Yes, conversation is possible even with those persons, religious or otherwise, who believe that they have a monopoly on the truth.These conversations would be difficult, but the potential reward great.

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Yes, as audacious as that claim is to make, I do believe that Jesus Christ was, and is, the Son of God.

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I not only could change my mind, I have. There was a time, a long time, when I did not question the traditional teaching of my Christian faith on the matter of homosexual activity.

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The Pope’s statement is just that: a reiteration. There is nothing new in it; it simply restates the familiar position of the Catholic Church. Whenever one enters ecumenical dialogue it is critically important that one stay true to oneself. It is only in that way that it is possible to be a real conversation partner. From time to time it is important to make such clarifications. Especially is this important if the conversations themselves seem to be taking a direction that is not in keeping with the fundamental values that define the conversation partner. That, according to the commentary accompanying the statement, seems to have been his perception.

It is difficult to predict exactly how the Pope’s statement will effect ecumenical relations and the conversations that surround them. Inevitably such moments of clarification contain within themselves at least two different possibilities: one is to chill relations and the other possibility is to further them. The only way to tell the difference in intent between the two is to listen carefully to the next word that is spoken. Is that next word a word of invitation to further deepen a dialogue now reinforced by the always bracing words of a candor that flows from honest humility, or is the next word a word that flows out of an arrogance that, at its’ core, senses no need for the other. Given the Vatican’s long commitment to dialogue I can not but imagine that its hope is the former and not the latter.

I’m sure that many do not care, but I am equally certain that many do. Those who do care are among those who most passionately want God’s message of abiding love made ever more available.

The Pope’s message is a sober reminder of just how “wounded” our divisions have been made us. We are all "wounded" in the sense that our message is muffled. And that, in my view, is a wound that afflicts all Christian communities: the Episcopal Church, the Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostals, independents, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic as well as all the rest. We are all incomplete to the extent that we are cut-off from the fellowship that each has to offer the other.

Mercy and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Psalm 86:10

The few words of this brief passage capture the essence of a hope for human life that I believe lies at the heart of human aspiration -- in life as it is experienced by each of us individually and life as lived in the larger human community.

Each of these four is widely (though to be sure not universally) seen as a virtue. However, all too often they are understood and experienced as being if not exactly in opposition one to the other, then at least as alternatives. All too often “truth” is treated as though it were contrary to “mercy” and “mercy” as though it was incompatible with “truth.” All too often “truth” is used as a weapon to hurt rather than to heal, and “mercy” is used as a shield against the searing cleansing of “truth.” In the same way “righteousness” is far too often given, even perhaps usually given, as the justification for enmity and conflict. Our side is right; therefore, our actions to defend or enforce our understanding of the “right” are justified. “Peace” for its part is often, if not usually, understood to be an accommodation between competing perspectives or powers that allows an absence of conflict.
There is, however, nothing inherently opposed in these concepts. In an ideal world, in the perfect universe, mercy and truth are synchronous; righteousness and peace are in harmony. Further, this passage testifies to the fact that these are not simply abstractions, they are the concrete realities of life. They meet, they kiss. They exist.
It is that perfection which, as a Christian, I believe Jesus embodies. He, in Himself, brought these together into a living being. He showed, by his life and his death, that it is by means of courageous and self-less love that these elements, these life forces, are brought into harmony. It is by that living and dying, in company with him, that we approach the harmony that is the song of the universe.