Enhet, men også ulikheter

F. Longenecker skriver på sin blogg om enhet og ulikheter innen Kirken; han sier at folk utenfor Kirken tror at alle katolikker oppfører seg på samme måte, har samme åndelige idealer og liturgiske preferanser osv (slik tenkte jeg også før jeg ble katolikk, og kom fra de mange organisasjonene i Den norske kirke), men slik er på ingen måte:

… This unity within diversity is something I used to think we had in the Anglican Church. I thought that because we had Charismatics, Evangelicals, Anglo Catholics and we had a world wide communion with many different cultural expressions. However, we did not really have unity because within the diversity there were huge and irreconcilable differences. The only unity we had was a willingness to agree to differ with one another.

The diversity and unity within the Catholic Church is something far stranger and more beautiful and more difficult to describe. This is something I feel passionate about sharing with our Anglican brothers and sisters who are considering the Anglican Ordinariate. Some of them feel they will be gobbled up by the big-ness of Rome. I have found just the opposite. There is an extraordinary amount of freedom within the different expressions of Catholicism. Whether they are religious orders, dioceses, parishes or Eastern Rite Churches, or one day the Ordinariate for former Protestants…within the diversity there is an underlying unity that sets us free.

If you really do ‘profess to believe all that the Catholic Church teaches as revealed by God’ then you belong to the Catholic faith. You are one with the Catholic faith. You may not be perfect. You may not be a saint. Christians who are outside the Catholic faith may be better Christians than you, but you are a Catholic. …

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