Ero Sum Ero.

Oremus Mare.

I believe in you.

3/31/2026

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

To all who are called into the one Church of Jesus Christ, whether in the Eastern Orthodox communion, the Oriental Orthodox Churches of ancient witness (Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, and their sisters), the Roman Catholic Church spread throughout the world, the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to our Muslim brothers and sisters who, like us, bow before the one true God to the best of our epistemic limitations. I write not as one who stands above the fray, but as a fellow pilgrim who has tasted the sweetness of faith and the bitterness of our divisions. While I was born into the Roman Catholic Church, I have spent most of my life as a devout atheist. I write with the consideration of the Apostle Paul, who wept over the fractures in Corinth and pleaded, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

Today the wound is deeper still, and the world watches.

I call this reality “The Broken Church.” This is not to mock the grace still flowing through every tradition, but to name honestly what our Lord Himself grieved in His high-priestly prayer: “that they may all be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21). The schism of 1054 between East and West, the earlier and later ruptures that produced the Oriental Orthodox family, the sixteenth-century fractures of the West, the nineteenth-century restoration movements, and even the profound differences that separate Christian confessions from the noble house of Islam—all these are not mere footnotes of history. They are family wounds. We still share the same Scriptures of the Old Testament, the same reverence for the prophets, the same longing for the living God. Yet we speak different theological languages, celebrate different liturgies, guard different emphases, and sometimes eye one another with suspicion rather than love.

Consider the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). Humanity, in its pride, sought to build a tower “with its top in the heavens” so that we might make a name for ourselves and avoid being scattered. God saw the arrogance and confused our single language into many, scattering us across the earth. Is not this the very picture of our religious history? We have built magnificent towers—cathedrals and temples, mosques and tabernacles—each intending to reach God. Yet because we have often built them on the foundation of our own certainty rather than on the humility of the cross, our languages have multiplied: Greek metaphysics and Latin jurisprudence, Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christologies, creeds with and without the filioque, additional scriptures and prophetic voices, the sublime Arabic of the Qur’an and the restored gospel of the latter days. We speak past one another. We hear the same divine melody but in keys so distant that harmony feels impossible. Our ignorance and arrogance blind us: we assume our tower is the only one that touches heaven, and in that assumption we wound the very Body we claim to serve.

Yet God has not left us in confusion. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit reversed Babel. The same wind that scattered us at the tower now gathered thousands from every nation, and each heard the mighty works of God in his own tongue (Acts 2). The Church Fathers saw this clearly. St. Gregory of Nazianzus declared that the confusion of tongues at Babel was “laudable” because it broke up a wicked unity; far more praiseworthy is the present miracle that “brings them again into harmony.” St. Fulgentius of Ruspe taught that the humble piety of the faithful has made the divided tongues combine once more in the unity of the Church, “so that what discord had broken up, charity should reunite.” The greatest language of all is not Greek, Latin, Aramaic, or Arabic—it is the living Word of God Himself, Christ the Logos, who speaks through Scripture, through the sacraments, through the quiet voice of the Spirit, and yes, through the sincere seeking of every human heart.

The early Fathers, writing long before our present fractures hardened, still thundered against the very spirit that now divides us. Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the Apostle John, warned: “Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Clement of Rome, writing to the quarreling Corinthians, cried out: “Why are there strife and passion, schisms and even war among you? … Why do we tear apart and divide the body of Christ?” Cyprian of Carthage, in his treatise On the Unity of the Church, gave us the unforgettable image: “No one can have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his mother.” He pictured the Church as a single ray of sunlight, a single root, a single fountain: break the ray, the branch, the stream, and life withers. These were not triumphalist slogans; they were pastoral pleas born of tears. They would look upon our present divisions and grieve, yet they would also point us back to the one altar, the one Eucharist, the one baptism, the one Lord.

Each of our traditions carries real strengths that the others need. The Orthodox—Eastern and Oriental alike—have preserved a luminous mysticism, an unbroken liturgical poetry, and a profound reverence for the mystery of the Incarnation that keeps the Church ever ancient and ever new. Rome has guarded a universal structure and a charitable reach that has carried the Gospel to every continent. The Latter-day Saints have restored an emphasis on eternal families, ongoing revelation, and the practical holiness of daily covenant-keeping that many of us have forgotten. And our Muslim neighbors model a radical submission (islam) to the one God, a disciplined rhythm of prayer and fasting, and a fierce defense of monotheism that rebukes every form of idolatry. Each of us holds treasures. Yet when we clutch them in pride, they become weapons instead of gifts.

Here I must turn the mirror upon myself—and upon all of us—with the highest standard of self-reflection. How often have I, in my own heart, assumed that my tradition alone has the full map to heaven? How often have we all mistaken doctrinal precision for love, or institutional loyalty for faithfulness to Christ? Not to recognize the brokenness of the visible Church is itself a form of arrogance that harms the very cause we claim to serve. It scandalizes the world, weakens our witness, and grieves the Spirit who desires unity. If we cannot love one another while we disagree, how can we claim to love the God we cannot see?

Let me ask you, then, in the Socratic spirit that invites truth rather than conquers it: If Christ prayed so fervently for our oneness, why do we remain content with separation? What if the very certainty we prize is the tower we have built—impressive, yet keeping us from the humility that alone can receive the Spirit’s unifying fire? What if the “other” tradition, the “other” faith, holds a piece of the divine mystery that our own language has not yet learned to pronounce? And what if refusing to see the brokenness is the greatest brokenness of all?

My friends, I do not write to dissolve any tradition or to demand a premature merger that would ignore real differences in metaphysics, authority, or revelation. I write simply to say: the Church of Jesus Christ is wounded, and we are the wounded. Yet the same Lord who prayed for unity, who breathed the Spirit at Pentecost, who still speaks through every honest tongue, is able to heal what we cannot. Let us therefore repent of arrogance, listen across languages, honor one another’s strengths, and above all fix our eyes on the greatest language of all—the living Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. In that Word alone is the unity that Babel could not build and that our divisions cannot finally destroy.

May the God of all comfort, who raised Christ from the dead, grant us the grace to become what we already are: one body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling. Until that day, let us walk together in humility, pray for one another in love, and bear witness to a fractured world that the last word is not division, but the reconciling cross.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

Your brother in the pilgrim Church of Jesus Christ,

Eram Sum Ero