Dialogue Document
Methodist-Catholic Dialogues: Thirty Years of Mission and Witness (2001)
Methodist-Catholic Dialogues: Thirty Years of Mission and Witness by the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns of the United Methodist Church
"Christian churches are called by Christ to stand together in mission to the world and to join with Christ in the prayer “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (Jn 17:21). Since 1966 Methodists and Catholics have taken up this mandate in a variety of contexts in the United States and around the globe.
In almost any ecumenical structure in which Catholics and Methodists participate, they provide unique leadership because of their numbers, their ability to exercise leadership in all of their congregations, and the mutual accountability of their ministers. This does not mean that Methodists or Catholics are without their own internal tensions that intrude into the ecumenical setting. However, Methodists and Catholics recognize that by their baptism, their confession of the Christian faith as attested in the Scriptures, and their common calling to mission, what binds them together is far greater than what divides them."