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Representatives of the Catholic Church and four Protestant churches in the United States have begun to discuss the Church’s mission and identity after formally agreeing to recognise each other’s baptisms.
The discussion will include “unity and diversity in the Church, and the origins and current interpretations of ministry and ordination, and the nature and role of authority and the episcopacy”, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a press release.
The bishops said the last topic is a direct response to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint, in which he invited other Christian leaders to help the Pope think about the ministerial role of the bishop of Rome.
“We now have the opportunity to reflect together on what it means to be the Church, Christ’s body in and for the world,” said a joint chair of the dialogue, the Rev. Cynthia Campbell of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
“I know that this will be an opportunity for spiritual growth for the participants, and we pray for the Church as a whole.”
The agreement on baptism between the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ was the result of six years of study and consultation by scholars during the Catholic-Reformed dialogue that began in 1965.
It marked the first time the Catholic Church in the United States has ever signed such an agreement, although Catholic bishops’ conferences elsewhere in the world have done so.
The five denominations agreed to recognise each other’s baptisms when water and the Trinitarian formula of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” are used.
In 1993 the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity called for ecumenical agreements about baptism, so that “the various Churches and ecclesial Communities arrive as closely as possible at an agreement about its significance and valid celebration”.
Sources:
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (study on the Church)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (agreement on baptism)
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