Ties that bind (& knot):

...First, we must try to reach agreement with others on the basic human right to religious freedom, so eloquently described in Vatican II's "Declaration on Religious Freedom...

...but it may also reflect fideism, individualism, and a rejection of the social responsibility espoused by Catholics and mainline Protestants...

...With evangelicals, Catholics agree on morals and the essentials of the faith, but not on discipline or on institutional structures...

...The Orthodox resent and resist attempts by Catholics to regain churches and monasteries that were confiscated by the Soviets...

...Both groups need to hear the good news proclaimed in such a way that it brings about an "encounter with Christ, conversion of heart, and experience of the Spirit in the community of the church," as the 1977 Roman synod put it...

...In terms of the spiritual life, it is better for someone to be fervently responding to God's revelation than to be a merely marginal or dormant adherent of some religious group...

...If so, under what circumstances...

...their devotion to Jesus is strong and sincere...

...Yet their understanding and presentation of the gospel is often so distorted and even truncated that while their initial evangelization may be fruitful, subsequent catechesis and growth in the faith can be hampered...

...Catholics have reached agreement in virtually all essential areas of doctrine with the Orthodox, but the two are stalemated about various bureaucratic disciplines...

...We must respect the revelation found in all of them yet remain confident that Jesus alone is the completion of creation and the one mediator for the salvation of the whole human race...

...Shifting away from an "objective truth" approach toward the personal and communal elements of trust and commitment, feeling and choice, opens up lines of communication which may be more ecumenically fruitful...

...He encourages all who make a commitment to Christ to become active in their own churches, but he puts commitment to Jesus ahead of denominational adherence...

...The journey to full union with God may have many windings...

...New religions (for example, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Sokka Gakkai Buddhism) regularly try to proselytize Christians, and exert economic, social, and religious pressure (for example, threats of hell to all nonmembers...

...Avery Dulles has pointed to three essential elements of faith: conviction, trust, and commitment, the latter linked to participation in the struggle to improve the world...

...Fundamentalists appeal to the emotions...

...The individualism reinforced by some fundamentalists can deafen them to the social gospel and its call to corporate responsibility for sinful economic, political, and social structures...

...Once again, Christians should encourage everyone to follow God's will as he or she perceives it...

...But can we legitimately encourage any Christian, even the dormant or marginalized Christian, to leave Christianity for another religion...

...With the mainline Protestant churches, Catholics have achieved basic agreement in faith, but a radical disagreement exists about morals and discipline: abortion, women's ordination, birth control...

...Both nominal (dormant) and marginalized Catholics need evangelization...

...It has been virtually impossible to reconvert their descendants...

...Can we legitimately encourage anyone to join them...

...Let the other Christian churches serve their spiritual needs...

...The church is not meeting their needs for identity, for a healthy self-concept, for a religious experience which transforms their lives, or for a community where they feel at home, supported, and spiritually challenged...

...People should be free from all physical, psychological, sociological, economic, and political coercion when choosing and practicing their faith...

...Thus Pope John Paul IPs call for a new evangelization...

...In summary, we live and pray and work in a very diverse, complicated world...

...In fact, following the disintegration of the Iron Curtain, ecumenical relations may have taken a turn for the worse...

...There are, of course, dramatic variations on these themes in different parts of the world, but they indicate that, when it comes to ecumenism, the Catholic church faces a radically different situation than it did following Vatican Council II...

...Our efforts to evangelize must be made with full awareness that the most important goal is not to boost Catholic statistics but to draw all people into loving union with God in Christ...

...In much of Eastern Europe, they proselytize Catholics and other Christians but are critical of efforts by Catholics and others to evangelize or even catechize members of non-Orthodox churches...

...We Catholics are competing for members with other Christian churches and the new religions...

...Their membership is steadily growing, often among those who are afraid of cultural trends, feel marginalized, and prefer to hand over responsibility to others...

...Too many adults, teen-agers, and ethnic groups have heard the message but have not found it to be good news...

...What can we do...

...Whereas mainline Protestant churches do not proselytize, they readily welcome Catholics who have become disaffected with their own church's official teachings on morals and discipline...

...In this regard, the church counsels us to be generous and patient...

...Many Christians joined Islam for economic or political reasons...

...Third, rather than raid one another's membership, Christian churches should try to help one another in the task of renewal, reform, and evangelization...

...They have been affected by "Catholic culture" but have not made it their own...

...But if a church resists reform or neglects evangelization, we may not put the security of a church above the spiritual well-being of persons...

...What of the fundamentalist churches...

...The "new" religions pose a more serious problem...

...Both fundamentalists and evangelicals actively proselytize marginal (that is, occasionally practicing) and dormant (that is, nonpracticing) Catholics...

...This may be healthy, if people are led closer to God and Christ...

...Fundamentalists, sects, and cults, differ from Catholics in faith, morals, and discipline...

...they form small communities which offer support and fellowship...

...Second, ecumenism is best served when faith is understood as an assent to God's revelation as personally perceived, and when a church or religion is seen as a community of believers organized to help people perceive and respond to God's revelation in creed, code, and cult...

...Agreement with other religious groups will not be easy, for many groups survive not because of their inner strengths but because they prevent other groups from effectively proclaiming a different faith...

...People should be Christians because they want to be...

...Historically, we have seen what happens...

...Catholics must work with other churches toward renewal, but if large numbers of our own household are not being effectively reached by Catholic evangelization, then these individuals' growth in the spiritual life takes precedence over membership in Roman Catholicism...

...Vatican II recognized that other religious traditions may be vehicles of God's revelation and called upon Christians to recognize, preserve, and promote the spiritual and moral goods contained in them...

...What attitudes should we adopt in dealing with these developments...

...This is a cognitive problem, but it has affective overtones...

...FRANCIS J. BUCKLEY Francis J. Buckley, S.J., teaches theology at the University of San Francisco...

...But it is best that such Catholics be evangelized by the Catholic church...

...We can and should encourage people to say yes to God, confident that all "elements of holiness and truth possess an inner dynamism toward Catholic unity," as Vatican II taught...

...Even the area of agreement, however, is complicated by the erosion of the faith among Christians because of classic liberalism and the individualism springing from the Enlightenment...

...Instead of simply discouraging people from joining other religions, we must make Christianity attractive by letting the Spirit of Jesus radiate through our own lives...

...The affective aspect of catechesis has been neglected...

...But we must also proclaim, in season and out, that Jesus is the full revelation of God...

...I rejoice at the evangelistic efforts of Billy Graham...