{"id":1245,"date":"2005-10-12T08:33:09","date_gmt":"2005-10-12T08:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/taize.html"},"modified":"2005-10-12T08:33:09","modified_gmt":"2005-10-12T08:33:09","slug":"taize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/taize.html","title":{"rendered":"Taize"},"content":{"rendered":"

A John Allen report on the community:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Talking to pilgrims here, and to ecumenical observers in other places, three aspects of Taiz\u00e9 seem to be the most impressive.<\/p>\n

First is the utter selflessness of the community. The brothers don\u2019t charge fees, don\u2019t ask for contributions, don\u2019t ask people to join anything nor to leave anything behind. There are no high-pressure \u201caltar calls,\u201d no invasive questions about one\u2019s spiritual life or personal morality. Meals are simple, using nothing more than a bowl and wooden spoon, but always plentiful. While a handful of young men stay behind for life as monks, most pilgrims just come and go, each making of the experience what he or she chooses.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Taiz\u00e9 has no program for ecumenism, no particular spiritual path it proposes. It does not host theological dialogues nor organize international conferences, so it\u2019s no one\u2019s rival. It has no \u201cagenda\u201d beyond living its own life.<\/p>\n

Second is the aesthetic sense of Taiz\u00e9, the capacity to make beauty out of simple materials. The Church of Reconciliation, with its small icon of the Madonna and tabernacle, its modest Orthodox iconostasis, and stark Protestant sanctuary, somehow manages to be stunning and yet unassuming. Liturgies are reverent without being overly pious or stuffy, with a striking use of light and darkness, and the music runs through one\u2019s mind long after formal worship is concluded.<\/p>\n

Third, and perhaps most basic, is the spirit of Taiz\u00e9. Many groups talk about reconciliation and unity, but here those ideals are lived as facts of life. Taiz\u00e9 doesn\u2019t \u201cwork for\u201d Christian unity, it assumes it, thereby giving visitors a tangible experience of how full, visible unity among Christians looks and feels.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A profile of the new Prior:<\/a><\/p>\n

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"But if you look on ecumenism as an end in itself" Alois warns. ‘then you lose sight of the true goal which is the common meeting with Christ. It is to this meeting that we come three times a day here in our community prayer."<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A recent George Weigel column on the controversy that erupted after Brother Roger’s funeral<\/a> thanks to a NYtimes story:<\/p>\n

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Since the 1970s, all Eucharistic celebrations at the Church of the Reconciliation at Taize are Catholic liturgies, presided over by priests or bishops. "For those who…cannot or do not wish to receive communion in the Catholic Church, a special arrangement enables them to receive the \u2018blessed bread.\u2019 After the Gospel reading…a basket of small pieces of bread is blessed by the celebrant and set on a table next to the altar. At the moment of communion, the distribution of the Eucharist and the distribution of the blessed bread are done in a way that clearly indicates the difference. In this the Orthodox and Easter-rite Catholics recognize their traditional practice of distributing the \u2018antirodon,\u2019 namely parts of the altar bread that have not been consecrated. At Brother Roger\u2019s funeral, in accordance with the usual practice at Taize, those present could receive either the consecrated Eucharistic species or the blessed bread."<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em>\u2019 story suggests that a policy decision was made to give holy communion to non-Catholics at Brother Roger\u2019s funeral. That is simply not true<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A John Allen report on the community: Talking to pilgrims here, and to ecumenical observers in other places, three aspects of Taiz\u00e9 seem to be the most impressive. First is the utter selflessness of the community. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}