BWA leaders meet with Catholics
___ROME (BP)--A delegation from the Baptist World Alliance met with representatives from the Roman Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican in December.
___The delegation of 13 Baptists was led by Tony Cupit, BWA's director of study and research. Philip Wise, a vice president of the North American Baptist Fellowship and pastor of Dothan Baptist Church in Alabama, and James Leo Garrett, professor emeritus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, represented the Southern Baptist Convention at the meeting.
___The talks were the first since a five-year theological conversation between the two groups concluded in 1988. They were scheduled at the suggestion of Brazilian pastor Nilson Fanini, BWA's immediate past president, when he and Denton Lotz, BWA's general secretary, met with the Pontifical Council in 1999.
___The meeting was made more critical by the release of a controversial document by the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith this fall.
___The document, called "Dominus Iesus," received widespread attention by the media, theologians and religious bodies around the world. Issued as an attempt to address pluralistic trends in the Roman Catholic Church, it asserted that non-Catholic churches "are not churches in the proper sense" and that the only way to salvation is through the Catholic church.
___"Dominus Iesus" was a major focus of the meetings between the representatives of the BWA and the Pontifical Council. The Baptist delegation expressed their objections to language contained in the document while affirming their agreement on the dangers of pluralism, secularism and relativism, which also are addressed in the document. The Roman Catholic delegation made clear that this statement does not invalidate previous statements on ecumenism and assured the BWA delegation of their desire, and the desire of the pope, for official conversations with Baptists.
___Members of the BWA delegation also met with representatives of the Italian Baptist Union, which had declined to send representatives to the meeting with the Roman Catholics.
___The concerns of the Italian Baptists were discussed and the meeting ended with encouragement from the Italian Baptists for the BWA to continue meeting with representatives from the Pontifical Council.
___Although no official theological discussions were scheduled, both delegations agreed to meet again in 2001 to discuss specific issues raised in that meeting and in previous conversations.
The Baptist Standard
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