Please read the passage before the commentary.
The two world wars of the twentieth century were devastating to the peoples of Europe. The Protestant break with the Roman Church was catastrophic for the Christians of Europe. During the Second World War military chaplains could not restrict their services only to their own members as Protestants and Catholics were mixed among the dead and the dying. Ecumenism was the necessity in war.
The outcome of the world wars spurred the rise of the United Nations. It also spurred the development of the Second Vatican Council. Both the United Nations and the Second Vatican Council were built on the same dynamism of the goodness of cooperation and understanding.
In a sense, both the United Nations and the Catholic Church moved beyond the old of individualism into the new of cooperation.
In Jesus’ day there was the good of John the Baptist and the new good of Jesus, the old wine and the new, the old cloth and the new cloth. While the situation of today may differ from that of the time of Jesus and the early Church, we can do well the reflect on how we have dealt with change when we are called to deal with change.
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