Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C., is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Recognition of common baptism has been fundamental to the ecumenical renewal and liturgical reform movement. The common texts of the various churches of the Western tradition reflect a common scholarly enterprise of Catholic and Reformation churches.
Christians seek the unity for which Christ prayed by looking together to the "faith of the church through the ages." This gospel truth embodied in the scripture and Christian history is what is meant by Christian orthodoxy. Competing claims to this core of the Christian message have given rise to tragic divisions, all in the name of defending Christian orthodoxy.
The 20th century may be recorded as the ecumenical century, but it certainly will be noted as the century of the Pentecostal renewal, both as a new church phenomenon and as a charismatic impulse within Catholicism and classical Protestantism.
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