If the ecumenism of the last 50 years had a theme song, it would be composed by Legos.

Everything is awesome
Everything is cool when you’re part of a team
Everything is awesome when we’re living our dream
Everything is better when we stick together
Side by side, you and I gonna win forever, let’s party forever
We’re the same, I’m like you, you’re like me, we’re all working in harmony

So fifty years of happy slappy ‘you’re awesome, let’s be awesome together’ ecumenism, fifty years of glossing over differences in hopes of getting the team back together, fifty years of avoiding uncomfortable Truths in pursuit lesser agreeable personalized truth(s), what has ecumenism wrought? Now that we have the huggiest Pope ever, is it time for us all to get back together?

Let’s ask those whom we have relentlessly pursued with positive emphasis on what we hold in common. Yeah, let’s ask those very same Evangelicals what they think, shall we? The same peeps who the Pope wants to apologize to so they will like us better while staying warm and cozy in their copious errors, them. So here is what they had to say.

ITALIAN EVANGELICALS ON CONTEMPORARY CATHOLICISM

Following a round table promoted by the Italian Evangelical Alliance, the Federation of Pentecostal Churches, the Assemblies of God in Italy, the Apostolic Church and the Pentecostal Congregations held in Aversa on July 19, 2014, at the Pentecostal Faculty of Religious Sciences, on the theme: “Contemporary Catholicism: an evangelical perspective” the above cited organizations, following the evangelical opening on the part of evangelical circles and international and national Pentecostals, with regard to the Catholic Church and her present Pontiff, without expressing judgment on the faith of the individual faithful, retain incompatible with the teaching of Scripture a Church that proclaims herself to be the mediatrix of salvation and presents other figures as mediators of grace, given that the grace of God comes only through faith in Christ Jesus without works (Ephesians 2:8) and without the intervention of other mediators (1 Tim 2:5).

 Moreover, they retain incompatible with the teaching of Scripture a Church that assumes the responsibility of adding dogmas (like the Marian ones) to the faith once and forever transmitted to the saints (Jude 3; Apocalypse 22: 18).

Finally they retain incompatible with the teaching of Scripture a Church that has its heart in a political state, a legacy of an “imperial” Church from which it assumed titles and prerogatives. Christian churches must be careful about imitating the “princes of nations” and follow the example of Jesus Who came to serve and not to be served (Mark 10:42 – 45).

Therefore, they retain that the apparent similarities with the evangelical faith and spirituality from sectors in Catholicism are not, in themselves, reasons to hope for a true change. Considering that irreconcilable and absolutely divergent theological and ethical differences still persist, they retain they are unable to start and follow-up any initiative or ecumenical opening with regard to the Roman Catholic Church, inviting all evangelicals at the national and international level to exercise sound biblical discernment(1 John 4:1) without giving way to unionist anxieties contrary to Scripture, but rather renewing the commitment to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world.

Aversa (Caserta), July 19, 2014

Fifty years of sending flowers, cards, and hugs and our BFF’s in Christ just issued a restraining order. Good Job Ecumenism!

*subhead*Our BFF’s just issued a restraining order.*subhead*