Bridging a divide

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This article was published 20/07/2019 (2548 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With more than a decade of experience of bridging a theological divide in their marriage, Winnipeggers Laura Funk and Gilbert Detillieux invite others to join a larger conversation between Mennonites and Catholics next week.

“We’re not looking for official doctrine,” says Funk, a Mennonite woman organizing Bridgefolk along with Detillieux, a Roman Catholic.

“We’re friends getting together and talking about our traditions and our theologies and our practices.”

Bridgefolk runs July 25 to July 28 at Canadian Mennonite University, marking the first time in its 20-year history the annual event has taken place in Winnipeg, home to about 20,000 Mennonites.

More than 50 people from across Canada and the United States are expected to attend, including Mennonites interested in liturgy, Catholics attracted to peacemaking and people who have moved from one tradition to another or landed somewhere in between, says Funk, a spiritual director and member of Hope Mennonite Church.

Although church leaders are welcome, the main purpose of the annual international gathering is to bring together ordinary Mennonites and ordinary Catholics to discuss mutual concerns, the co-chair of the Bridgefolk board says in a telephone interview.

“It was certainly intended to be a grassroots conversation, not a dialogue at 25,000 feet,” explains Abbot John Klassen of St. John’s Abbey, in Collegeville, Minn., which has hosted the conference multiple times.

“We want to talk about those things in which we had a common purpose.”

The abbey is also known for commissioning the 1,150-page, hand-lettered, hand-illuminated Saint John’s Bible. In 2008, the Winnipeg Art Gallery hosted an exhibit of 98 pages of the Bible.

Following previous conference themes of racism and inequality, the 2019 Bridgefolk agenda focuses on reconciliation between Indigenous people and settlers, including a symbolic action along the Assiniboine River to remember missing and murdered Indigenous woman, led by keynote speaker Sister Eva Solomon.

“My description of reconciliation is it’s a lifelong process,” the Winnipeg-based Ojibway woman and Catholic nun says.

“We all have to do it for ourselves and for our families and for other people.”

After the release of 95 calls to action resulting from the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the topic may be more familiar to Canadians than Americans, Klassen admits.

“Clearly, as a nation, we are way behind Canada on this issue,” he says.

“That awareness of what happened to native people in the United States is just becoming part of our consciousness.”

Over the years, Bridgefolk participants have found many commonalities, but still struggle over the ritual sharing of bread and wine, called eucharist in Catholic circles and known as communion among Mennonites.

Klassen says the group has developed its own traditions to bridge some of those theological gaps, including singing each other’s hymns, developing a liturgy that includes Catholic saints and Mennonite martyrs, and hosting a meal that involves washing feet instead of the eucharist.

“What we discovered is that we need to celebrate some things that celebrate our unity and foot-washing is one of them,” he says.

Klassen has raised the profile of this international movement of Catholics and Mennonites working toward Christian unity by sending updates and information to Mennonite leaders and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

And during his visit to Winnipeg, which boasts the largest urban concentration of Mennonites in the world, Klassen expects some confusion around his own identity as a Benedictine monk.

“My name Klassen in Winnipeg is hugely Mennonite,” he says, adding that his surname can be traced to 16th-century Dutch Mennonites who later converted to Catholicism.

Klassen’s mixed lineage is not unusual among Bridgefolk types, says Funk, who has attended several previous events with Detillieux during their 13 years of marriage.

“People come from more than one place. It’s not a purist thing,” the Wolseley resident says.

“That’s what draws people to Bridgefolk. They’re on the bridge.”

brenda@suderman.com

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