On Day 4 of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we continue our reflections on the daily themes and Scripture readings offered by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

On Day 3 of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we continue our reflections on the daily themes and Scripture readings offered by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. As we walk towards freedom in the Lord, we ask Him, “What do you require of us today?” (Cf. Micah 6:6-8.) For we know […]

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. It is the beginning of Lent in the western Church, a 40-day season of penance. During this time, Christians traditionally show our sorrow for our sins by making a voluntary sacrifice, and possibly by taking up additional forms of self-discipline. These are, contra pop culture, to be done discretely, privately, without […]

Today we observe the Solemnity of the Chair of St. Peter, as the 22nd of February falls on Ash Wednesday this liturgical year.  The Church has celebrated this occasion since at least the mid-4th century.  Called to Communion has given it attention in the past, including Bryan Cross’s detailed survey of references from the early centuries […]

“While experiencing these days the painful situation of our divisions, we Christians can and must look to the future with hope,” Pope Benedict XVI told a packed basilica of St Paul’s outside-the-walls Wednesday evening, “because Christ’s victory means to overcome everything that keeps us from sharing the fullness of life with Him and with others.” […]

Most gracious God, on this day of the March for Life, may your servants who marched side by side be rewarded with the strength of perseverance, with the deepest hope in your goodness, and with a renewed desire for unity with the separated brothers and sisters with whom they marched.

In his work Called to Communion (Ignatius: 1991. German title: Zur Gemeinschaft gerufen), then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: Anyone who becomes acquainted with [the Church] as she lives out her life sees immediately that the ancient Church never consisted in a static juxtaposition of local Churches.  Catholicity, concretely realized in many forms, belongs to her essence from the […]

Each year, Called to Communion takes note of the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.” It is an occasion prompted by the World Council of Churches, an occasion to which the Catholic Church gives full-throated support.1 Since Called to Communion is a Catholic website devoted to God’s call to communion, made to all Reformed and […]

Stories of conversion from the Reformed faith to the Catholic Church abound. When I was Reformed, and was contemplating the claims of the Catholic Church, I read many conversion stories. I searched them and I probed them, looking for that nugget by which I could understand why the particular story’s author had gone off the […]

Has the Catholic Church changed her doctrine concerning “no salvation outside the Church?” Dr. David VanDrunen recently penned a brief historical survey of what he sees as Catholicism’s “change” from soteriological exclusivisity to inclusivity. VanDrunen is a Westminster Seminary California professor and minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). His article appeared in the OPC’s periodical […]