Baptists and Catholics in Conversation: Oversight and Primacy in the Ministry of the Church

A week from today I depart for Rome, where the delegations from the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity to the 2006-2010 series of bilateral ecumenical dialogues on the theme "The Word of God in the Life of the Church: Scripture, Tradition, and Koinonia" will reconvene for a week of meetings at the Domus Internationalis Paulus VI. Following three previous sessions of conversations on The Authority of Christ in Scripture and Tradition, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and Mary in the Communion of the Church, this year's session will focus on the ecclesiological themes Oversight and Primacy in the Ministry of the Church.

Members of the Baptist delegation will be co-chair Paul Fiddes of the University of Oxford; co-secretary Fausto Vasconcelos, Director of the Education & Evangelism and Study & Research divisions of the Baptist World Alliance; Timothy George and Steven Harmon of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama; Anthony Peck, General Secretary of the European Baptist Federation; Tomas Mackey of the Baptist Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Nora Lozano of the Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas; Rachael Tan of the Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary; Curtis Freeman of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina; Fred Deegbe, General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana; Elizabeth Newman of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Virginia; Massimo Aprile of the Baptist Convention of Italy; and Tadeusz Zielinski of Warsaw Baptist Theological Seminary in Poland.

Members of the Roman Catholic delegation will be co-chair Bishop Arthur Serratelli of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey; co-secretary Gregory Fairbanks of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; Jorge Scampini of the Convento de Sto Domingo in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Krzysztof Mielcarek of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland; Susan Wood of Marquette University in Milwauke, Wisconsin; Peter Casarella of DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois; William Henn of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome; Teresa Francesca Rossi of the Centro Pro Unione in Rome; Dennis McManus of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; and Sara Butler of Saint Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York.

Stay tuned here for additional information.