Ecumenical progress with Protestants and Pentecostals

To mark the week of prayer for Christian unity, the secretary of the Pontifical council for Christian unity, Bishop Brian Farrell continues his conversation with Philippa Hitchen about the current state of ecumenical relations with the different Christian Churches and eccelsial communities. In this interview, he shares his thoughts on the dialouges with Protestants and Pentecostals, especially in light of the forthcoming Synod of Bishops on new methods of evangelisation....

Listen:

"I think that while there are many difficulties coming up, at the same time, my experience of dialogue with the Protestant communities is that in the face of the huge secularisation that is taking place, we realise more and more that we have to give common witness and stand together on the basic issues of our faith in God and his Providence over life….the forces that push us together are very strong and I think that in this sense we have an opportunity…

We have already begun work to bring representatives of the various Churches to the Synod ….naturally new evangelisation cannot be done by the Catholic church alone, we are all part of this reality and we all have a gift to offer, so I think there’s a great interest on the part of our ecumenical partners to be involved in this new evangelisation…

Dialogue has been going with certain parts of the Pentecostal world for quite a number of years, but I would say that in the last 5 to 8 years there has been a new quickening of interest and a new presence of many Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders in the ecumenical movement so we have developed a number of different conversations…

I think that we also in the Catholic Church have recognised that the Charismatic movement has a message that can be of great importance for the new evangelisation. There’s an energy, a strength, a vision that that we need to promote and bring to all of our communities. We have to overcome the routine of just being Catholics because we were born that way – we have to have a new vitality and it’s not that we’re inventing some new message, but it’s the new energy, the new mode, the new vision and courage to go out there and spread the message……"