Taize? QUESTION from Ignatius Maria Faustina on October 18, 2002 Dear Brother Ignatius,
I was wondering if you knew of the Taize prayer group? It seems to me that they are some new age, ecumenical prayer group. It sounds fishy to me and wondered if you had any thoughts.
ANSWER by John-Paul Ignatius, OLSM on October 20, 2002 Dear Mr. Ignatius:
I am not very familiar with this group. There seems to be many groups involved in the Taize. From what I gather this movement was started about 50 years ago as an inter-denominational group thus it is not specifically Catholic.
Pope John Paul II has praised this group and even gave a private audience to its director and visited the Taize community in France, I believe.
So, at least from a general overall point-of-view, it must be an okay group, but that does not mean there are not warts among the local chapters.
We must remember that the Pope is trying to be generous and to encourage and uplift Christians. Thus he often gives praise and blessing to various groups. But this does not mean that he approves of every little thing the group does. In some cases there could be things the Pope does not know; in other cases he may know of the problems but trusts local bishops to take care of it recognizing that as a whole a group is generally okay.
Anyway, as far as the Taize group is concerned I do not know the details of their approach. Perhaps if you had something specifically in mind, a website maybe that contained something you thought might be problematic, then I would review that.
God Bless.

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