During a True Life in God retreat in Greece in 2009, Fr Rene Laurentin responded to a question from Vassula Ryden. The question was, "what constitutes full communion with the Catholic church?" The response has been split into two separate clips. Part 1 This is part 2 UNITY! UNITY! UNITY!
Apparently Vassula met with Cardinal Bergoglio before he became Pope for 45 minutes and talked with him about unity and moving the dates of Easter to unify the Churches. He said that it was going to be easier to move the dates for the Catholic Church than the Orthodox Church. She said, "In my private opinion, this is the Pope who will do it." VERY....interesting!! at 18:45
In the above videos, Fr Laurentin speaks of the moving meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem in 1964. When Pope Francis travels to the Holy Land later this year, he will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of this meeting. As Fr Laurentin mentions, the unity of Pope Paul and Patriarch Athenagoras was almost total. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, the Patriarch was strongly criticised from within his own community. Here are a couple of paragraphs of the Patriarch's words of wisdom: I do not deny that there are differences between the Churches, but I say that we must change our way of approaching them. And the question of method is in the first place a psychological, or rather a spiritual problem. For centuries there have been conversations between theologians, and they have done nothing except to harden their positions. I have a whole library about it. And why? Because they spoke in fear and distrust of one another, with the desire to defend themselves and to defeat the others. Theology was no longer a pure celebration of the mystery of God. It became a weapon. God himself became a weapon! What is most lacking among men of the Church is the Spirit of Christ: humility, selflessness, an open welcome, the capacity of seeing the best in others. We are afraid, we want to hang on to what is over and done with, because we’re used to it. We want to be right over against the others, and under a language of conventional humility we hide the spirit of pride and power. We carry on apart from life. We have made the Church into an organization, just like all the other ones. We have put all our energy into setting it up, and now we put all our energy into keeping it going. And it works more or less; rather less than more, but it works. Only it works like a machine, and not like life. Read more at: http://www.stpaulsirvine.org/html/athenagoras.htm
this is very relevant to the 'WOW! WOW! WOW! ' THREAD. This is exactly what JPII started and Pope Francis is following through beautifully. These videos really need to be looked at. As one of the foremost brilliant Marian Theologians of the 20th Century --Fr. Rene' should be listened to. His approval of Vassula is spot on.
John Paul II. The Pope refers to True Life in God During the Angelus prayers in Castel Gandolfo on August 11, 1996, a year after the Notification against Vassula, Pope John Paul II greeted, by name, a group of True Life in God readers from Spain. (Duration of video - 2 minutes) Click here.
