Ecumenism definitely alive and well

Bishop Richard J. Sklba in the "Herald of Hope" column in our Catholic Herald discusses the recent Vatican Document on the nature of the Church.

In an age of all-too-easy popular slippage from one Christian tradition to another, almost as if it didn’t matter and all were equal and alike, the question of denominational loyalty and conviction is important.

Christian traditions are not all equal, he indicates. If pressed, he will agree that Catholic Church is the one true church.

We Catholics not only see ourselves as a church, but we also claim to be Christ’s church in the sense that we believe that we possess all the essential elements instituted by Christ for his church: Word and Sacrament, east and west, with so many different spiritualities (Franciscan, Dominican, Ignatian, Carmelite, etc.).

I'm just an untrained Sunday School teacher, but it might have helped if he'd tracked, say, the four marks of the Church in the Creed a bit closer, and not made it sound like the Lord instituted "different spiritualities". Take him literally, and one might think labyrinths closer to the essentials of the Church than the papacy.