The heart has its reasons, says Pascal, and sometimes those reasons have a long history. Personal contact, friendship, and theological dialogue with other denominations and faiths help open our minds and hearts. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we are still dealing with the fruit of centuries of bitter misunderstanding, which doesn’t disappear so easily, especially when it’s institutionally entrenched and nurtured as a prophetic protection of God and truth. We have suffered through five hundred years of misunderstanding. The effects of the historical break within Christianity and its reaction are present today. They are still seen everywhere, from high church offices to debates within the academy of theology to suspicions inside the popular mind. It is sad how we’ve focused so much on our differences when at the center, at the heart, we share the same essential faith, the same essential beliefs, the same basic moral codes, the same Scriptures, the same belief in an afterlife and the same fundamental tenet that intimacy with Jesus Christ is the aim of our faith. Granted, there are some real differences among us, mainly in terms of how we understand certain aspects of the church and certain issues within morality rather than how we understand the deeper truths about the nature of God, the divinity of Christ, the gift of God’s Word, the gift of the Eucharist, and the inalienable dignity and destiny of all human beings. Within the hierarchy of truth, this essential core is what’s most important, and on this essential core, we agree. That’s the real basis of our common discipleship. The issues that divide us focus primarily on church authority, ordination to ministry, whether to emphasize word or sacrament, how to understand the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the number of sacraments, the place of sacramentals and devotions within discipleship, and how scripture and tradition interplay with each other. The earliest Christian Creed had but a single line: Jesus is Lord! All Christians still agree on that, and so we remain brothers and sisters, separated only by five hundred years of misunderstanding.