A landmark ecumenical document issued by Catholics and Lutherans in 2015 highlighted a string of agreements between the two churches while urging deeper connections at local levels.
Sunday’s prayer service at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Springfield, bringing together the leaders from the Springfield Catholic Diocese and the Evangelical Church in America’s Central/Southern Illinois Synod, on the heels of the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, does just that.
″(The service) is a desire to recognize progress in Catholic-Lutheran relations,” said ELCA Bishop S. John Roth, who will join Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki in leading the service.
“Lutherans and Catholics have come a long way in shrinking the rift between us. Our relationship today is far better than simply not saying bad things about one another. It is a positive, hopeful, cautiously growing sense of being the body of Christ together.
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