[amc] Fwd: Catholics remember Anabaptist martyr (Bridgefolk news release)

From: Ray Gingerich <rjgingerich@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Milwaukee Mennonite Church <mmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Austin Mennonite Church <amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 11:00:53 -0500
I thought many of you would be interested in this. Ray

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gerald W. Schlabach, St. Paul, MN <gwschlabach@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, May 31, 2012 at 8:07 AM
Subject: Catholics remember Anabaptist martyr (Bridgefolk news release)
To: menno.annc.misc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
menno.rec.study.history@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Catholics remember Anabaptist martyr
Bridgefolk news release
May 30, 2012

Collegeville, Minnesota (BRIDGEFOLK) - On May 20 a Benedictine abbot whose
ancestors had once been Dutch Mennonites, led in commemorating the 485th
anniversary of the martyrdom of Michael Sattler. Sattler had been a
Benedictine, but left during the Peasants War of 1525 to become an
Anabaptist leader. He is regarded as the primary author of the Schleitheim
Confession.

The Abbot was Fr. John Klassen, the leader of the largest Benedictine
monastery in North America, Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota.

The commemoration on May 20 affirmed both the nonviolent witness of Michael
Sattler, and his willingness to die for the principle of religious
freedom-positions now widely accepted in the Catholic community. Fourteen
members of the monastic community participated, along with two Mennonite
pastors.

The program opened with an invocation by Rev. Weldon Nisly, pastor of
Seattle Mennonite Church, and the singing of a hymn written by Menno Simons,
"We Are People of God's Peace," which now is included in one Catholic
hymnal.

The event was based on more than a decade of conversation between Mennonites
and Catholics at Saint John's in annual Bridgefolk conferences. It also
followed the formal ecumenical dialogue which began at roughly the same
time, and which produced the document, Called Together To Be Peacemakers,
published jointly by the Vatican and the Mennonite World Conference in 2004.

A Benedictine commemoration of the martyrdom of Michael Sattler was first
suggested 25 years ago in a leading Catholic scholarly journal by an Irish
Catholic abbot, Fr. Eoin de Bhaldraithe. De Bhaldraithe had become
acquainted with Mennonites through their peacemaking work in Northern
Ireland. Inspiring his suggestion was the work of the Canadian Mennonite
historian, Prof. C. Arnold Snyder, who published a biography of Michael
Sattler in 1984. Snyder's work in turn had drawn on the research of John
Howard Yoder, published a few years earlier.

In 2003 and 2004 two scholarly conferences were held at Saint John's Abbey
to discuss the martyrdom of the 16th-century Anabaptists from an ecumenical
perspective. The papers from these conferences have been published.

Founded by German missionaries more than of 150 years ago, Saint John's now
includes a university, a high school, a publishing company, a seminary and
school of religion, a guesthouse, and the Collegeville Institute for
Ecumenical and Cultural Research. The monastery now has about 170 members.

This year's commemoration took place at the recently established Michael
Sattler House, located immediately adjacent to the Saint. John's campus.
Although independent of the monastic community this new effort has close
relationships to it. Its founders, Lois and Ivan Kauffman, describe it as "a
place where the 500-year Mennonite and Amish tradition of lay discipleship,
which Michael Sattler did so much to initiate, can be combined with the
1500-year Benedictine tradition in which he was formed."

An open letter written for the event states, "We at the Michael Sattler
House have come to believe that Catholics can now regard Michael Sattler as
an early martyr witness to the principles of social justice and freedom of
conscience which became official Catholic doctrine at Vatican II-in the
Declaration on Religious Liberty, and in The Church in the Modern World.

"We also believe Mennonites and Amish can now view Michael Sattler not only
as one of their major founders, but as one who brought with him the riches
of the pre-Reformation Benedictine tradition in which he was formed, and on
which many of their own traditions are based."

Plans are now being made for a second commemoration of Michael Sattler's
martyrdom on May 20, 2013.

Further information is available on the Michael Sattler House website,
www.MichaelSattlerHouse.org.



-- 
Center for Strength-Based Strategies
Ray Gingerich, Senior Associate
5631 Bentwood Lane
Greendale (Milwaukee), WI  53129
Phone (414) 331-5957
email rjgingerich@xxxxxxxxx
fax (815) 371-2292
website: www.buildmotivation.com

*"Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of human
freedoms--the freedom to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one's own way." --Victor Frankl*
[amc] Fwd: Catholics remember Anabaptist martyr (Bridgefolk news release)

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