Doctrinal Text Looks at Increasing Harmony Among Church Groups

The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 6/14/16 | Cindy Wooden

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The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's letter to bishops around the world has been published

Local bishops have an obligation to welcome new movements and communities and guide them, while the groups have an obligation to obey the local bishop and avoid the appearance of setting up a parallel church, said a new Vatican document.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s letter to bishops around the world on “the relationship between hierarchical and charismatic gifts in the life and mission of the Church” was released today.

The hierarchical gifts — teaching, sanctifying and governing — are those conferred with ordination. The charismatic gifts refer to those given by the Holy Spirit to groups or individuals to help them live the faith more intensely and to share the faith with others through missionary activity and acts of charity.

At a Vatican news conference, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, doctrinal congregation prefect, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, presented the document, which formally is titled Iuvenescit Ecclesia (The Church Rejuvenates).

Faced with the reality of aging and death, men and women always have “looked for something or someone to help them remain young,” Cardinal Muller said. “This is the same challenge that every institution that wants to last must face: remaining young with the passing of time, that is, renewing itself while remaining what it is without changing or altering” its basic identity.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit — raising new movements to face new challenges — help the Church to remain ever young, he said.

Cardinal Ouellet told reporters some suspicion of new, charismatic movements on the part of the institutional Church can be traced back centuries: to the second-century Montanist heresy, which claimed new revelations, and the widespread “apocalyptic doctrines” of the Middle Ages.

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2 Corinthians 6:17
King James Version (KJV)
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

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1 John 2:19

King James Version (KJV)

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.