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.
From Catholic Peace Fellowship: Saint Marcellus Day 2015
Thursday, October 29th
Supper, Pilgrimage, Address and Prayers
The relics of St. Marcellus are housed in the main altar at Sacred Heart Basilica at Notre Dame and each year around his feast day pilgrims visit those relics to pray and meditate on the current-day meaning of his martyrdom for peace 1,700 years ago. Continue reading “Saint Marcellus Day Celebration – October 29th, 2015”
MINNEAPOLIS AND COLLEGEVILLE, MINNESOTA (January 2015)—Liturgical Press, the Roman Catholic publishing house of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, and Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, the publishing ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), are pleased to announce the co-publication of One Hope: Re-Membering the Body of Christ, a resource to help Catholic and Lutheran communities walk together, recognizing and nourishing unity at a grassroots level.
In August 2014, six gifted pastoral leaders and scholars—three Lutheran and three Catholic—gathered for six days at a retreat center in the central Minnesota farmlands. Through intense prayer, discussion, debate, laughter, and work, they created a resource to help Catholics, Lutherans, and all Christians prepare for and mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. The result is One Hope: Re-Membering the Body of Christ.
The essays in One Hope explore experiences and activities that Catholics and Lutherans share and that connect to the living of their faith in embodied ways: breathing, eating, singing, forgiving, serving, and dying. One Hope will serve as a welcome resource for adult faith formation and parish discussion groups made up of Catholics, Lutherans, or members of other denominations.
From Toronto School of Theology.
With the 500th anniversary of the Reformation at hand in 2017, the question of how to commemorate it is upon us.
Do we celebrate the Reformers’ renewal of the church in light of the gospel? Do we mourn the division of the one, catholic church? Or have events like the globalization of Christianity and the rise of Pentecostalism made the 16th-century debates irrelevant?
Join us as Professor Ephraim Radner and a panel of theologians representing a variety of Christian traditions wrestle through these important questions and more.
Lecture
Dr. Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College. Toronto
Respondents:
Dr. Gill Goulding, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Director, Advanced Degree Programs, Regis College, Toronto
Rev Michael Stahl, head of communications for the Evangelical Church of North Germany, Hamburg
Dr. John Vissers, Director of Academic Programs and Professor of Historical Theology, Knox College. Toronto
Dr. John Rempel, Director of Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre and previous Professor of Historical Theology and Anabaptist Studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Indiana
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Sheraton Hall, Wycliffe College (5 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto)
Reception to follow.
Please let us know you are coming by emailing us at events@wycliffe.utoronto.ca.
As Bridgefolk participants grow in understanding and appreciating the profound gifts of each other’s traditions, we are discovering how deeply the practice of eating together at the Lord’s Table sustains and enriches our life of Christian discipleship and peacemaking. Fed and nourished by the gift of Christ’s love, we are strengthened to share the peace of Christ in the church and in the world.
To illuminate this vital connection, Bridgefolk has begun a new online series, of sermons and homilies that connect discipleship and peacemaking with the Eucharist or Lords’ Supper. The first installment, “The Table of Countercultural Mission,” was preached by Mennonite pastor Daniel P. Schrock at Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship in Goshen, Indiana. Go to http://www.bridgefolk.net/eucharistic-peacemaking to read, or find guidelines for submitting sermons and homilies on these themes for inclusion in this online collection.
A new book by Gordon Oyer recounts the history of a little known yet foundational event in the development of Mennonite-Catholic collaboration in peacemaking and ecumenical dialogue. The book is Pursuing the Spiritual Roots of Protest: Merton, Berrigan, Yoder, and Muste at the Gethsemani Abbey Peacemakers Retreat. Here is the publisher’s summary of the event and the book:
In the fall of 1964, Trappist monk Thomas Merton prepared to host an unprecedented gathering of peace activists. “About all we have is a great need for roots,” he observed, “but to know this is already something.” His remark anticipated their agenda—a search for spiritual roots to nurture sound motives for “protest.”
This event’s originality lay in the varied religious commitments present. Convened in an era of well-kept faith boundaries, members of Catholic (lay and clergy), mainline Protestant, historic peace church, and Unitarian traditions participated. Continue reading “New book recounts historic 1964 peacemaking retreat at Gethsemani Abbey”
The thirteenth annual Bridgefolk Conference is slated for July 24-27, 2014 at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN. Our conference theme this year is Service–An Overflow of Christ’s Love. The Catholic keynote speaker will be Vincent Guider, director of the North Lawndale Kinship Initiative at Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago’s West Side. The Mennonite keynote speaker will be Elizabeth Soto Albrecht, moderator of Mennonite Church USA. In addition to keynote addresses, the conference will include times and spaces for worship, discussion, reflection, story-sharing, and fellowship as well as participation in service projects. Please look for conference registration information to be posted in the near future on the Bridgefolk website (www.bridgefolk.net). As a grassroots movement of Catholics and Mennonites “proceeding through friendship,” Bridgefolk welcomes all those interested to join us at the conference. We hope to see you there!
Shawn Storer, director of Catholic Peace Fellowship, has issued the following public invitation:
Peace. The Saint Marcellus Day 2013 events that will take place in South Bend and Notre Dame, Indiana on Marcellus’ feast day, Wednesday, October 30th, are as follows: Continue reading “Schedule of events for the celebration of the Feast of Saint Marcellus 2013”
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has called for a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, in the entire Mideast region, and throughout the whole world to be held this coming Saturday, September 7th, 2013. The Pope made the announcement during the course of remarks ahead of the traditional Angelus prayer this Sunday. Below, please find the full text of the Holy Father’s Angelus appeal.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Hello!
Today, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to make add my voice to the cry which rises up with increasing anguish from every part of the world, from every people, from the heart of each person, from the one great family which is humanity: it is the cry for peace! It is a cry which declares with force: we want a peaceful world, we want to be men and women of peace, and we want in our society, torn apart by divisions and conflict, that peace break out! War never again! Never again war! Peace is a precious gift, which must be promoted and protected. Continue reading “Pope: Angelus appeal for peace”
Papers from our 2007 conference at the University of Notre Dame on the Mennonite-Catholic dialogue report “Called Together to be Peacemakers” have now been published. Edited by Gerald Schlabach and Margaret Pfeil, Sharing Peace: Mennonites and Catholics in Conversation, is available directly from Liturgical Press or other booksellers. Copies will also be available at the upcoming Bridgefolk conference in Ontario.
Sharing Peace brings together leading Mennonite and Catholic theologians and ecclesial leaders to reflect on the recent, first-ever international dialogue between the Mennonite World Conference and the Vatican. The search for a shared reading of history, theology of the church and its sacraments or ordinances, and understandings of Christ’s call to be peacemakers are its most prominent themes. Continue reading “Sharing Peace: Mennonites and Catholics in Conversation now available”