produces, as Pius XI warned, “a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ”. Today’s ecumenism is a manifestation of the triumph of modernism in the Church’s human element. Yesterday’s heresy becomes to-day’s “orthodoxy,” and Churchmen now bless what the Church always condemned.
Such is the madness of ecumenism now trumpeted as “a sign of hope” and “a gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Accommodating “Sects of Perdition”
At the Kevelaer Congress various speakers were nonetheless eager to promote this alleged “gift of the Spirit”, and spoke of how they incorporate ecumenism into Shrine programs. In true ecumenical form, the Congress included addresses from non-Catholics: Orthodox Archimandrite Spyridon Katramados; Anglican Rev. Dean Keith Jones and Evangelical Protestant Pastor Paul Martin Clotz.
Also present at this conference was Fatima Rector Luciano Guerra whose speech was entitled, “The Experience and the Pastoral Projects at Fatima in an Ecumenical Environment.” He presented his usual feeble excuses for allowing the Hindus to conduct a Hindu prayer ceremony at the Catholic altar at the Capelinha at Fatima, although now, he attempts to distance himself from the debacle, saying that things got a little out of his control. This is a far cry from his original Communiques that claimed “nothing took place on or off the altar” and that castigated concerned Catholics who were outraged at the Hindu sacrilege.
Among various ecumenical initiatives at the Fatima Shrine, Rector Guerra spoke of the following as if it were something praiseworthy:
“Every year for the last four years, we received the visit of a group of Anglican priests normally accompanied by a bishop. They stay several days in Fatima, taking part in some of the celebrations and even in the Eucharist, but without concelebration or communicating (receiving communion). The Shrine makes available to them the interior chapels of the lodging houses, so that they may celebrate their own rites. Already this year the Anglican Archdeaconry of Gibraltar held its Synod in one of the lodging houses of the Shrine.”
Thus Rector Guerra willingly turns over a portion of the Fatima Shrine to clergymen (and women?) from a false religion to perform religious rituals set up in defiance of the worship Our Lord established. He chooses to forget Pope Pius XII’s reminder that “outside of the Church, neither holiness nor salvation can be found”[13] (so much for the “ecumenism of holiness”). He snubs Pope Gregory the Great who taught, “Now the holy Church universally proclaims that God cannot be truly worshiped saving within herself, asserting that all they that are without her shall never be saved.”[14]
Guerra and other ecumenical Catholics also choose to disregard the Scriptural condemnation against religious camaraderie with heretics.
Our Lord Himself warned that heresies would arise and destroy souls: “Many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many.” (Matt: 24:11)
Following their Divine Master, the Apostles commanded Catholics to have no part with heretical teachers. St. John, the Apostle of Charity, re-garded the heretic as a seducer, an anti-christ, a man who dissolves Christ. (1 John 4:3, 2 John 7) “Receive him not into thy house” said St. John, “nor say to him, God speed you.” (2 John 10)
Saint Peter, conscious of his Papal duty to protect the flock against “ravenous wolves,” assailed heretics calling them “lying teachers who shall bring in sects of perdition ...” (2 Peter 2:1)
Saint Paul likewise warned, “I know that after my departure, ravenous wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Therefore watch.” (Acts 20:28,29,31)
Yet today’s ecumenical clergymen, including Fatima’s Rector Guerra, shred the pages of Sacred Scripture by accommodating leaders of heretical religions — “ravenous wolves” who “dissolve Christ” — at the Catholic shrines en-trusted to their care.
A “Model” Ecumenical Pilgrimage
Following up on Bishop Farrell’s call for ecumenical pilgrimages, the story of a unique pilgrimage at Santiago de Compostela was presented to the Kevelaer Congress as a possible model for others to follow.
Santiago de Compostela is the magnificent 1000-year-old Cathedral that entombs the body of Saint James, the Apostle who was with Our Lord at Mount Tabor and Gethsemane. It has been a place of pilgrimage for more than a thousand years, and is considered Catholicism’s third most important pilgrimage site, after that of Rome and Jerusalem.
Rev. Msgr. Noël Treanor, Secretary General of the Commission of the Bishops Conference of the European Community (COMECE) delivered a speech entitled “European Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela”.
Held from April 17-21, 2004, the European Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was supported by both the COMECE and by the Presidents of the European Commission, of the European Parliament and of the European Coun-cil. Sadly, this demonstrates the postconciliar Church’s (and the EU’s) vision of the EU as a pan-religious unity based not on the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, but on the ecumenical co-op condemned by Pope Saint Pius X’s Letter against the Sillon.[15]
Starting in Madrid, the 2004 ecumenical pilgrimage comprised over 300 pilgrims from 29 countries. Bishop John Crowly of England enthusiastically described the variety of the delegation. It was “... of varying sizes, containing wonderfully varied cross sections of women and men, EU civil servants, journalists, teachers, Taizé and other monks, parliamentarians, academics, youth workers, lay and clerical theologians, and lay movements. There were representatives from across the ecumenical spectrum, including a Lutheran bishop from Finland, a Greek Orthodox bishop and a Protestant bishop from Madrid.”[16]
Each day included a morning Mass (usually concelebrated); a mid-day meditation; and an Evening Prayer. The Evening Prayer services were usually presided over by non-Catholics. Finnish Lutheran Bishop Erik Vikström presided and gave the address at the Evening Prayer at the Basilica de San Isidora. Greek Orthodox Bishop Athanasios of Achaia did likewise at the Evening Prayer at the Basilica of Santa Maria de la Encina. Finally, Bishop López Lozano, Anglican Bishop of Madrid, led the Evening Prayer at the pilgrimage destination, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
This is an unspeakable tragedy, since one of the reasons for the ecumenical pilgrimage is for the sake of peace and unity for the EU. Not only are these ecumenical gatherings a mere superficial unity in the natural order, but these pan-religious activities will bring down God’s punishment, since they operate in defiance of the consistent teaching of the Popes throughout the centuries, teaching that no Pope has the power to change. On this subject, the eminent Cardinal Mercier of Belgium taught in a 1918 Pastoral Letter that the First World War was a punishment from God for nations putting the one true religion on the same level as false creeds. Citing the teaching of Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X and Benedict XV, he called this degradation of the Catholic religion a “blasphemy which calls down God’s chastisement on society far more than the sins of individuals and families.”17
Yet this “blasphemy” is to be incorporated into Catholic pilgrimages and shrines as an “ecumenism of holiness,” a hope for the future. This, in fact, was the Conclusion drafted into the Final Statement of the Congress.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The Conference’s Final Statement included its official Conclusions and Recommendations. Among its Conclusions, we read:
● “Although still in an early phase, ecumenical pilgrimage initiatives are springing up in Europe ...”(#2);
● “The current move towards European political unity, and also towards Christian unity, constitutes a challenge, a sign of the times and a call from God so that people and communities may dedicate themselves more to finding out what they have in common and to respecting still further what is their own. (#3);
● “The conference acknowledges that in general, despite certain experiences including ‘official’ ones, shrines do not yet have an ecumenical programme or project. (#4);
●“Perhaps the experience of ecumenical pilgrimage could be promoted more easily with a new generation of Christians who are better prepared for spiritual exchanges ...” (#5)
The Congress then proposed a short list of formal Recommendations, the most radical of which is the following:
● “Organization of common days of prayer is proposed at shrines for specific purposes, such as peace; sharing between rich and poor countries; Christian unity; the family; migrants and refugees; and Europe itself. In some places, prayer for unity should be more frequent, and the Via Crucis will purify us of any false judgments or interests. Some shrines could also follow the example of others in creating a school of ecumenical prayer that could become a meeting place of unity. Finally, ministers from other denominations could also be invited to preach on some occasions. Individual Church authorities could also make available some spaces within a shrine for worship by Christian brothers and sisters who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.” [#11][18]
There we have it. Catholic Shrines are now encouraged to be places where ministers of false religions can preach to congregations, and where space is provided on Catholic ground for false worship. Is it unreasonable to suspect that this is part of the plan for the new Shrine structure at Fatima?
The final recommendation from the Congress was a call to extend this new ecumenical approach to Catholic Shrines world- wide:
● “Finally, the desire was expressed to hold a world conference, which should be prepared by existing and future national associations of rectors and directors of pilgrimages.” [#14][19]
With this, the ecumenization of Catholic Shrines and pilgrimages will be complete. It will serve to incorporate Catholic Shrines even more fully into what Pope Pius XI called “a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ”.
What About the New Pope?
Will this program of ecumenizing pilgrimages and shrines be continued under the new pontificate? It may be argued that things have changed since September 2004 when the Congress was held. Pope John Paul II is dead. Pope Benedict XVI, his successor, has placed the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants under the Sacred Congre-gation for Justice and Peace, and has accepted the resignation of PCPCMI President, Cardinal Fumio Hamao.
Further, Pope Ratzinger is perceived as being a bit more conservative in certain areas than was John Paul II. It is well known that Cardinal Ratzinger was favorable neither to John Paul’s Apology program, nor to John Paul’s “Spirit of Assisi” prayer meetings. The new Pope has yet to organize any such pan-religious prayer gatherings that include Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, witch doctors and sundry pagans. If the Church has seen the last of these papally-sponsored “Spirit of Assisi” scandals, then this is something gained.
Nonetheless, while Pope Ratzinger may look askance at the “Spirit of Assisi”, he has always been enthusiastic toward ecumenism with so-called “Christian” confessions. Bishop Farrell, a kind of Cardinal Kasper clone, rejoiced in May 2005 about the newly-elected Pope’s ecumenical outlook. A press release from the World Council of Churches relates:
“He [Bishop Farrell] and his colleagues have been greatly cheered by the ecumenically-minded pronouncements made by Pope Benedict XVI since his election last month. ‘We are full of hope in everything we’ve heard regarding ecumenical relations [said Bishop Farrell]. The Pope is totally supportive. And he has been deeply involved in dialogue since he was a young theologian in Germany engaged in discussion with Lutherans and he has been a prominent figure in dialogue with Orthodox theologians’.”[20]
Thus the same Bishop Farrell who called for the ecumenization of shrines and pilgrimages has cheered Pope Ratzinger’s ecumenical world view.[21] We may conclude that the holy places are not safe, and will continue to be kneaded into the toxic ecumenical mix.
The new program for shrines and pilgrimages, on the days it is enacted, will force ecumenism into the faces of Catholics who still visit Catholic Shrines for a Catholic motive and with a Catholic mind-set. This violation of the faithful is a further rape of the Church by that smiling beast named aggiornamento.
Conqueror of All Heresies
It is fitting that the 2004 Congress on Shrines and Pilgrimages was held at Germany’s Marian Shrine at Kevelaer, for it is here that Our Lady is invoked as “Comforter of the Sad and Distressed”. Nothing could be sadder, more distressing, than to see our Church leaders promote an ecumenism that strikes at the heart of the Catholic Church’s very reason for being. The need for public resistance to these aberrations has never been greater.
Let us stand with Our Lady at the foot of the Cross as Her Son is crucified anew. Let us entrust our prayers, our reparations and our resistance to our dear Blessed Mother who is Comforter of the Sad and Distressed, and Conqueror of All Heresies.
Notes:
1. Posted at Fátima Virtual: www.fatimavirtual.com/portal/index.php?id=1750&layout=detail.
2. All speeches and documents from the Kevelaer Congress quoted in this article can be found by consulting the Index of the Congress at the Vatican webpage: www.vatican.va/ roman_ curia/pontifical_councils/migrants/ pom2005_97-suppl/rc_pc_migrants_ pom97_index.html
3. See “The Ecumenical Church of the Third Millennium,” John Vennari, Catholic Family News, January, 1998. (Reprint #256 available from CFN for $2.00US postpaid).
4. Emphasis added.
5. Pope Pus XI, Mortalium Animos, On Fostering True Religious Unity, January 6, 1928. This encyclical perfectly conforms with the authentic Catholic Magisterium on the subject from the time of Jesus Christ.
6. Cardinal Kasper said, “Today we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a ‘return’, by which the others would be ‘converted’ and return to being ‘Catholics.’ This was expressly abandoned at Vatican II (Adisti, February 26, 2001). English translation quoted from Where Have They Hidden the Body?”, by Christopher Ferrara. See also Iota Unum, chap. 35, where Professor Romano Amerio demonstrates that converting non-Catholics to the one true Church is not the aim of today’s practice of ecumenism.
7. “Greetings to the Participants”, Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao. Most tragic of all, the Cardinal was here quoting Pope John Paul II.
8. The moral theologian Father Francis Connell, C.Ss.R., said it well: “Far from minimizing the exclusiveness of the Catholic religion, our people should be instructed unhesitatingly, whenever the occasion offers, and to let non-Catholics know that we consider them as deprived of the ordinary means of salvation, however excellent their intentions.” — “Com-munication with Non-Catholics in Sacred Rites,” American Ecclesias-tical Review, September, 1944.
9. Vatican I, Dei Filius.
10. Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.
11. Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, November 9, 1846.
12. Pope Pius IX, Nostis et Nobiscum, December 8, 1849.
13. “O Mary, Mother of Mercy and Seat of Wisdom! Enlighten the minds enfolded in the darkness of ignorance and sin, that they may clearly recognize the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church to be the only true Church of Jesus Christ, outside which neither sanctity nor salvation can be found.” (Pius XII: Racolta, # 626)
14. From the Magna Moralia. Emphasis added.
15. See “Our Apostolic Mandate”, Letter (On the “Sillon”), Pope St. Pius X, August 25, 1910.
16. Bishop John Crowly, Pilgrims on the Way of Hope, in Briefing, May 2004, 34, 3, p. 34-37. Quoted from “European Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela,” Rev. Msgr. Noël Treanor, Secretary General, COMECE, Brussels, Belgium. (Indexed on Vatican web page — see endnote #2).
17. “In the name of the Gospel, and in the light of the Encyclicals of the last four Popes; Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X, I do not hesitate to affirm that this indifference to religion which puts on the same level the religion of divine origin and the religions invented by men, in order to include them in the same skepticism, is the blasphemy which calls down chastisement on society far more than the sins of individuals and families.” Cardinal Mercier’s Pastoral Letter 1918, The Lesson of Events. Cited from The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism, Father Denis Fahey, (Dublin: Regina Publications, 1943), p. 36. (Emphasis added)
18. Final Statement. Emphasis added.
19. Ibid. Emphasis added.
20. “Receiving the Holy Spirit from One Another,” Theodore Gill, Press Release from the World Council of Churches, May 15, 2005.
21. A disturbing example of the present Pope’s ecumenical world view is found in the following statement: “On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own Faith history. Absolutely not!” – Pope Benedict XVI’s Address to the Ecumenical Meeting: Cologne, August 19, 2005. (Posted on Vatican web page.)
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