Mormons and Iglesia Ni Kristo are inviting us!

This is big news for Interfaith Dialogue! And it is happening during Year 2020 of Interreligious Dialogue (IRD!). What a blessing!

I am stating here the good news that it was they who invited us. This invitation is significant. It means that these two Churches, very popular and influential worldwide, are ready to join us in promoting peace through the culture of ecumenical dialogue.

The Mormons or the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints invited me last year to a celebration in Manila. It was a happy surprise. Since the beginning of Ecumenical Movement in 1910 until now, this popular Church in the United States and in other parts of the world has never joined the ecumenical movement which is Catholic Church’s dialogue with the Non-Catholic or Protestant/Christian Church denominations. Then last February this year the Davao Mormons invited me together with our local Focolarini to a lunch in their church in CM Recto Street, Davao City. Here I met for the first time their international, national and local officials. And officially there they publicly declared, in their own language, their desire to be our partners in promoting peace through the culture of dialogue. They even offered the use of their facilities for our meetings.

My personal relationship with the Iglesia Ni Kristo (INK) began a couple of years ago. A retired Supreme Court Associate Justice by the name of Quitero joined our round table discussion on social system change at the National Transformation Council (NTC) which I chaired. He was an official of the Iglesia Ni Kristo. Later I became a friend of Ka Erdz Codera, one of the closed associates of INK Supremo E. Manalo. He became a friend of mine together with other ex-Catholic justices, senators, ex-gov’t and ex-military officials promoting authentic social change. This was during the presidency of Benigno Aquino III.

Lately I met two INK ministers. They are Ka(patid) Mark Tumawao of the Iglesia Cathedral on Malvar Street, Davao City, and Ka DK Esmundo of the Iglesia Church in Bgy. Bacaca, Davso City. I went to ask their help for a friend of mine who had a problem with an INK woman. Then later they surprised me when individually they asked if they could invite me to their church assembly. I gave my thrilled YES, of course!

An effective interfaith dialogue principle that I will share with these new friends is to say that as human beings and believers there are more things that unite us than our divisive differences, that the bottom line of dialogue is human friendship.