Inside ML

With this issue, ML takes a step toward further ecumenism. The editors have created a dual issue being mailed to both Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America parishes in the United States. To help with that task, ML invited a guest editor, Gail Cromack, to help put this issue together.

Gail is not at first glance what one might expect in a Lutheran pastor. She got her start in ministry by working as a Wycliffe Bible translator in the Amazon. She later began a second career as an anthropology teacher in Syracuse. At 51, Gail entered the Pacific Lutheran Seminary. She is now in her first pastorate, a small community in Northern California. She happened upon an issue of ML a couple of years ago and contacted me to find out if ML was going out to Lutheran parishes. It just so happened that the in-house editors were beginning discussions about how to do more outreach to liturgical churches other than Catholic. And so coincidence — or the Holy Spirit — has lead ML to this collaborative venture.

Readers will find an interview with Max Johnson, a Lutheran pastor and professor who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, in which he discusses the convergence of Catholic and Lutheran theology and worship practices (page 14 of the printed edition of ML). Gail writes an extensive review of Lutheran scholar Gordon Lathrop’s new book, Holy People (page 18). Readers receiving the Catholic version of this issue of ML will find the regular authors of the Planning Guide (page 21) providing the expert guidance and insight regular readers rely on. Lutheran readers will find a Planning Guide geared toward their lectionary and worship practice authored by experts from the ELCA tradition.

Both readerships will want to note the article by Jim Kemna on his pilgrimage to India (page 10). His experience provides interesting insights about what it means to be ecumenical. If U.S. Catholics might be more at home in a U.S. Lutheran liturgy than in an Indian Roman Catholic liturgy, how far apart from each other can we really be?

Correction

The advertisement for Cave Co. on page 51 of the September issue (ML26:7) lists an incorrect web site address. The correct web address is http://www.churchconstruction.com/caveco/.

ML

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