Oh it's the craze that sweeping the nation!!

Dear readers, as you sit down to that nice meal with your loved ones, or sip at the cup of delicious coffee that you so richly deserve please just stop for a moment.... and think.... of those less fortunate than yourselves, those who suffer from a peculiar form of mental illness. Think of having a compunction so consuming that you will do anything to satisfy it, bend reality to serve it and give up your heritage to collaborate with it.  The worst of this malady is that those poor souls don't realise their plight and resent the label that has been given to their condition, they are the ecu-maniacs.

 Ecumenism, what is there to say. Many Catholics believe it is a noble cause, indeed it is THE cause, but they come at it from a faulty understanding of what it truly is.
I'm reminded of that scene from the film "The Deerhunter." You know the story with Robert DeNiro, set against the back drop of lives torn apart by the Vietnam War. Anyway in the film the characters decide to go up into the mountains to hunt deer. Picture the scene, a mountain road and a car appears, it slows down and stops and one of the men gets out to relieve himself, he finishes and goes to get back into the car. Just as he reaches the door of the car the car speeds up and leaves him. He shouts at the driver and the car stops a short distance up the road, he walks towards it and just as he reaches it the car speeds off again, this happens several times, the driver is playing a joke on him. I'm sure that some of us played that joke as well in our younger days!!
    My point is this it reminds me of the Catholic church and its relationship with some of the other christian communities. It is one big joke!  Think about it, the Church strives to come to some sort of agreed frame work with the anglican communion, works at it for years and then the anglicans allow women priests and ordain practicing homosexuals. Others communities allow contraception and abortion under certain circumstances. Yet the Catholics have to keep running to catch up, moving farther and farther away from the core of their faith simply to appease fellow travellers who succumbed to the modern world years ago.
Ah but what about the dialogue? Yes lets look at that this interminable dialogue that seems to have no beginning , no middle and no end. The definition of dialogue is simple, it is a conversation between two or more, not much help there. Well what about conversation what does it mean? The definition of to converse simply means to talk. But what I find interesting is that there is another meaning of converse, namely the opposite, turned round, reverse. That seems to be more apt when we think about the conversation that Catholics engage in with other christians.
 True ecumenism is the process by which all those who profess to believe in Christ Jesus are gathered together in the One True Church, that which was founded by Christ, that which is lead by Peter and his successors.