wfn.org | United Methodists praise Pope's call to repentance

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 20, 2000  News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-21-31-71B{155}

NEW YORK (UMNS) -- The United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and
Interreligious Concerns has sent letters of appreciation for Pope John Paul
II's recent call to repentance for errors of the Roman Catholic Church over
the past 2,000 years.

Approved March 15 by the commission's executive committee, the letters were
sent to the Pope and to Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican.

"Our executive committee felt a deep connection between the direction of the
Pope's statements and our commitment to the act of repentance and racism to
the historic Black Methodist churches," said the Rev. Bruce Robbins, the
commission's top executive. He also noted that, as Christians, United
Methodists share 1,500 years of history with the Catholic faith.

The commission has spearheaded an effort by United Methodists to repent of
the racism and seek reconciliation, beginning with a special service planned
during the denomination's General Conference May 2-12 in Cleveland.  Special
recognition will be given to the Central Jurisdiction, a racially segregated
unit which existed in the church between 1939 and 1968, and racial
indignities that  prompted blacks to leave the Methodist church in the past
and form the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion
and Christian Methodist Episcopal churches.  

During a March 12 Sunday Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Pope John
Paul II, along with cardinals and bishops, participated in a public act of
repentance for the church's "betrayal of the gospel" in the past,
particularly the second millennium. Those lapses included religious
intolerance and injustice toward such groups as Jews, women, and indigenous
peoples.

The commission's letter to the Pope acknowledged "your clear, pastoral call
for Christians to repent and be reconciled to our gracious God and to each
other.

"As United Methodists, we humbly join in confessing our sins of commission
and omission in our common heritage as well as in the present," the letter
continued. "We join with you in asking God to pardon our mothers and fathers
in the faith who, in attempting to serve the truth, at times failed to live
in faithfulness to the gospel. We also confess that too often our own acts,
words, thoughts and attitudes continue to wound the body of our Lord Jesus
Christ. We do not always live as our Lord taught us, and too often we ignore
the promptings of the Holy Spirit to manifest the grace and peace of Christ
in the world around us.

"Pray with us, Holy Father, as we enter a time of deep reflection in the
life of our United Methodist Church," the commission wrote. "We look
especially at the shameful ways that we, individually and corporately, have
treated brothers and sisters whom we have oppressed and others whom we
continue to abuse by unjust economic and social systems, even within our
ecclesial structures."

The letter to the cardinal noted the United Methodist struggle "to face the
shameful parts of our history, particularly in regard to slavery,
segregation and other manifestations of racism" and mentioned plans for the
act of repentance in May.

The Rev. Robert Edgar, a United Methodist and chief executive of the
National Council of Churches, called the Pope's act of confession "a
challenge to examine our own histories" and said he would encourage the
NCC's member denominations to circulate the Pope's statement widely for
study.

"Repentance, whether on the part of individuals or of churches, is essential
if the visible unity of Christ's church is to be advanced, and almost all
significant ecumenical documents acknowledge this," he noted. 

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United Methodist News Service
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