Mark Sullivan, esteemed son of my sister Sue, has posted an interesting piece on the new Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. It originally appeared in Our Sunday Visitor newspaper. Here’s a snip:

“We are striving to create a center where discussions between Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox can happen. A place where we can come together and say, ‘What is this that we call our common faith, and how do we each contribute to a better understanding of that,’” George Kalantzis, director of the new Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies, told Our Sunday Visitor…

“What is missing in American Protestantism is an understanding of the richness of the early Church,” Kalantzis said. “One looks at reformers such as Calvin, Luther and Wesley and one sees the dependence on the early Church. The Reformation itself is a call to come back to the Church. It is a call to the Church to come back to the tradition of the Church.”

“Wheaton has always been at the forefront of that evangelical call to be faithful to the Bible and the faith of the Church,” Kalantzis said. “And now we have an opportunity to have a programmatic relationship with that.”

It looks great on paper — though it’s hard to imagine how “discussions between Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox” can happen if Wheaton continues to exclude Catholics from its faculty. It’s the college’s right, and I support that right. But it does render impossible the discussion they say they want to have. Or am I missing something?