The lack of tolerance is increasingly evident even in the spiritual life. In this past year, divisions have hardened in churches and religious communities alike. The Anglican Communion has been brought almost to the point of schism by arguments on women bishops and gay clergy, by differing interpretations of scriptural truth and by ideological assertions of separate national tradition. The bonds of fellowship that once linked 38 Churches around the world have practically broken. Traditionalists, liberals and evangelicals speak of each other more in terms of anathema than love. The fragile truce brokered at the Lambeth Conference last year has shattered, and Africa, America and the Churches of the Southern Cone seek to go their own way.
The Roman Catholic Church has fared little better. Attempts to reassert the authority and primacy of Rome have led to division and pain. The Pope has reached out to all those whom he would like to see reintegrated with mainstream Catholicism. But the cost has been an abrupt halt in ecumenical rapprochement, a growing gulf between the Vatican and both Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and with a clumsy and mistaken signal that accommodation is possible with those who hold extreme or anti-Semitic views.
It is not only Christianity that has rediscovered medieval notions of heresy. Islam is still in the throes of a global struggle between those who would take the faith back to a simplistic view of its past and those who insist that it must accommodate its tenets to the modern world. And in this struggle, there is no room for compromise or tolerance.
What a stupid article. If nothing is important and there is no truth/no right or wrong you can have all the tolerance you want. I guess the monks in the 10th Century showed this type of tolerance as they offered up their skulls to Viking swords. It kept the Vikings from getting upset.
One has to smile at this line, though . . . “The fragile truce brokered at the Lambeth Conference last year has shattered . . . ”
Heh.
It’s as if the author thinks something was accomplished at Lambeth. What a laugh that brings about [i]an abject failure of a conference[/i], complete with one of the most inane vacuous documents to ever come out of an Anglican Communion maw.
On the one hand, Anglicanism, which has no central theological authority, no Magisterium, and no overall leader with power over it is components, is infected with intolerance because the conservatives and the liberals won’t agree to put aside their differences, and no one has the power to make them do so. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church, which does have centralized theological authority, a Magisterium, and a leader with power over its components, is also infected with intolerance because its leadership is insisting that certain issues have long been resolved and it is time for everyone to submit to those resolutions.
Under one system, agreement on important questions is not required, and the Times decries the fact that under such a system people disagree on those important questions. Under the other system, agreement on important questions can be required, and the Times is complaining because steps are being taken to require it.
What is the message here?
I thought heresy started in the first century.What were the false teahers teaching?
IMHO, this is a very poor article founded on very poor analasis using inappriate standards and baselines. Wonder why it’s on this blog?
This really is bizarro-world stuff. If you just wrote the exact opposite of the article, line by line, you’d have something close to reality.
[blockquote]a growing gulf between the Vatican…. and Eastern Orthodoxy[/blockquote]
Oh dear Lord…
http://www.zenit.org/article-27714?l=english
Facts? Who needs facts when you can just make it up as you go! Much easier when you don’t bother with either facts OR logic.
The meaning of the piece is not really mysterious. What is desired is a church that conforms to the world. Anyone who espouses anything else is rigid, schismatic, intolerant and uncharitable.