By John Klassen OSB
Catholic co-chair of the board, 2002-2024
As a “grassroots dialogue” between Mennonites and Roman Catholics, Bridgefolk began in a classic Benedictine way. It started small. There were a number of creative energies behind it. In the first place there was an amazing group of 25 people who gathered at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania in August 1999.
Some of these were couples in so-called “mixed marriages,” a Mennonite and a Catholic who had married. A number were persons who sought deepened spirituality or commitment to peacemaking in the other’s tradition. During the weekend, each person shared their story. Because of the striking differences between these two religious traditions, their stories carried grace as well as pain. No theologizing, no hypotheticals, simply speaking in the first person. When we speak of Bridgefolk as a grassroots dialogue, this is what we mean: close to the ground, close to human experience, but shot through with profound theological reflection and a deep love for the breadth and depth of these two traditions.
A second major impulse for Bridgefolk came from the success of the first international dialogue between Mennonites and Roman Catholics. Working across a five-year period (1998-2003), six Mennonite and six Roman Catholic leaders drafted and wrote a report named “Called Together to Be Peacemakers.” These were theologians, church historians, and scripture scholars, who listened deeply and well to each other. What distinguishes this work from almost all other ecumenical efforts within the Catholic environment is that no previous ecumenical work between Mennonites and Catholics had been done at the national level. The report itself is a fine piece of thoughtful work in that it faces significant differences in the interpretation of church history, the stance towards infant baptism, and the authorization of ministers within the respective church. The authors also pointed to further work that needed to be done, for example, a study of the violence against Mennonites throughout their history because of ecclesiology and their refusal to be drafted into an army.
A third crucial ingredient in the founding of Bridgefolk was the presence of a core group of passionate, committed leaders who were willing to invest time and energy to the evolution of this idea. These included Gerald Schlabach, Ivan and Lois Kauffman, Marlene and Stanley Kropf, Weldon Nisly, William Skudlarek, Margaret O’Gara, and myself. How to embody the work of peacemaking and the mutual exchange of gifts between Mennonites and Catholics in a way that grew out of those who came together? The group decided to start by hosting a summer conference at Saint John’s Abbey in 2002. There were many topics and speakers and we focused explicit attention to building relationships, simply building trust. This developed into a series of summer conferences that always included worship, praying and singing from both traditions, sharing the reading of Scripture, and giving space for informational questions.
After three summer conferences at Saint John’s, the leadership group was convinced that the fourth conference needed to be in a Mennonite setting. Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA, stepped forward to host the conference. This move began a pattern of alternating the conference between Catholic and Mennonite locations. This significant move embodied having a conversation between two real partners and giving each other a feel for each other’s unspoken and unarticulated traditions. Later on, the board invited a sister from Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Minnesota and the community has become a Catholic host for the conference (2012). Finally, in 2013 we had our first conference hosted by Canadian Mennonites, at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario.
As a Bridgefolk group we danced around the question of shared Eucharist for many years. At the outset of these comments, let me observe that there is no standard Catholic believer in Eucharist and probably no such Mennonite creature either. Eucharistic faith is deeply personal. However, there are significant differences between Catholics and Mennonites and the ritual by which we celebrate Eucharist. The Roman Catholic rite is well defined and structured; one can go across the Catholic world from country to country, in different languages, and encounter a fundamentally similar liturgical experience. Within Mennonite churches, even though there has been significant attention to liturgical renewal and retrieval within the communion, there is an enormous variation across local churches.
For two years running (2012-2013), we created a “double Eucharist,” with a unified Liturgy of the Word and Eucharistic prayer and institution narrative from each tradition. This liturgy required an enormous effort in its preparation and the gathered assembly also needed to be prepared for what was going to unfold. The first year we did this really well. The second year, not so well, because we had enough new participants who did not have the deep background for this liturgical expression and were left profoundly puzzled by the complexity. Like many good scientific experiments, this one failed, but we learned a lot from it!
As a result, the board charged Professor Mary Schertz and me to create a liturgical frame for foot washing. As is well known, in John’s gospel, chapter 13, where we would expect to find an account of Jesus handing the Eucharist to his disciples, instead he washed their feet. We created a Liturgy of the Word with opening prayers, and a major prayer modeled after a eucharistic prayer which includes an institution rite, an epiclesis, and anamnesis. Finally, we added an agape meal with formal prayers and scripture that echoed eucharistic language from the early centuries. We have found that this foot washing / agape rite has served us well as a body because we have freedom to choose preachers and presiders, men or women, from either tradition.
This experience of taking an existing rite and shaping it for our specific purposes brought us to a fundamental insight for the work of mutual exchange. In formal dialogues, there tends to be little formal prayer and liturgical experience because it is usually those elements that are contested and for which ecumenical agreement does not yet exist. As Bridgefolk, we found it essential to create and shape some existing liturgical experiences to help us celebrate our being together. For example, from the very beginning we sang hymns together, from both of our traditions. When we explored the meaning of the “communion of saints” we discovered that while we have a very different theology of intercession, both of our traditions have an overlap of reverence for martyrs in our respective church. Thus, we created a “litany of martyrs and holy ones,” which integrates men and women martyrs and which we routinely sing together at some stage of our conferences.
I must include some comments about Ivan and Lois Kauffman and their novel experiment in founding the Michael Sattler House at the edge of the property of Saint John’s Abbey. This unique experiment in offering hospitality to those who needed a place for prayer, resting, and gathering their wits was fittingly named after the Benedictine prior (second in command) of Saint Peter’s Abbey in Germany in the 16th century (1490-1527). Sattler left the community (1525) and became a theological leader in the early Anabaptist movement. He and his wife Margaretha were martyred in 1527. My minds reels at the collection of delightful ironies present in the witness of hospitality provided by Ivan and Lois in memory of Michael Sattler. I enjoyed many a rich conversation and refreshment in this place of encounter and nourishment.
While conferences in the first fifteen years or so focused on specific elements in our shared Christian tradition such as baptism, Eucharist, prayer and discipleship, and ordained ministry, especially as these relate to peacemaking, in the past four conferences we have focused our attention on the way we as specific Christian communities have responded to issues of social injustice such as the evil of racism and the thorny issues around land, settlers, and indigenous peoples. This focus is not without tension in relationship to Bridgefolk’s founding mission but as abbot of Saint John’s Abbey until January 7, 2024, I personally benefitted hugely from the presentations and discussions at all these conferences. Those who have been involved with Bridgefolk over the past twenty-two years would probably cite different key moments along the way.
This short essay is not meant to be a history but rather a reflective essay from an outgoing co-chair of the Bridgefolk board. My term as abbot overlapped the founding of this grassroots effort in what has indeed been an ecumenical exchange of gifts.
