“Ecumenical” refers to the work for unity among different denominations of Christians. The question you raise is an inter-religious one because it relates to members of other world religions rather than other members of other Christian churches. The dialogue among Christians is not an interfaith or interreligious dialogue because, even though we belong to different traditions of Christian faith, we are still all members of the one world religion known as Christianity.

Regarding our relations with members of other religions such as Buddhism and Judaism, the Second Vatican Council’s A Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), recognizes the existence…

Yes, we do. What makes Christians unique from other monotheists like Jews and Muslims, for example, is the belief that who God is and what God is like, we find most clearly in Jesus. So for Christians, the way to God is through Jesus and in the power of his Holy Spirit.

Not cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus would be like buying a house and being handed the keys to it, and then trying to get into the house without using the door. Pentecostal and evangelical piety really gives central importance to putting the key in the door, opening it, and stepping inside to enjoy the warmth and intimacy of home, of life-in-God through Jesus. Catholic piety stresses this, too. The best example is the centrality of the Eucharist…

Well, it’s natural enough to want to go and see the place for yourself. Even people who know nothing about Islam use Mecca as a synonym for the ultimate goal. Every Muslim is required to make the pilgrimage (hajj) once in her or her lifetime; it’s one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Non-Muslims are not, however, able to participate in the hajj. The area around the two sacred cities of Mecca and Medina is a sacred area prohibited to non-Muslims. But nothing about the hajj itself is secret. Through several videos, you can vicariously share in the pilgrimage experience. In 1997 a team of Muslim camera men documented the hajj experience for ABC’s Nightline and the 25 minute video is available at this link.…

Since the ecumenical movement was really founded in Scotland, I’m concerned because the Catholic Church has recently closed the only seminary they had there.  Does this mean that the more “ecumenical” we become the less “Catholic” we might become?
In a logic text book, I think that would be called a “non sequitur” (the one does not follow from the other).
As you note, the World Missionary Conference that took place in 1910 in Edinburgh, Scotland, is generally considered to be the launch pad for what is today known as the ecumenical movement. Scotland, however, has by no means been the laboratory for that international  movement; it just happens to be where that meeting…

It might end up making you more committed to and active in your Catholic faith than ever. A study was done recently by a Church-related agency on the level of religious commitment among couples. It found that a high incidence of couples who were very engaged in the life of their parish were those in which one of the partners had been a member of another tradition of Christian faith and, over time, had become Catholic.
Why would that be? Perhaps because the fact that there were some differences there made each of the spouses more attentive to their faith and practice. Perhaps because through dialogue and seeking ways to pray together, a shared faith life came to mean all that more to them.
It’s easy to imagine the situation…

Question:  In a world of particularity, where people have so many choices that they don’t know what to choose sometimes, doesn’t interfaith and ecumenical dialogue just confuse us more?  How can we retain our particularity while still staying open to dialogue with other faiths?

If you’re not well grounded in your own faith, then yes, ecumenical and interfaith dialogue could have the effect of confusing you. But, as the saying goes, if you know where home is, you can go anywhere with benefit. If, however, you don’t know where home is, you’ll probably get lost or confused.
What many fail to understand about the situation of dialogue is that it presumes the people engaging in it have a clear…

In the United States thee are three formal regional dialogues between Catholics and Muslims: the West coast; the Midwest; and the Mid-Atlantic. Each dialogue is focusing on a different topic. In 2005, for example, the Midwest dialogue published a little book on Revelation: Catholic and Muslim Perspectives. The Mid-Atlantic dialogue has been working the past few years on the topic of Catholic-Muslim marriages. The resource materials they developed for both couples and clergy should soon be available on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website where reports from other dialogues are already posted  at this link http://www.usccb.org/seia/islam_index.shtml.

The Mid-Atlantic dialogue on…

Here are several ways in which the two religions differ:

Incarnation: The big difference is what Christian theology calls “the Incarnation”, or the “enfleshment” of God as one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Trinity: Closely related to this is the revelation of God as a community of relations—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If one looks at Jewish mysticism the idea of God being internally dialogical is not so strange.  Jewish mystical tradition hold a vision of God as ten-fold, the sephirot emanating from the eternal One, the wholly other.  By the last of the emanations, God is approachable by humanity.
Scripture: We share the bulk of Sacred Scripture, but not the New Testament which Jews…

This is weird but is Satanism or devil worship a religion?  Or is it just some kind of weird cult?
“Satanism” is a term that refers to a number of related beliefs and social phenomena. Their commonality is that they all feature the veneration or admiration of  Satan or similar figures.
The notion of Satan arose in Jewish scripture. For example, in the Book of Job, the angel of the Lord called ‘the Satan’ (suh-tahn) was the one who challenged the followers of Yahweh. In the gospels, a character named “Satan” was described as the cosmic enemy of God and  temptor of Jesus. Religions inspired by these texts (Jews, Christians and Muslims) typically regarded Satan as an adversary or…

Question:  I went to a “high Anglican” service and was told that they believe the same thing about the Eucharist as we do.  Is it OK therefore for me to receive communion here as a Catholic and if not, why does the church say that I shouldn’t receive here?

The Anglican and Catholic International Dialogue Commission, in a 1981 document entitled The Final Report, claimed in the sections relating to the Eucharist “to have attained a substantial agreement on eucharistic faith.” This, however, does not resolve the question of intercommunion. The reason is that, while both churches may have a common understanding of what is happening at the Eucharist, the significance they attribute to…

The Episcopal Church belongs to the Anglican Communion, a world-wide family of Churches. The Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church both follow the Bible and the traditional Christian creeds, celebrate the seven sacraments, and have bishops, priests, and deacons. In its Decree on Ecumenism, The Second Vatican Council (1962-5) said that “among those (churches separated from it in the Reformation)in which some Catholic traditions and institutions continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place” (par.13). The main differences still needing resolution are 1)the role of the bishop of Rome (pope) in a reunited church, and 2)the ordination of women as deacons, priests,…

Question: I am wondering about Jewish people, my son is marrying a Jewish girl soon, If Jews don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God In the second person of the trinity, how will they get to Heaven?  I was taught that one must believe In Jesus as the mediator between God and us.
There is a lot of discussion and debate in the church today about the question you raise. On September 1, 2002, a Christian Scholars Group published the following consensus statement:
“For centuries, Christians claimed that their covenant with God replaced or superseded the Jewish covenant. We renounce this claim. We believe that God does not revoke divine promises. We affirm that God is in covenant with both Jews and Christians.…

Question: What is the difference in belief between Roman Catholics and Episcopalians? I was once told, “All the ceremony and half the guilt” but there must be more to it than that.
Indeed, there is more to it than that, though your pithy line has some validity to it as far as it goes. A large part of the Episcopal Church (its styles vary from the simple to the elaborate, from Evangelical to Catholic) has retained rich and reverent ceremony as part of its catholic heritage. And since the locus of authoritative teaching authority is less clear in the Episcopal Church than in the Roman Catholic Church, there may well be less guilt around not following church teachings.
Belief-wise, Episcopalians (Anglicans)…

As the question does not specify what kind of a non-Catholic wedding (e.g. Protestant or Orthodox Christian, or Hindu?), the answer must of necessity be broad as well.
Be a respectful observer. Participate to the extent your own faith tradition allows. Pray well for the couple being married. Do what Jesus did at the wedding feast of Cana: add joy to the occasion.
Fr. Thomas Ryan, CSP is the Director of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations for the Paulist Fathers.…

Buddhism refers to a variety of traditions—Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana—whose source point was in Northern India 2500 years ago. Buddhism, like Christianity, comes from the name of its founder, Buddha, or “awakened one”, as Siddhartha Gautama was called. A primary difference between the two religions is that the Buddha remained silent on the question of God, whose existence, he felt, could not be proved. So he chose to focus his energies on what no one could deny: the presence of suffering.

This led to the Four Noble Truths: 1) All life is suffering. 2) The cause of suffering is desire. 3) To reduce your suffering, decrease your desire. 4) The Eightfold Path is a way to do this. By recognizing these…

First of all, Hinduism is not a religion as we tend to think of a religion. It is a name given to a range of practices, attitudes, beliefs, schools of thought, and the social and political systems connected to these. There is in Hinduism the idea of an enduring divine reality that never changes: Brahman. And “God” is the personalized form or manifestation of that ultimate divinity and takes many forms.
Interestingly, the Deity in Hinduism has a triple-form, and thus a certain resonance with Christian belief in the Trinity. There is Brahma, the Ultimate Reality, associated most with the transcendence of the Divine, remaining somewhat in the theological background as the revered but disengaged Creator.
Then…

While we are looking for common ground with followers of other religions, it is also good  to be aware of and not gloss over the differences. The differences between us will not disappear. They make us who we are.  But so does what we share, and what we share is all important for the future of humanity.
Incarnation: The big difference is what Christian theology calls “the Incarnation”, or the “enfleshment” of God as one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Trinity: Closely related to this is the revelation of God as a community of relations—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If one looks at Jewish mysticism the idea of God being internally dialogical is not so strange.  Jewish mystical tradition hold…

Current events in a country bridging Europe and Asia are offering an important object lesson about the Muslim world: it is not monolithic, and there are significant forces for religious pluralism and democracy within it.
The country is Turkey, at one and the same time a candidate for the European Union (EU) and the source of much of the water in the Middle East; larger in population than any EU country, and with the second largest military in NATO after the United States.
From May 7-15 I had the opportunity to travel with an interfaith group of 16 people from the fields of government, education, health care, religion, journalism and the arts to several cities within Turkey on visits to schools, mosques, cultural institutions,…

At the beginning of March, Philip Groning’s film Into Great Silence—a two-hour and forty-minute meditation on life in the Grande Chartreuse Carthusian monastery in southeastern France—opened at a theatre in New York City for a two-week run. But when each of the three daily showings continued to sell out, the theatre owners put a “Held Over” sign on the marquee after the film’s title. Now, at month’s end, it’s still playing to a full house. Patrons are buying their tickets on-line the day before in order to ensure they get a seat.
All this for a film in which, for the first two hours, the loudest sounds are of rain falling, birds chirping, an axe splitting wood,…

As the firestorm of reaction cools to some sentences in Pope Benedict’s talk on September 12 at Regensberg University in Germany, the questions of the hour are: What lessons can be learned, and what impact will it have on Catholic-Muslim relations at-large?
The speech was in large measure a scholarly address criticizing the West for squeezing faith out the door in its love affair with reason, science, and technology. The section relating to Islam represented only three paragraphs, and came at the outset.

Pope Benedict began by recounting a conversation that took place between a 14th century Byzantine Christian emperor and a Persian scholar. “Show me,” he quoted the emperor Manuel II Paleologus…