“What the Person in the Pew Needs to Know About the Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue” 

At the lecture by Metropolitan Kallistos last February at The Catholic University of America, he was asked how to avoid another Council of Florence where Church unification agreements reached between Orthodox and Catholic theologians and hierarchs were not accepted by lay persons and diocesan clergy.  To answer this question he and I and others have been working on developing an education program for the “person in the pew” to raise the awareness of the Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue, and educate lay persons about the misunderstandings and misconceptions we have about each other.

We have developed a project called “Sister Churches 101:  What the Person in the Pew Needs to Know about the Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue.”  A more complete description has appeared in my previous two postings.

I have approached many institutions that give grants for such projects, but have not had any success yet in raising the funding required.

In order to get this project started, I need your help.  Metropolitan Kallistos, Msgr. Paul McPartlan, and others have agreed to record video interviews concerning the topics identified in the attached program description, but I do not have the money available to make the video recordings and edit them into the various programs for distribution (DVD, internet, etc.).  Therefore, I ask you to be generous and support the initial stage of this project by making a tax-deductible contribution to the OL Foundation that will be used to get the Sister Churches project started.  We need $25,000 for this first phase.

In order to have the program available for distribution by the OL Conference in June, I am scheduling the video recordings to be made in late March.  Therefore, I would very much appreciate if you could respond by March 1st so I can confirm the recording sessions with the speakers.

Thank you again for your generosity, and may God bless you!

For donations of $100 or more, we will send you a copy of the final Sister Churches video program as a thank you gift.

OL Foundation Donation – Sister Churches 101

Please complete the form and send to the address below, or complete your credit card information.

Name:  __________________________________________________
Street:  __________________________________________________
City:  ________________________    State: ________         Zipcode: ______________
Email:  ____________________________   Phone:  _____________________________
Credit Card # ______________________________________Expiration Date:  ________________
I wish to donate $ __________ to the Orientale Lumen Foundation for the Sister Churches 101 program.

Please make checks payable and send to:  

Orientale Lumen Foundation
PO Box 192
Fairfax, VA  22038-0192

Please respond by March 1, 2011 .

Thank you for your generosity!  All donations will be receipted for IRS tax deduction purposes.