Bridgefolk is a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics who come together to celebrate each other's traditions, explore each other's practices, and honor each other's contribution to the mission of Christ's Church.
Gilbert Detillieux started attending Bridgefolk conferences in 2013, when it was hosted by Conrad Grebel College in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He and his wife, Laura Funk, had been hearing about Bridgefolk almost since they started dating in 2005. He being Roman Catholic and she Mennonite, Bridgefolk drew their attention. Gilbert’s interest in ecumenism predated his meeting Laura, so the ecumenical nature of Bridgefolk appealed to him. What won both of them over, however, was the warm welcome they received at their first conference, and the network of like-minded friends they quickly formed.
Abbot John Klassen invited Gilbert to join the board in 2017, and he has served since then. Attending board meetings and annual conferences has helped deepen and solidify Bridgefolk friendships. It also brought additional responsibilities, small at first, and then a very big one: helping to plan the 2019 conference, which was hosted by Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg—only the second Bridgefolk conference held in Canada.
Gilbert and his wife Laura worked as a team to organize the conference, together with a local planning committee. They invited Sr. Eva Solomon CSJ to be the Roman Catholic keynote speaker, and Steve Heinrichs the Mennonite keynote. Sr. Solomon brought a wealth of knowledge from her Anishinabe (Ojibway) background, and Heinrichs was at the time director of Indigenous-Settler Relations for Mennonite Church Canada. A panel discussion provided additional Roman Catholic, Mennonite, and indigenous perspectives. The conference opened with the staging of the play Discovery: A Comic Lament, which was both entertaining and thought-provoking. The planning group was grateful for the participation of several indigenous attendees, mostly affiliated with St. Kateri Tekakwitha Indigenous Catholic Church in Winnipeg. Despite the hectic and stressful nature of conference planning, Gilbert found it very rewarding and a highlight of his board involvement to date.
Gilbert considers his participation on the board both a pleasure and privilege. He misses those who have transitioned off the board during his tenure but has been happy to learn to know new board members, appreciating the greater diversity of voices and perspectives that new board members have brought.
ELKHART, Indiana (Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary) — Nearly 40 Bridgefolk participants joined with other Christians for the sixth Rooted and Grounded Conference on Land and Christian Discipleship, hosted by the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in late September. The conference focused on the theme, “Pathways through Climate Doom: Resistance and Resilience.”
“The focus on confronting climate doom resonated with many people, especially the young adults who attended,” reflected Janeen Bertsche Johnson, MDiv, AMBS Director of Campus Ministries and Rooted and Grounded Conference Coordinator. “I was grateful for the ways in which speakers, workshops and worship sessions helped us imagine a variety of responses — curiosity, trauma-informed care, scriptural resources, deep attention, art and music, prayer postures, engaged dialogue, historical truth-telling, lament, hope, and so much more.”
A total of 150 participants from the United States and Canada gathered for keynote sessions, workshops, paper presentations and worship, with 30 more attending online. Bridgefolk co-sponsored the conference instead of holding its own annual conference in 2023. Bridgefolk participants led morning and evening worship services for all, then gathered for reflection and a Bridgefolk footwashing / agape service on Saturday afternoon.
The Rooted and Grounded theme offered an opportunity for Bridgefolk to follow through on its recent conference topics. Since 2018, annual Bridgefolk conferences have invited Mennonites and Catholics to look together at their shared calling to address racial injustice and the legacy of land theft from indigenous peoples in order to nurture a just peace.
Kaitlin Curtice, a Potawatomi Christian author, poet and speaker, presented two keynote sessions on “Resistance” during the Rooted and Grounded Conference on Land and Christian Discipleship, held Sept. 28–30, 2023, at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. (Credit: David Fisher Fast)
Resistance
On the evening of Sept. 28, Kaitlin Curtice, a Potawatomi Christian author, poet and speaker, presented a keynote address during the conference’s opening worship session on the need for resistance in the midst of climate doom. She suggested that resistance includes cultivating relationships – with Mother Earth, with one another, and with fellow creatures. Resistance is also the way in which people use their everyday lives to resist the “toxic status quo of our time” and choose an alternative way that is rooted in relationships.
Curtice shared about her upbringing on the Citizen Potawatomi Nation reservation in Oklahoma and how she had to overcome a sense of disembodiment that resulted from her ancestors having been uprooted and having had to start over in new places.
“Colonialism disrupts our connection to the land, our bodies and each other — no matter our background,” she said. Resistance represents a lifelong endeavor to rebuild these connections and heal from the intergenerational trauma of disconnection, she noted, reminding those present, “The land is everywhere. If we listen, the land is speaking.”
During her workshop on the morning of Sept. 29, Curtice expanded on the theme of resistance by sharing from her latest book, Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day(Brazos, 2023). She described how four realms of resistance provide a moving, cyclical framework for understanding life — communal, ancestral, personal and integral.
Curtice explained how people are bound up in community with both their ancestors and those who will come after them. The actions of their ancestors have led them to where they are now, and the actions that they take in turn affect the generations that come after them.
People will make mistakes, feel exhausted and move from realm to realm to figure out life, Curtice told her listeners. Things will be hard, and they will grieve. She reminded them that the current plight will not be fixed quickly, for this is lifelong work, but they are not alone in it.
Resilience
Leah Thomas, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care at AMBS, provided a resilience training on Sept. 29 in the afternoon. She defined resilience as “the capacity to face and handle life’s challenges with flexibility and creativity.”
“Resilience means rediscovering and cultivating forms of inner strength that we may not realize already reside within us,” she continued. “It is the capacity to tolerate difficult feelings, which also expands our capacity to experience greater joy. Resiliency helps us grow beyond our current comfort zone to develop a fiercely compassionate and honest engagement with life.”
Drawing from social psychology, Thomas explained how trauma affects people’s emotional and spiritual lives and can be transmitted across generations.
“The climate crisis is a collective trauma — an intergenerational trauma,” she said. “The exploitation of the natural world is interconnected with other types of exploitation/oppression — including colonialism, genocide, enslavement, racism, classism and sexism — all within a society marked by capitalism’s overarching narrative of exploitation.”
“This collective trauma has damaged the ‘social tissue of community’ similar to how the tissues of the mind, body, and spirit can be damaged, and it continues to be passed from generation to generation.”
In the context of climate doom, Thomas said that resilience is the ability to remain grounded and retain a sense of well-being in the face of the collective trauma caused by climate change. During the training, she offered practical exercises for remaining grounded when feeling overwhelmed. She encouraged participants to take a break and wander outside, taking time to notice the sights, smells and sounds around them.
Seeking hope
During the evening worship service on Sept. 29, Jackie Wyse-Rhodes, PhD, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at AMBS, shared her keynote address, “Seeking Hope when the Path is Crooked: The Bible and Climate Change.” She discussed various types of paths in the Bible — straight paths, crooked paths, paths yet unknown, and ancient paths.
Stan Harder (profile, at left), Conrad Liechty of Goshen (Indiana) College, and Ally Welty Peachey of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, converse during one of the sessions at the Rooted and Grounded Conference on Land and Christian Discipleship at AMBS. Liechty and Peachey were among a group of young adults who attended the conference through the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative as “climate ambassadors” from their schools. (Credit: David Fisher Fast)
Straight paths are often extolled in the Bible as good and righteous, she said, making for a journey that is accessible and predictable. Crooked paths are the opposite — untrustworthy and difficult.
While it seems that climate change is leading humanity on a crooked path to destruction, Wyse-Rhodes reminded her listeners that they are not the first to despair or to lose hope. She called them to remember various people from the Bible and how they navigated challenging journeys.
Wyse-Rhodes also looked to Wisdom literature for guidance in forging a path of justice and faithfulness in difficult times.
“The ‘path yet unknown’ is a future path, yes. But it is not linear,” she said. “The past and the future inform one another. The crooked path loops back upon itself, and if we seek diligently, maybe we can find an off-ramp to the past, where we can set up a marker to welcome future generations back home. For the road to our future will ultimately take us back to God’s own ancient pathways.”
Additional conference information
Along with the keynote sessions, 10 workshops and 13 paper presentations provided participants with practical tools for dealing with climate doom as they engage in the work of restoring a fragile and damaged earth.
Prior Rooted and Grounded conferences were held in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021.
Located in Elkhart, Indiana, on ancestral land of the Potawatomi and Miami peoples, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary is a learning community with an Anabaptist vision, offering theological education for learners both on campus and at a distance as well as a wide array of lifelong learning programs — all with the goal of educating followers of Jesus Christ to be leaders for God’s reconciling mission in the world.
This AMBS press release was supplemented with information from Bridgefolk.
Bridgefolk board member Michelle Sherman draws our attention to the importance of Pope Francis’s second apostolic exhortation for all people of goodwill on the climate crisis, Laudate Deum [“Praise God”], released on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4. Sherman notes that the theme coincides with that of the Rooted and Grounded conference that Bridgefolk had co-sponsored just days before, in place of its own 2023 annual conference.
Encouraging Bridgefolk participants to read the document, Sherman notes that it is relatively short and can be read in one sitting. She offers the following excerpts in order to illustrate how its message resonates with that of the recently conference:
11. It is no longer possible to doubt the human – “anthropic” – origin of climate change. Let us see why. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which causes global warming, was stable until the nineteenth century, below 300 parts per million in volume. But in the middle of that century, in conjunction with industrial development, emissions began to increase. In the past fifty years, this increase has accelerated significantly, as the Mauna Loa observatory, which has taken daily measurements of carbon dioxide since 1958, has confirmed. While I was writing Laudato Si’, they hit a historic high – 400 parts per million – until arriving at 423 parts per million in June 2023. [7] More than 42% of total net emissions since the year 1850 were produced after 1990. [8]
69. I ask everyone to accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home and to help make it more beautiful, because that commitment has to do with our personal dignity and highest values. At the same time, I cannot deny that it is necessary to be honest and recognize that the most effective solutions will not come from individual efforts alone, but above all from major political decisions on the national and international level.
72. If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, [44] we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact. As a result, along with indispensable political decisions, we would be making progress along the way to genuine care for one another.
73. “Praise God” is the title of this letter. For when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies.
Karen Rose, OSB, was installed as the 18th prioress of Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Saint Joseph, Minnesota on Sunday, June 4, 2023. In recent years Sister Karen served as a Bridgefolk board member. Although her new responsibilities prompted her to resign from that position soon after her election by the monastic community on February 25, she hopes to continue participating in Bridgefolk.
S. Karen previously served as the director of mission advancement at Saint Benedict’s Monastery and succeeds Sister Susan Rudolph, who served as prioress since 2017.
The prioress is elected for a six-year term and is the spiritual leader of the community, which currently has 157 sisters. She is also the chief executive officer of the corporation and represents the monastery on the corporate board of the College of Saint Benedict and the corporate board of St. Cloud Hospital, two institutions founded by Saint Benedict’s Monastery.
S. Karen was born in the northwest of England. As she was growing up, she grew to love the arts and humanities and considered a career in ancient and modern languages, but as she went off to pursue higher education, she decided to study philosophy and theology in the hope of finding the meaning of life. When she didn’t find it, she felt called to do something that would help ease the suffering of humanity. That call ultimately led her to move into the field of health care. She holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in philosophy and theology from Oxford University, a doctorate in nursing from the University of Manchester, as well as other degrees and certificates.
An insatiable thirst for knowledge and discovery led S. Karen to participate in Studium, the monastery’s scholars’ program, in 2005. With no plans to enter religious life, she never expected to stay more than a few weeks. However, she felt God kept calling her back, until she made first monastic profession on July 11, 2009 and perpetual monastic profession on July 11, 2012.
The Rite of Installation took place at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 4 in the presence of her monastic community, members of the Monastic Congregation of Saint Benedict, and several special guests. She was installed in the office of prioress by Sister Nicole Kunze, Vice President of the Monastic Congregation of Saint Benedict.
Later that afternoon at a special celebration of the Eucharist, the Most Reverend Patrick Neary, Bishop of the Diocese of Saint Cloud, bestowed upon Prioress Karen Rose the blessing of the universal church in the presence of family, friends, oblates, Benedictine associates, clergy, representatives of religious communities, colleagues, benefactors, staff, members of the Order’s sponsored institutions, and persons representing the wider community.
Writing in Anabaptist World, the denominational magazine of the Mennonite Church USA, leading Mennonite historian John D. Roth has called upon Mennonites to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement that birthed their church in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness. Ecumenical “steps toward reconciliation in the past two decades” with Lutherans, Catholics, and Reformed churches “make it clear that the commemorative events … will need to look different” from the way that Mennonites once presented themselves in ecumenical encounters.
For example, if earlier accounts of Anabaptist beginnings depicted the movement primarily in heroic, even triumphalist, language, the 2025 commemoration will need to include space for confession. For many Mennonites our impulse in ecumenical settings is to claim our distinctive theological themes — community, discipleship, nonresistance — as if they were talismans that secure our moral superiority. The principle of “right remembering” calls us to also recognize shadow sides of those distinctives — the way in which our focus on distinctives can blind us to other theological truths — or to the gaps that exist between our precepts and our practice.
Second, a focus on Anabaptist origins in 16th-century Europe can easily overshadow the global reality of the church today. History matters, but almost all of the growth in MWC-member churches during the past 50 years has been in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The renewal of the Anabaptist tradition today is happening in the Global South.
Finally, our commemorations in 2025 will need to acknowledge the significant ecumenical relationships forged since 2004. These have spiritual significance and call on Mennonites to revise how we tell the story of the 16th century.
Roth is professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College, director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism and editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review. His article is available in the March issue of Anabaptist World.
After years of pressure and following up on Pope Francis’s 2022 visit to Canada, the Vatican issued a statement on March 30 repudiating the 15th-century concepts known as the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which were used to rationalize colonization. Recent Bridgefolk conferences have examined the “Doctrine of Discovery” as part of mutual learning that Mennonites and Catholics in the grassroots movement for dialogue and unity believe necessary in order to strengthen just peacemaking practices in both traditions, and in both the United States and Canada.
“In no uncertain terms, the Church’s magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being,” states a two-page text released jointly by the Vatican’s Dicasteries for Culture and Education and Promoting Integral Human Development. “The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery.’ ”
The declaration acknowledges that some scholars believe the basis of the doctrine is rooted in papal documents, but states that the bulls were “written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, [and] have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”
At the same time, it states that the papal bulls “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples” and that the they were “manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.”
The Vatican statement has been a leading news story in Canada, reports Bridgefolk board member Gilbert Detillieux of Winnipeg. According to the CBC, indigenous leaders have welcomed the news, though with warnings that the statement will remain symbolic unless it leads to further concrete action by the Church, and by the governments on both sides of the border that converted the “Doctrine of Discovery” into the policies, laws, and court rulings that stripped indigenous peoples of their lands and led to the assimilationist efforts and abuses of residential schools.
The 2023 Bridgefolk Conference will be a collaboration with the Rooted & Grounded Series of Conferences on Land and Christian Discipleship at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. “Pathways through Climate Doom: Resistance and Resilience” will be held September 28-30. Persons wishing to submit proposals for paper presentations should do so by the April 30 deadline.
Johann Christoph Arnold and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Rome 1995
Following the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, The Plough magazine re-released the transcript of a 1995 interview with the future pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The magazine is a ministry of the Bruderhof, a contemporary Hutterite Anabaptist community. Bruderhof elder Johann Christoph Arnold, met with Cardinal Ratzinger, for a conversation with a group of German Catholics. Excerpts and a link to the entire article follow.
In response to two accounts of Anabaptist martyrs, which Arnold had begun by reading:
What is truly moving in these stories is the depth of faith [of these men], their being deeply anchored in our Lord Jesus Christ, and their joy in this fact, a joy that is stronger than death. We are distressed, of course, by the fact that the church was so closely linked with the powers of the world that she was able to deliver other Christians to be executed because of their beliefs. This should be a deep challenge to us, how much we all need to repent again and again, and how much the church must renounce worldly principles and standards in order to accept the truth as the only standard, to look to Christ …
On the true path to Christian unity:
I think, too, that it is important [to realize] that we cannot bring about unity in the church by diplomatic maneuvers. The result would only be a diplomatic structure based on human principles. Instead, we must open ourselves more and more to him. The unity he brings about is alone true unity. Anything else is a political construction, which is as transitory as all political constructions are. This is the more difficult way, for in political maneuvers people themselves are active and believe they can achieve something. We must wait on the Lord, that he will give us unity, and of course we must go to meet him by cleansing our hearts. …
This is how I would see such a gathering, that we don’t try to negotiate how [Catholics and Anabaptists] can unite in the Catholic Church, but that together we allow the Lord to cleanse us and learn the truth from him, the truth that is love, and that we let him work so that he brings us together.
On the source of Christian unity:
As a Catholic one should wish that a Hutterite becomes a better Hutterite, and the other way around, a Hutterite can wish that a Catholic becomes a better Catholic, as long as one is convinced that in both cases it is the center that actually matters. To become fully Catholic means to enter fully into communion with Christ; if becoming fully Hutterite means the same thing, if it does not mean the canonization of relativism – each to his own – but on the contrary the deepest unity of truth, which is Christ himself. He is the source of the unity, and from this source it will go out into the world.
We are created out of Love and for Love. Conflict is a regular part of this human journey and an opportunity to grow. How do we grow into the persons and communities that God calls us to become? How do we construct a more sustainable just peace?
In October the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project of Pax Christi International, offered a series of virtual lectures on gospel nonviolence:
Why ‘Nonviolence?’ (includes 2 young adult speakers)
Returning to and Exploring the Power of Nonviolence
Christian Foundations of Nonviolence
Embracing Nonviolence: A New Moral Framework
Embracing Nonviolence: Transforming the Church.
These lectures are now available for personal or group study. All five videos are divided into speaker chapters, and the presentations run from between 15 to 29 minutes. Immediately following each presentation is a slide that has three discussion/essay questions.
A one-stop web page for these resources is available at https://cniseries.info. The page includes find brief lecture and presentation summaries, a link to each video and a downloadable study guide.
