"Ecumenical Follies" Update

Ecumenism in Its Death Throes?

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        In a recent column I reported that even the arch-ecumenist Cardinal Walter Kasper has conceded that should the Anglican "Church" decide that women can be "bishops," all prospects for "church communion" with the Anglicans would be dashed.

        Well, surprise, surprise, that is exactly what the Anglican "Church" has done. As Telegraph.co.uk reported on July 9, 2006: "The Church of England yesterday decided that the ordination of women as bishops can be theologically justified. In a historic move, the General Synod voted by a large majority that the move was ‘consonant with the faith of the Church.’"

        As the Telegraph story notes: "The vote was passed despite a plea from the Vatican that the ordination of women bishops would make unity between the two Churches ‘unreachable.’ The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, admitted that there would be ‘a heavy and serious’ cost to relations with the Roman Catholic Church as a result of the vote."

        Is it really possible that anyone at the Vatican is surprised by this decision? Can they not recognize a decrepit and dying human organization when they see one? Was this latest Anglican absurdity really the first clue Vatican "ecumenists" had that "unity between the two Churches [sic] is unreachable"? Are we supposed to believe that unity was "reachable" with a "Church" that had already approved the ordination of women as priests, abortion (at least in some cases), contraception, divorce and innumerable heresies against the Faith?

        How much longer — how much longer — will the Vatican waste the resources and energy of the Church on the futile pursuit of "unity" with the Mad Hatters of the Anglican Church and all the other Protestant sects that have absolutely no intention of embracing the authentic Gospel in its integrity?

        What will it take before the men in charge of "Catholic ecumenism" realize that the entire enterprise was doomed to failure from the start, because it did not take as its first principle the common sense, dogmatically necessary teaching of every Pope before Vatican II on the subject of Christian unity: that the only way to bring about the unity of all Christians is to bring all Christians into the Catholic Church, for there is no other Church and never will be.

        The Vatican’s pursuit of "unity" with the Anglicans — which no doubt will continue even if they pretend to "consecrate" women "bishops" — shows that ecumenism has become a parody of itself. There is nothing one could do to portray ecumenism as more ridiculous than it already is. Yet on and on it goes, with its resolute practitioners refusing to recognize the death throes of their own doomed "movement." They continue unswervingly on a path to nowhere, their eyes fixed on an ever-receding mirage. May Our Lady of Fatima intercede to deliver them, and the Church, from the lingering spell of ecumenism.