A Bad Sign of Things to Come in Turkey?

Jonathan Pageau's Interactive Drawing Project

Commentary on the Chieti Document by Fr. Lawrence Farley

Who Can Block the Holy Spirit?

I read Matthew Levering's Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Regarding the Holy Spirit’s unitive mission in the Church, Levering responds to Kendall Soulen, who focuses on relationship between the Holy Spirit and multiplicity or diversity, by emphasizing the Holy Spirit’s promotion of unity in truth and unity in charity, the bond that unites the Church. I was reminded of the Kontakion hymn in the Byzantine rite for the feast of Pentecost, which contrasts God’s dispersal of mankind at Babel with His calling of all to become His people at Pentecost. God’s undoing of the tower Babel is not through the Church having a single, uniform language and culture, but through the unifying of diverse peoples with their own Christianized languages and cultures. But as we see in the history of the estrangement between Catholics and Orthodox, and the early separation of the Oriental, or Non-Chalcedonian, Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, differences in languages or terminology (as mentioned above in the dispute over the Filioque), exacerbated by political issues, nationalism, cultural chauvinism, and other factors, have been significant barriers to agreement and communion. But the greatest cause of the failure of the apostolic churches to reach full communion in the past may have been insufficient charity (and humility). In relation to the Holy Spirit’s mission of unity, it seems to me that the zeal of bishops to preserve the unity of faith may have surpassed their zeal for charity. In this respect, the tasks of the Third and Fourth Ecumenical Councils remain incomplete (though the various apostolic churches have in the last half-century issued statements with other churches that they do not really disagree on the important issues of Christology). All must examine their conscience or the churches will continue to be chastised. The Holy Spirit is the force behind healing and reconciliation; but can it even be said that in defense of Bouyer's thesis in The Church of God, that the Holy Spirit has never failed to preserve those who have no fault in the separation in the unity of faith and charity, even though some of their bishops may have thought otherwise and excluded each other from communion?

Anamnesis, Not Amnesia: The 'Healing Memories' and the Problem of 'Uniatism' by Father Robert Taft, S.J.
Ecumenism and healing of memories; ecclesiological issues?