Paul DeCelles gave these brief comments at the 1988 Singles Conference, explaining the ecumenical origins of the People of Praise and encouraging the 200+ single people in attendance to place a very high value on our commitment to ecumenism.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
[Tape begins after Paul has already begun speaking.]
PAUL: . . .We have to keep it always in our mind that we are an international community, just as we have to keep in mind that we’re an ecumenical community. And, actually, there are not very many Protestants here. Almost everybody here is a Catholic. But that doesn’t matter. We’re still an ecumenical community, and one should always keep that in mind. One reason why I want to stress that—especially, obviously, for the Catholics—is that you really can’t be a good Catholic if you’re not ecumenical. It’s very important.
Now, there are a lot of people who are Catholics, and they’re certainly good Catholics, but they’re not ecumenical, and they’re not open to it at all. They’re not open to their brothers and sisters who are not part of the Catholic tradition. And for those who are Catholic here, I want to say that that’s not right.
People should not be like that if they’re Catholic. And also, Protestants should not be like that. So, all of us together are committing ourselves to a life in Christ together. Some of us have very distinct advantages in one tradition. Others have distinct advantages in another tradition. We all come together with the strength that we draw from our various denominations, but we pool our lives together. That’s what we put together here.
And we should always take it into account that it is extremely important that we preserve that bond of unity, which we have to have, because we’re ecumenical. This is something that God has called us to. It’s not something that we’ve simply chosen to do. I suspect that, in fact, if we were to choose freely on our own, simply from the beginning—boom!—like that, we probably would just be a Catholic community.
In the very beginning we were overwhelmingly Catholic, and we’re overwhelmingly Catholic now. Which is a bit of a problem for us—unless, as Catholics, we continue to be alert to the fact that we’re ecumenical, and pay attention to that, and love our Protestant brothers and sisters who are in our midst, and take special care of them. Actually, what we hold in common is the greatest things that we have in our faith!
It really is true! We have one faith, one Father, one Christ, our Lord, one salvation, one baptism. That’s what we share together. And it is remarkable! What we have in common is extremely powerful. And that’s why we are forced, basically, as an ecumenical community, to spend a lot of time on what is most essential! Because that’s all we can talk about. Glory to God!
So let’s hold it as a high value, and remember that. And especially—actually, a lot of the Catholics in the community have the wrong notion. They say, “Why don’t you Protestants go get some more Protestants to join the community?” Well, it wasn’t the Protestants who got the Protestants to join the community in the first place.
You know, what happened, actually, was that we were just praying with anybody we could get hands on. [Laughter in the audience.] Right? And we didn’t ask him—you didn’t check their green card or something and say, “Hey, are you a . . . ?” Or whatever. [Paul chuckles, audience laughs.] “Can I pray with you? Are you a Catholic? Can I pray with you for the baptism in the Spirit?” No way!
In fact, we prayed with everybody who came along. And some of them, many of them, were Protestants. And, they joined our fellowship. They shared our life. And when it came time for us to make a covenant, there was simply no reason why we should exclude them from our fellowship, from the fellowship which we have with them. Why should we break that fellowship, when, in fact, we were brought to this by Christ, by the evangelistic trust which he had given us and put in our hearts?
[Recording ends here.]
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