Editorial: 'Evangelical Catholic' Commends Deal Hudson for meeting with Pastor Hagee

When I read of Deal Hudson's outreach and encounter, I rejoiced. It shows that the work of authentic ecumenism continues. Deal used a difficult situation to make progress with another Christian.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - I read with delight of Dr. Deal Hudson's outreach to Pastor John Hagee who, in recent Press reports, has not appeared to be very "Catholic friendly", to say the least.

We have published Deal's article concerning his meeting with the San Antonio Pastor below.

There are many Catholics who have attempted such efforts at promoting healing with other Christians in the past. I am numbered among them. In our understandable reaction to anti-Catholic language or actions, we can sometimes forget that there is a need to educate some other Christians out of their ignorance concerning the Catholic faith. We also have an obligation to help them overcome their often inherited suspicions.

From what I can see, Deal Hudson's effort with Pastor Hagee is to be commended for moving that process forward.

Catholics who have tried this approach in the past have sometimes faced opposition from some Protestants. We have also faced misunderstanding from some within our own Catholic Community. The opposition from fellow Catholics has not come from the Hierarchy or from the "Magisterium", the teaching office of our Church. All too often it has come from the ranks of Catholics who are faithful to both.

The problem is that a false dichotomy sometimes operates even among those who consider themselves "orthodox" in their Catholicism. They act as though being fully, faithfully and obediently "Catholic" and being authentically ecumenical are at odds. I believe that they are mistaken to believe this. Let me try to explain why I feel this way.

Pope Benedict XVI recently responded to a question which was posed to him from his Clergy in Rome with this comment: "Catholicism, somewhat simplistically, has always been considered the religion of the great "et et" ["both-and"]: not of great forms of exclusivism but of synthesis. The exact meaning of "Catholic" is "synthesis".

What does this mean?

Part of what it means is that the Catholic faith is not always about opposition but also about synthesis. I maintain that being fully and faithfully Catholic and being fully and faithfully ecumenical is just one of many examples of this kind of synthesis. Our love for the Catholic Church should lead us to hunger for the full communion of all Christians. This is not just a matter of my opinion or my experience. It is the teaching of the Church.

It is the Catholic claim that the Lord founded One Church and that the "fullness of truth" does indeed "subsist" within the Catholic Church. This claim is not about triumphalism but about understanding the Church as a Communion. It is not the desire of the Lord that His Body be divided.

This claim of Catholic Christianity as the "fullness" of truth should never make Catholics "haughty" but humble. It also gives us, among all Christians, the highest obligation in charity. We are the ones especially called to the ecumenical task because as the Lord proclaimed: "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more." (Luke 12:48).

This understanding of what it means to be Catholic has led me to a lifetime of trying to live an authentic ecumenismism as a faithful, dynamically orthodox Catholic Christian. I have always reached out to other Christians, prayed with them, worked with them, and learned from them.

I have long called myself an "Evangelical Catholic".Let me give a little background concerning my use of the term "Evangelical Catholic".

Oh, I know it is fairly acceptable to use this term these days. That was not always the case. However, an increasing number of Catholics are creating web sites bearing the name and there have been numerous articles reflecting upon the meaning of the term. It has finally "arrived" in the broader Catholic dialogue.

This acceptance was accelerated by John Allen's excellent piece in August of 2007 entitled "The Triumph of Evangelical Catholicism" in which he mentioned my first book, which bore the name "Evangelical Catholics". I was the first Catholic to suggest that "Evangelical" should be an adjective which describes all Christians, including Catholics.

Like the old country song, "I was country before country was cool". I was an "Evangelical Catholic" before all these web sites and Web Logs grew enamored with the term.

I began my 1990 book "Evangelical Catholics" with this simple claim:

"I am a Christian. I am a Catholic Christian. I am an evangelical Catholic Christian. To many who read all three claims, they are either contradictory or can only stand together in certain limited configurations. Nevertheless, it is my contention and experience that not only can I be all three, but each is necessary to define my relationship with Jesus Christ and with His Church as well as my role in the Church's ongoing mission to bring all men and women to salvation in Jesus Christ."

The book, with a foreword from Chuck Colson, is still the subject of heated anger in some Protestant circles. However, in most it is now accepted that Catholics can be "evangelical". Unfortunately, the book was discounted by some Catholics, at least until lately.

I am still an "Evangelical Catholic", only older. And, after years of theological study, life and ministry experience, I am ready to write the companion to that little book.

I say that just in case any Publishers are reading this article.

Walter Cardinal Kasper of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was interviewed several years ago concerning the "progress" of ecumenism in the forty years since the Second Vatican Council promulgated its 1964 Decree on Ecumenism.

He noted that "the Church's ecumenical awareness has grown"...but continued to indicate that "problems and disappointments still exist" and "obviously, we have still not reached the objective: full and visible communion."

"We are in an intermediary state," he said. "Sometimes, old prejudices persist. Also to be deplored are signs of slowness and egoism... The suspicion that ecumenical dialogue harms our own Catholic identity is a grave suspicion...The truth is the opposite. Dialogue presupposes partners who have their own identity...Ecumenism is not a form of ecclesiastical diplomacy, but rather a "spiritual process."

Pope John Paul's Encyclical Letter "On the Commitment to Ecumenism" ("May They Be One") made a monumental contribution to this "spiritual process". Among his many encyclicals, apostolic letters and exhortations, it is one of the least understood. In it he provided a bold path toward the full communion of the Church. He strongly affirmed that there is no retreat from the ecumenical task and that the "way of ecumenism is the way of the Church".

I am a "revert" to the Catholic Church. I wandered back home, after my wayward teenage years, to again embrace my deeply held Catholic faith. Though this is the faith that I had been raised in, my return came after a "search for truth" during the period sometimes referred to as the age of the "counter culture". This search for truth led me to make my childhood faith my own; to seriously consider the claims of the Gospel, in its fullness, as lived in the Sacramental communion of the Catholic Church.

Among the many questions that troubled me in my journey back to the Catholic faith was why the Christian Church was broken, splintered and seemingly at odds, camp against camp, for at least the last millennium. This question led me to a study of Church History.

My concern for understanding the causes of the great divide between East and West led me through the Patristic literature and also rooted within me a deep love for the Eastern Church Fathers.

My concern over the divisions in the West, after the Protestant Reformation, led me to study the writings of the Protestant Reformers.

This study led me even more fully into the Catholic Church into which I had been baptized as a child and confirmed in as an early teenager. I love the Catholic Christian faith. I am deeply appreciative of the fullness that is found in Catholic Christian faith, worship, theology, teaching and life.

However, perhaps as a result of the journey, as well as a sense of a personal vocation, I have carried a lifelong burden to see the prayer of Jesus, recorded in St. John, Chapter 17, answered:

"I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me." (John 17:20-23)

Into a world that is fractured, divided, wounded, filled with "sides" and "camps" at enmity with one another, the Catholic Church is called to proclaim, by both word and deed, the unifying love of a living God.

The heart of the "Gospel" (literally "Good News"), is the message that in and through the Risen Jesus Christ, authentic unity with God - and through Him, in the Spirit, with one another- is not only possible but is the plan of God for the entire human race. It moves forward through the Church which is His Body and the seed of the Kingdom to come.

In Jesus Christ, through Baptism, we are invited into communion with God the Father, through the Holy Spirit. We, in the words of the Apostle Peter, become "partakers of the Divine Nature". (2 Peter 1:4) In Him, we also find communion with one another. In Him and with one another, in the communion of the Church we are invited into the world that He still loves to carry forward in time His redemptive mission until He returns.

There is a reciprocal relationship revealed in the sacred words contained in this continuing prayer of Jesus found in John's Gospel.

The world will believe the message we proclaim - and respond to the invitation inherent within our mission- when we demonstrate our own unity of love with one another. The prayer of the Son of God will be answered; the only question is how soon it will happen. In some wonderful way, we who are Christians can help to hasten that day by the way we choose to live in love with one another.

That is the message that the great apostle Paul proclaims to the Ephesian Christians:

"Brothers and sisters: I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace; one Body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4: 1-6)

Paul was the apostle of unity between the early Jewish and Gentile believers who were deeply divided. He knew the corrosive effect of divisions within the Body of Christ. His words urge us to "live in a manner worthy of the call".

There is still only "...one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and father of all". The God who is One, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, places the impulse toward Christian unity in our hearts. This call to unity in Jesus Christ must become the heart cry of the entire Christian Church so that this prayer be fulfilled; and so that the "world may know".

In that letter on Christian unity (signed on the Feast of the Ascension in 1995), Pope John Paul II raised the stakes for all of us. He called for the use of a new language in our relationships with other Christians. He affirmed our foundational unity in one Baptism. The letter continued the trajectory of teaching from the Magisterium of the Church concerning the ecclesiology of communion, expounded by the Council fathers, and proposed a language of communion to be used in authentic ecumenical efforts:

"It happens for example that, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Christians of one confession no longer consider other Christians as enemies or strangers but see them as brothers and sisters. Again, the very expression 'separated brethren' tends to be replaced today by expressions which more readily evoke the deep communion, linked to the baptismal character which the Spirit fosters in spite of historical and canonical divisions.

Today we speak of "other Christians", "others who have received Baptism", and "Christians of other Communities". The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism refers to the Communities to which these Christians belong as 'Churches and Ecclesial Communities that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.' This broadening of vocabulary is indicative of a significant change in attitudes. There is an increased awareness that we all belong to Christ." (par. 42)

The ecumenical mission of the Church is at the heart of the whole mission of the Church because it is at the Heart of God. To be a faithful Catholic is to long for the full communion of the Church. The Servant of God John Paul II called all of the faithful to carry forward the task of ecumenism with a practical and spiritual urgency:

"Relations between Christians are not aimed merely at mutual knowledge, common prayer and dialog. They presuppose and from now on call for every possible form of practical cooperation at all levels: pastoral, cultural and social, as well as that of witnessing to the Gospel message.

"Cooperation among all Christians vividly expresses that bond which already unites them, and it sets in clearer relief the features of Christ the Servant". This cooperation based on our common faith is not only filled with fraternal communion, but is a manifestation of Christ himself.

"Moreover, ecumenical cooperation is a true school of ecumenism, a dynamic road to unity. Unity of action leads to the full unity of faith: "Through such cooperation, all believers in Christ are able to learn easily how they can understand each other better and esteem each other more, and how the road to the unity of Christians may be made smooth. In the eyes of the world, cooperation among Christians becomes a form of common Christian witness and a means of evangelization which benefits all involved." (Par 40)

Ignatius, the third Bishop of Antioch, wrote to Polycarp, his brother Bishop in Smyrna, in 107 A.D.:"...let unity, the greatest of all goods, be your preoccupation." Those first Millennium Christians also lived in a "culture of death." Roman society practiced the killing not only of children in the womb, but of newborns, through a practice called "exposure."

The holy Bishop wrote these words while traveling to Rome, under the persecution of Trajan, the leader of that first millennium "culture of death." There he would be thrown to the wild beasts and be martyred for the Lord.

It was in Antioch that they were first called Christians, St. Luke tells us (Acts 11:26). There is precedent for earning that name through pouring our lives out for Jesus Christ, in the midst of a hostile culture, for unity.

It was Ignatius who first called these early Christians "Catholic." He insisted that Christian unity, and the "catholicity" or universality of the one Church, was a cause worth dying for. In the words of this great father and martyr "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

His words continue to resound in this Third Christian Millennium. They represent a great theological synthesis of the ecclesiology and the ecumenical vision of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Like millions, I read with pain the words attributed to Pastor John Hagee during this Presidential Primary campaign in America. I met the Pastor in the 1990's when I was the Executive Director of the "American Center for Law and Justice" (ACLJ), a public interest law firm founded by Dr. M.G. "Pat" Robertson.

Yes, the evangelical Protestant leader Pat Robertson hired a Catholic to head his efforts to build a pro-life, pro-marriage religious liberty legal effort. He was certainly ahead of his time. During my first visit to his office, i noticed that he had a copy of "Evangelical Catholics" on his desk.

My seven years with the ACLJ were a learning experience I will never forget on many, many fronts. Some of the friendships I made still endure. Though Pat and I certainly did not see things the same way theologically, to this day, I commend him for his early pro-life and ecumenical courage.

I visited with Pastor Hagee in an effort to elicit his assistance in our early pro-life legal work. I also met his wife and members of his church. In one of our conversations, the Pastor noted that I referred to children in the womb who became the victims of the evil called abortion as "Holy Innocents".

He asked if I was a Catholic. He said that he recognized the term because his wife and many members of his church were, in his words, "from a Catholic background".

I used the title and content of my first book, "Evangelical Catholics" as a framework for our discussions. The book was subtitled "A Call for Christian cooperation to penetrate the darkness with the light of the Gospel". I took the opportunity to not only affirm that I was a happily practicing Catholic with the Pastor but to share my own journey home to the Catholic faith. I then welcomed his assistance in our pro-life work.

Now, all these years later, the Pastor has grown in prominence.

His strange brand of dispensationalist eschatology could be the subject of another article. Many of these kinds of mistaken biblical interpretations were properly corrected when that kind of exegetical approach reared its head in the first Millennium of the Church.

One can find the correction in the teaching of early Councils and in corrective writings from the teaching Office of the Church. However, in some circles, those writings are not considered, the authority of those early Councils is rejected and, sadly, the same mistakes are being repeated, complete with weird timelines.

However, when Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights exposed the virulent anti-Catholic words in some of the Pastor's writings, videos and sermons, I was very upset. I am glad that we have people like Bill Donohue to stand up to any form of anti-Catholicism. However, my experience with Pastor Hagee still lingered in my memory and I wondered if I should try to reach out to him.

So, when I read of Deal Hudson's outreach and encounter, I rejoiced. It shows that the work of authentic ecumenism continues. Deal used a difficult situation to make progress with another Christian. He gave Pastor Hagee the experience and witness of a convinced Catholic Christian and some material which will hopefully help to change his mistaken perspective. Deal acted ecumenically.

Of course, it was only a beginning.

However, someone had the courage and the charity to take the first step. For that, this Evangelical Catholic commends Deal Hudson

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