To be Catholic is to be Ecumenical

A Talk for Christian Unity Week

I am aware that there are many students at Fisher House who are keen ecumenists, who attend, sing in, or help out in their College chapels, are used to cheery pints with the College chaplain in the bar, and who take a real interest in learning about, and comparing, the different traditions within Christianity.

I am also aware of those for whom ecumenism is much more of a footnote to their religious experience, whose first interest is to strengthen and inform their own Catholic faith, who think that we face enough problems without having to worry about other Christian traditions, many of whom are involved in internal wrangling and crises in their own communion.

Does this mean that it is really up to us as Catholics where we position ourselves on the ecumenical spectrum? That it is an aspect of our Catholic faith and practice that can be left to individual taste, rather in the way that some Catholics take a special interest in vestments, or plainchant, or environmental issues, and others, equally validly, don’t? Can ecumenism be a footnote, a special interest activity that doesn’t belong to the heart of the Catholic experience.

The title of this talk would appear to imply that is not the case. To be Catholic is to be ecumenical – implying that if you do not take an interest in ecumenism, you are not fully, or whole-heartedly, Catholic. And just to be clear about where the phrase comes from, it is a quotation from Pope St John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical, Ut Unum Sint. The Pope stressed that Ecumenism was not an activity incidental to what the Church does, but is ‘an organic part of her life and work, [which] consequently must pervade all that she is and does.’

So I want to ask, what does the Pope mean? How is our Catholicism dependent upon ecumenism, and what does that mean for the way we understand and live out our faith? And from that, we need to ask ourselves, are we doing enough, or are we doing as much as we can reasonably be expected to do?

ELEMENTS OF THE CHURCH

The modern ecumenical movement was born at Vatican II, specifically in the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which for the first time did not identify ‘the Church’ only with ‘the Catholic Church’. While insisting that within the Catholic Church are all the necessary elements of the Church, there are nevertheless, it said, also elements of sanctification and holiness outside the Catholic Church. In some traditions this is more obvious – the Orthodox Churches, for example, exemplify a great deal of authentic practice in their sacraments and theology – so much so, that we can recognise Orthodox sacraments as valid, and term the Orthodox communities ‘Churches’.

But even with Protestant communities, the majority of which arose at the Reformation, we can recognise elements of sanctity and holiness: we don’t think they are wasting their time. Their ministers, while we cannot recognise them operating an authentic sacramental reality, nevertheless minister unto salvation. It is worth noting that Lumen Gentium singled out the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition among other Protestant communities as one in which ‘significant elements of the Church are present.’

The Vatican Council did not recognise in these Protestant communities sufficient resonance with authentic tradition to call them ‘Churches’, but at the same time spoke of them ‘in relationship with the Church’. Like ring from a stone dropped in a lake, from the centre, where the Catholic truth is to be found, circles spread out concentrically, Orthodox, Protestant, and then Jewish, Muslim, and eventually even all people of good will, who seek God in their lives without knowing it.

I can’t emphasise enough what an earthquake this was in the Catholic Church’s view of itself and other Christians. Right up until Vatican II, the official teaching of the Church was not to recognise other Christians as Christians. We could not enter their churches, we could not join in their services. We were forbidden to pray together, not even the Lord’s Prayer. There could be no question of dialogue with non-Catholic Christians. All that could be asked of them was that they would return to allegiance to Rome, from which (as the official document said) ‘they had unhappily departed’.

But now it was possible to call them Christians, bearing a relationship to the Church. Moreover, recognising elements of truth and sanctification in other Christian communities enabled Catholics to begin speaking with them. As Pope John Paul put it, To the extent that these elements are found in other Christian Communities, the one Church of Christ is effectively present in them. In other words, those elements of ourselves we recognise in other Christians act like magnets, drawing us together.

AN EXCHANGE OF GIFTS

This, however, leads to a further developments. If there are elements of truth and sanctification in other Christian communities, might these not elements be available to Catholics also? What, indeed, if some elements were more clearly or effectively expressed in other communities than in the Catholic community? Catholics had an early example of this at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, when Orthodox observers noted that the Holy Spirit was almost nowhere referred to. Taking the point, the Council Fathers re-emphasised the role of the Holy Spirit at the Council. Indeed, the emphasis upon (or more accurately ‘re-discovery of’) the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church comes from our recognising that the Orthodox community expresses something that Catholics were lacking. Thus, for example, the Canon of the Mass used to make no mention of the Holy Spirit: now the epiclesis – the calling down of the Holy Spirit – is emphasised and marked by the ringing of bells. This is something we have re-learned from our Orthodox partners, and enriched ourselves thereby.

Similarly, from our Protestant partners, we have re-discovered the role of Scripture in the Church. Up until the Vatican Council (indeed, I remember as a boy) Catholics were suspicious of the Bible. It was a dangerous book, used by Protestants to attack Catholics, capable of being interpreted against the Church. But following our ecumenical contact with Protestant Christians, our attitude to scripture has completely changed. Our Mass lectionary, which seeks to put before the faithful a wide range of readings from the whole bible, is a gift that we have gained from contact with our Protestant partners.

At the same time, we have much to offer them. We have shown clearly to Protestant Christians the need for scripture to be interpreted within the Church – not according to personal taste or proclivities. To the Orthodox, in the same way, we have argued the importance of universal primacy; and the same notion – a Petrine ministry - has, despite appearances to the contrary, aroused great interest in the Anglican communion. Methodists have learned from our sacramental economy and Marian devotions; pilgrimage has been rediscovered by many Protestant communities.

This is what Pope St John Paul called ‘an exchange of gifts’. A sharing of the treasures of our traditions, to enrich our own religious experience. Such an approach requires humility – to recognise that some other traditions may do things better than us – confidence in oneself, and an ability to recognise what in one’s tradition can be complimented or even expressed in different ways, without losing the truth. Above all, it requires what Pope John Paul called a ‘conversion of heart’ - an overcoming of suspicion, an un-learning of stereotypes, and a growth in friendship and trust between Christians of different traditions.

CO-EXISTENCE

While huge ecumenical advances have been made, it cannot be denied that ecumenism is going through a difficult period at the moment. The current ecumenical project seems to have run out of steam. What seemed fresh and subversive thirty years ago has become otiose and stale. As Michael Root from the Catholic University of America says says: the high emotions of mid-twentieth century ecumenism have given way to predictable gestures and general indifference.[1] And even Cardinal Walter Kasper, architect of some of the most notable ecumenical milestones of our time, has concluded: ‘We seem to be frozen. Recent decades have seen tiredness, disillusionment and stagnation’. Like an East Coast train whose onward surge is halted by ice on the rails, so the ecumenical juggernaut has been frozen in its tracks and has juddered to a halt.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, ecumenism is a victim of its own success. We have become so used to interacting with other Christians, praying with them, that we can be dulled to the extraordinary distance we have travelled. Attending Evensong in your College Chapel is a matter-of-fact event. In your parents’ lifetime, it was forbidden for Catholics. What was extraordinary has now become commonplace. That is good. Ecumenism should be unremarkable.

But it is also true that issues are more complex than first realised. With Orthodox Christians, a web of non-theological, political, issues has rendered ecumenical progress problematic. Talks between Catholics and Orthodox foundered, a few years ago, because the Russian Orthodox representatives refused to appear in the same room as Estonian Orthodox. Following political uncertainty in central Europe, the Russian Church withdrew from dialogue with the Ukrainian Uniate Church. These things have little to do with theology, and nothing to do with ecumenism – but they have a devastating effect. Worse. With Protestant communities, new theological and – we would maintain – moral issues have brought about immovable obstacles to dialogue. The ordination of women, and of practising homosexuals, Eucharistic presidency by laity – all these things bring ecumenical discussion to a halt. Moreover we note with concern a lack of consistence between our dialogue partners – they say one thing to us, and another to other partners. So, Anglicans are at present considering a temporary exception from the rule that clergy must be ordained by a bishop, so as to enter into a union with Methodists. This utterly contradicts agreements on the necessity and role of Bishops that we Catholics have previously agreed with Anglicans.

Further complications arise because some of these developments by our Protestant friends are not accepted within their worldwide communities. The ordination of practising homosexuals has split the Anglican communion, with bishops refusing to celebrate the Eucharist with other bishops, refusing to recognise other provinces. In this case, we can ask who represents true Anglicanism? With whom is the Vatican meant to dialogue?

One response we can make is that this all spells the end of ecumenism. As the Catholic Herald cried in a headline a few years ago, ‘Let’s bring this ecumenical farce to an end’. We have gone as far as we can go. That is not such a disaster – indeed what we have achieved is impressive. A few centuries ago we were burning each other at the stake. Now we attend evensong before Formal Hall on a Sunday night. Surely that is progress enough? We cannot move closer together when there are such intractable obstacles to union. Surely, then, we must simply live together, side by side. Get used to the fact that as well as the Catholic church in town, there is also an Anglican church, a Methodist church, a Baptist church. We’ll get on with our own lives, worshipping in our own tradition, coming together if need be on Remembrance Sunday or for the local Carol Service, or collaborating in the Food Bank, but otherwise doing our own thing. This was the view taken by the Catholic and Anglican Archbishops of Sydney a few years ago, when they announced that they were not interested in ecumenism, but rather evangelisation.

ECUMENICAL IMPERATIVE

But such a view is unacceptable for a Catholic. Unity, says Pope St John Paul, is at the heart of the Church’s mission, and that unity does not merely consist in the gathering of people as a collection of individuals. It is a unity constituted by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments and hierarchical communion. In other words, it is not enough merely to live side by side. At the heart of the Church’s mission is the call to profess the same faith, expressed through celebration of the same sacraments.

Ecumenism is essential for Catholics not because of the mood of the age, or statements by Popes, but because it is the expressed will of Our Saviour himself. In John’s gospel, chapter 17, our Lord prays over his disciples ‘May they all be one, Father, as you and I are one.’ It is Christ’s will for us that we be united – and the corollary is that our disunity is contrary to his will. Furthermore, Jesus models this unity on the unity of the Trinity (‘May they be one as you and I are one’), that is, united in an inner bond of love and self-giving, that does not conflate the persons, but is at the same time more than just co-existing. The unity that Christ wants for his Church is based on such inner bonds of faith, something that we call ‘communion’. Until we share that communion with each other, we are failing to live in God’s image - and therefore failing to present him truthfully to the world.

Following from this, a second reason why ecumenism is essential is that a divided Christian community compromises the preaching of the gospel. We fail to present Christ to the world when we are divided. Why should a cynical world listen to a message whose practitioners cannot agree among themselves on its meaning? Our lack of unity is the very opposite of evangelisation. Think of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site of our Lord’s passion and resurrection. Think of the scandal caused by the rivalry and hostility shown by the different Christian traditions that claim custodianship of the most sacred site in Christendom. Why would anyone heed a gospel that has such pettiness and hatred at its heart? Our division destroys the gospel.

Ecumenism is therefore an imperative, for it is the will of Christ for his Church, and it is the condition for preaching the gospel effectively. For those reasons alone, every Catholic must be committed to ecumenism.

IS IT NECESSARY TO BE ECUMENICAL?

But that still leaves the question: what do we mean by ecumenism? Does unity necessitate engaging in dialogue as some kind of equals with other Christians – or does it mean simply arguing our case as Catholics until other Christians see the error of their ways and submit to Rome? Why should we change what we do? How can we change what we believe? How can the truth be debated? We can all agree that disunity is bad, and contrary to the will of Christ, but in that case surely all that needs to be done is to press our case to be the true form of the Church? Does ecumenism not really mean you-come-in-ism?

In answer to that, let us be quite clear first of all. Ecumenism never means compromise. It doesn’t even mean understating or playing down aspects of our tradition so as not to offend other Christians or to make agreement with them easier. We won’t go on about Purgatory, if you go easy on the ‘sola scriptura’ – that has no place in ecumenical dialogue. Ecumenism can only be founded in truth – and that is its starting point: a fact emphasised especially by Pope Benedict.

As someone who took part in ecumenical dialogues for five years, I can testify that discussion with other Christians was always rigorous, unflinching, and instructive. Catholic teams taking part are carefully formed of theological experts, not all of whom are natural ecumenists. They really do not mind expressing robust Catholic dogma, and that is as it should be. From every ecumenical discussion, I came away feeling more Catholic, rather than less Catholic, and more appreciative of the truths of our faith. The Catholic Church is not going to give anything away that is essential to its tradition, or hallowed as part of its genuine patrimony. It can’t.

But an attitude identified by Pope St John Paul transforms the ecumenical debate. He spoke of the need for ‘conversion of heart’ among all Christians. Another way of putting it is Humility. A recognition that, in his words, ‘the Catholic Church does not forget that many among her members cause God's plan to be discernible only with difficulty’. Before we blame the others, we need to have a long, hard look at ourselves. Speaking of the lack of unity among Christians, the Pope reminds us that ‘people of both sides were to blame’ and that responsibility cannot be attributed only to the other side. We believe that the Catholic Church possesses all that is necessary as a means to salvation, but that is not to say that we have not obscured it, denied it, or refused to see any aspect of it in others.

So, in all humility, we need to see ecumenism as a joint task. Not merely us talking at them, but allowing ourselves to be questioned by them, to examine the elements of truth that we share, and ask what they mean for and to the Catholic Church.

What does this mean in practice? Not that we adopt bits of other traditions to show how open and forward thinking we are, still less that we try to make amends for the bad things we have done in the past by giving up essential parts of our tradition - but by recognising that there may be other, authentic, ways of expressing the truth, that are not familiar in the Catholic tradition, but which may nevertheless be authentic expressions of faith, and which may even teach us something. Pope John XXIII, at the opening of the Vatican Council, put it this way: The truths preserved in our sacred doctrine can retain the same substance under different forms of expression. As the Vatican Council’s decree on Ecumenism itself noted:

It is hardly surprising if sometimes one tradition has come nearer than the other to an apt appreciation of certain aspects of the revealed mystery or has expressed them in a clearer manner. As a result, these various theological formulations are often to be considered complementary rather than conflicting.[2]

There is always a danger that if we wall ourselves up in our Catholic fortress, admitting of no truth or goodness outside our boundaries, we become inward looking, stagnant, and closed off from grace. Pope John Paul said: ‘The Church is not a reality closed in on herself. Rather, she is permanently open to missionary and ecumenical endeavour, for she is sent to the world to announce and witness, to make present and spread the mystery of communion which is essential to her, and to gather all people and all things into Christ, so as to be for all an 'inseparable sacrament of unity.’ Truth is not a secret treasure to lock deep in the vaults, to keep away from contamination or examination. It is not a thing at all – it is faithfulness to the God who created us, and who endowed us with wisdom and insight. Truth is enhanced when viewed under different lights. Let us never fear, said Bishop Butler, one of the greatest English-speaking theologians at Vatican II, that truth might endanger truth. Truth is to be proclaimed – that is the mission of the Church, and to do so in faithfulness requires a united witness, and a willingness to share our resources.

One, obvious and relatively painless example of such an exchange of gifts is music. Bach Cantatas, Anglican chant, Protestant hymnody are all valuable expressions of Christian faith which Catholics have taken on, painlessly, and to their profit, complementing our own, precious and non-negotiable musical tradition. The final hymn at Mass last Sunday with the Bishop, which was incidentally the same final hymn I had at my ordination, ‘Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go’, is a Methodist hymn. Music is a gift we receive from other Christian traditions – and are enriched by doing so.

The same can be true in more strictly theological and ecclesiological matters. It is from our dialogues with the Orthodox and with Anglicans that we Catholics began to take more seriously our use of the age of the Fathers, the Patristic Era – those centuries following the formal composition of the bible, when the Church Fathers brought the best thinking of their age to questions of religion. Traditionally, Catholic theology drew narrowly on resources from Thomas Aquinas and the Counter-Reformation. It is one of the gifts Cardinal Newman brought with him from his Anglican days that he began a process of enriching of our theological method by drawing upon one of the greatest areas of Church scholarship.

In another example, Orthodox and Anglican Christians have spurred us to consider the way that authority is exercised in the Church, how decisions are made at a local level, and the role that is given to laity. The synodality of which Pope Francis often speaks, and which is given such a role in his encyclicals, is inspired by the structures of Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. In the realm of theology, from the Lutheran world Catholics have relearned the gratuitousness of grace, and the impossibility of earning salvation, countering a long-present danger present in popular Catholic practices of seeming to ask us to earn Salvation by our own merits.

None of this is changing Catholicism – as we have heard, the official ecumenical documents of the Church speak of formulations as ‘complementary rather than conflicting’. We are not altering Catholic teaching, but rather ‘re-learning’ elements that have always been present in Catholicism, but which for one reason or another have been underemphasised or obscured. In that sense, the gifts we receive from other Christians make us not less, but more, Catholic, more authentically who we are.

And that is the end why it is the most Catholic thing to be ecumenical. Because Catholicism has as its mission the call to make real the will of its founder, and it is Christ’s will that unity be restored among his people. And because Catholicism in its name and nature has a hunger for truth and recognises the work of the Holy Spirit wherever it may be found. With a strong sense of the genius of the human mind, a strong affirmation of creativity and a sense of wonder at the way God shows himself in the richness of diversity, Catholicism can never simply be content to squat on its inheritance, like a miser hording his jewels in the basement. Rather, the Catholic Church seeks out what is true, good, gracious, and draws it to herself. With a determination to make present in this world the mercy and magnanimity of God, the Church must model these qualities in its own approach, and reach out in graciousness to other Christians. I remember seeing this in action when Pope Benedict came England in 2010, and met with Anglican and Catholic bishops at Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Following a discourse from the Pope and the Archbishop, those present all prayed the Lord’s Prayer together. The Anglicans, however, graciously finished where Catholics usually do ‘but deliver us from evil.’ One voice, however, continued, adding the usual Anglican doxology, ‘for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory …’. It was Pope Benedict, displaying a generosity, courtesy and grace which perfectly embodied the loving magnanimity of Christ.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US?

If you have taken on board Pope John Paul’s statement, that to be Catholic is to be ecumenical, the obvious question is, what should you do about it? How should it affect the way that you live out your faith.

The first answer must be not to be content with where we are now, Christian traditions living side by side. Whatever the travails of contemporary ecumenism, there can be no minimising of the Lord’s call to be one as his followers. Not merely because this is his will, to which we owe obedience, but also because we recognise that divisions among Christians compromise the preaching of the Gospel, which is the mission of the Church. In the hostile world of today, that is irresponsible, foolish and self-defeating. To be one means not merely being nice to each other and saying nice things about each other, but to share an inner bond of faith modelled on the Blessed Trinity, which for us means participation together in the Lord’s Eucharist. Until we are able to achieve that, we are not faithful to the Lord’s will. So for each of us, it means engaging with the ecumenical project, expounding with confidence our Catholic faith in a way that leave room for the treasures of other traditions to deepen and broaden our experience.

Secondly, we must seek what Pope John Paul called a ‘conversion of heart’ - learn about each other, which means first of all unlearning much of what we think we know. The Pope warned against ‘Complacency, indifference and insufficient knowledge of one another’ in ecumenical dialogue. So often in religious debate, we find ourselves objecting to doctrines or practices which our partners themselves do not profess. How often have you been attacked, as a Catholic, for making the Virgin Mary a person of the Trinity or worshipping the saints, for not reading the bible, for adding to the scriptures, for believing that we can get to heaven by our own deserts. All of these are frequent criticisms; none of these is what we actually believe. We must be aware of our propensity to do the same with our ecumenical partners. Ecumenism must begin in truth.

Thirdly, it means a generosity of spirit. Recognising other Christians as my brothers and sisters, whose traditions are, for the most part, valid and grace-imparting for them. This is what Pope Benedict intended with the Ordinariate – to show that there were other ways of being good Catholics than the Roman model. The sonorous English prose of Cranmer and the 17th century contemporaries of Shakespeare who compiled the Church of England Prayer Book, falls strangely upon Catholic ears, yet it is something which, increasingly, we can admire and delight in. Generosity is an important tool of ecumenical methodology – of the way we go about ecumenism. My task is not simply to explain where you are wrong, and to set you right – very much as students explain to me, with impatient endurance, how to set up a doodle poll on my computer. No. Talking of ecumenism in 1993, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of ‘a duty to let oneself be purified and enriched by the other... Perhaps listening humbly one to the other in our diversity would be of more help to us than a superficial type of unity’.[3] A real way of dialogue involves, rather than an mere exposition of differing doctrines, a process of receptive learning, through which we might discern what we lack that God might give us through the other.[4] The most famous example of this way of doing ecumenism was the call by Pope St John Paul in 1995 to other Christians to help him to ‘find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation’.[5] The point is that, we recognise that diverse ways of expressing the same truth can help strengthen the church. Differences become graces. Such a method can help us to recognise our own lack and need for conversion as we seek to learn 'what is strong' from another Christian tradition.[6]

Fourthly, it means being truly Catholic, which means being faithful to the teaching of Christ, in every age and in every place, but also rejoicing in the way that God’s presence breaks into our lives in new and unexpected ways. Catholicism gives great weight to the ability of men and women to wonder, create, in ways that express the presence of God in their lives. This is eloquently summed up, in ecumenical terms, by Pope Francis:

We must acknowledge the value of the grace granted to other Christian communities. As a result, we will want to partake of the gifts of others. A Christian people renewed and enriched by this exchange of gifts will be a people capable of journeying firmly and confidently on the path that leads to unity.

[1] Michael Root: Ecumenical Winter, in First Things, Oct 2018. p 34.

[2] Unitatis Redintegratio, 17.

[3] Card. Ratzinger: Ecumenismo: crisi or svolta? Nuova Umanita, 15.

[4] WTW, 18.

[5] JPII: Ut Unum Sint, 95.

[6] Paul Murray, ed: Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning, p. 23.