{"id":3422,"date":"2007-01-17T10:34:52","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T10:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/unity-1.html"},"modified":"2007-01-17T10:34:52","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T10:34:52","slug":"unity-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/unity-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins tomorrow and goes through 1\/25. In case you’re wondering why it’s not, say, a Sunday  to Sunday, the document from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity explains:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Those dates were proposed in 1908 by Paul Wattson to cover the days between the feast of St Peter and the feast of St Paul, and therefore have a symbolic meaning. In the southern hemisphere<\/em> where January is a vacation time churches often find other days to celebrate the week of prayer, for example around Pentecost (which was suggested by the Faith and Order movement in 1926), which is also a symbolic date for the unity of the church.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Council’s resources for the 2007 week are here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, in the General Audience, the Pope addressed the theme, emphasizing, as he does when he speaks of ecumenism, the need for and good fruit of Catholics and other Christians working together to alleviate human suffering:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Speaking about the Week of Prayer\u201d, Benedict XVI reminded his audience that this year the topic taken from the Bible was about making the deaf hear and the mute speak, taking its inspiration for the healing of the deaf-mute as told in the Gospel of Mark. Every Christian, \u201cspiritually deaf and mute because of the original sin,\u201d through the baptism received the means to hear the word of God and proclaim it to his brothers. Or better still, from this moment Christians are given the responsibility of maturing in the awareness and love of Christ so as to be able to announce the Gospel.<\/p>\n

Announcing the Gospel and bearing witness about charity\u2014i.e. \u201cevery comfort Christians may concretely bring to others\u2019 suffering\u201d\u2014 \u201cwill favour,\u201d in the Pope\u2019s words, \u201cthe journey towards unity\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe harmony of purpose to alleviate man\u2019s suffering, the search for truth, the conversion of one\u2019s life and repentance are necessary steps each Christian must take\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cpraying for unity cannot be limited to a week per year. It must be done every day of the year\u201d so that \u201csignificant steps can be taken on the path to full and perfect communion.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins tomorrow and goes through 1\/25. In case you’re wondering why it’s not, say, a Sunday  to Sunday, the document from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity explains: Those dates were proposed in 1908 by Paul Wattson to cover the days between the feast of St Peter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nUnity - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/unity-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unity - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins tomorrow and goes through 1\/25. 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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\/3422","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=3422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}