A Reason to Stop Protesting

There is a great post at Pastor John Wright's Blog on his recent dialogue over the Psalms with Fr. Meinrad Miller, OSB.  It seems that a friendship has begun between Pastor John and the local community of Communion and Liberation in Los Angeles.  They invited Fr. Miller (who is from St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison, KS) and Pastor John Wright to talk about Fr. Giussani's latest work published in English The Psalms.

Pastor John writes of his friendship with CL and what it means to him:

I have found great friendship and hope in the Communion and Liberation friends that I have made. The movement represents the best of post-Vatican II catholicism, a reason for "Protestants" to stop protesting and join in conversation and unity, grounded not in a social program outside the church or in some transcendental human "faith", but in, to use Father Giussani's language, "the fact of Jesus Christ". Catholicity, not ecumenicity, becomes the crucial commitment within this relationship. I believe that the descendants of another renewal movement within the church catholic, that begun by John Wesley in 18th century England, share much, much in common with this "new" renewal group, Communion and Liberation. Who knows what God has in store for the future?

And he writes of The Psalms and Don Gius:

Father Giussani reminds us at the beginning of his book that “The Psalms are the form of a dialogue defined by God Himself for His relationship with the people He has chosen” (p. 9). This simple observation is very astute. The Psalms speak the voice of humans in their experience. There is no “objective narrator” who hovers above the text. The voice comes from within each psalm, asking the reader to identify with the human words spoken in the text. The words are human words expressed to God.

Comments

[1dayin7]

I agree. Except that CL is technically "pre-Vatican II", isn't it?!

We just said farewell to a School of Community friend who's a Methodist!

John Wesley certainly helped me to understand "faith" during my conversion to the Catholic Church too...

[stephen m. bauer]

In response to the above comment: Vatican II has been described to me as a response to changes that had already taken place in the world and the church. As such, I consider the growth of the seed that was to become Communion and Liberation to have been one of those changes, as well as it being a change led by the Holy Spirit. I opine that it was and still is the best antidote for Christians to the nihilism of the times. As such, I have to think of C&L as very much part of the heart of the true spirit of Vatican II.

[James III]

Fr. Meinrad was my spiritual director in college! I miss the school of community, there.