This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news

Catholic-Mennonite Conference Comes to Campus

Mennonites and Catholics from across the United States and Canada will gather at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., this July to continue their ground-breaking grassroots ecumenical dialogue.

Called "Bridgefolk," the annual summer conferences bring together Mennonites and Catholics on a voluntary basis to explore their two traditions. Participants include both laity and leadership. It was initiated by a group of interested individuals, both Catholic and Mennonite.

The conference will begin Thursday evening, July 21, with dinner and conclude at 1 p.m. Sunday, July 24. The gathering is open to the public.

The first conference was held in 1999 at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, Mt. Pleasant, Pa. Since then, annual summer conferences have been held at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., 2002, 2003 and 2004. The 2005 conference at EMU will be the first in a Mennonite setting since the dialogue became an annual event.

About 120 persons have attended one or more of the conferences to date, approximately half Mennonites and half Catholics. Many participants are repeat attendees. Average attendance in past years has been about 60.

Nancy R. Heisey

Kenneth J. Nafziger

This summer’s program will include several persons from the EMU faculty. Nancy R. Heisey, chair of EMU’s Bible and religion department and president of Mennonite World Conference will speak, and Kenneth J. Nafziger, well-known church musician from EMU, will lead the worship and singing.

Three faculty members from EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (formerly the Conflict Transformation Program) will also speak - Ronald S. Kraybill, Jayne S. Docherty and Ruth H. Zimmerman The Center’s programs have attracted numerous Catholic participants from around the world over the years.

Catholic speakers will include Abbot John Klassen, OSB of Saint John’s Abbey, the largest Benedictine Abbey in the world. Abbot Klassen’s ancestors in Europe had been Mennonite. Andrea Bartoli, the U.S. leader of the Community of Sant’Egidio, an international lay Catholic movement known for its peacemaking activities, will describe Sant’Egidio’s successful effort to end a civil war in Mozambique that had claimed a million lives. Dr. Bartoli is head of the conflict resolution program at Columbia University.

Other prominent Catholic participants include Drew Christiansen, SJ editor of the national Catholic weekly, "America," and Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Witness for Peace in Washington, DC.

In addition to panels of speakers which bring together a Mennonite and a Catholic to address the same issue, there will be hymn singing, small groups and sharing of stories and questions.

The conference will conclude with participants attending worship together at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Harrisonburg on Saturday afternoon and at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church on Sunday morning. Following the worship service at Harrisonburg Mennonite, the participants will return to Martin Chapel at Eastern Mennonite Seminary to conclude the three-day event with a footwashing service and agape meal.

One day prior to the Bridgefolk conference, the affiliated Mennonite Catholic Theological Colloquium will also meet at EMU to discuss the report of the International Mennonite Catholic Dialogue published last year.

The report, entitled "Called Together to Be Peacemakers," is the result of five years of intense dialogue between a commission of seven Mennonites appointed by the Mennonite World Conference and seven Catholics appointed by the Vatican’s Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

The keynote address at the colloquium will be given by John A. Lapp, former executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa. He will speak on "Ecumenical Dialogue as a Ministry of Reconciliation." Two panels, one Catholic and one Mennonite, will discuss the report by asking, "What Have We Learned? What’s Next?"

Registration forms and program details for both programs are available at www.Bridgefolk.net.

For more information, contact Ivan J. Kauffman at 202-494-4558 or via email at .

— posted June 15, 2005