September 8, 2021
If you were to grade how the ecumenical movement is currently doing, would you give it an A or B, a C or D?
During this long and ongoing pandemic, we might understandably say that we’ve retreated into a kind of self-sufficiency and complacency about our separation. It is, in short, a good time for us to give some thought to our relations with one another.
The rich meaning of the word “ecumenical” holds up to us a vision of living as members of a single household. Why should this vision—especially during a time of pandemic—hold any particular meaning for us as Christians? As our Scripture says:
There is but one body and one spirit, just as there is but one hope given all of you by your call. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, and works through all, and is in all (Ephesians 4:4-6).
Faithful to that biblical mandate, the World Council of Churches states that the goal of the ecumenical movement is “to call the churches to the goal of visible unity in one faith and in one eucharistic fellowship expressed in common worship and in common life in Christ, and to advance to that unity in order that the world may believe.” This vision unites two fundamental concerns: unity and renewal of the Church, and the healing and destiny of the human community.
The Church has a mission in the world, a job to do: evangelization, social justice, peace-making and combatting the challenge of secularism. The most effective way for the churches to address these tasks is by working together rather than alone.
When God puts us back together again (with the aid of our willingness to cooperate), this great Church will be marked by the dignity and scholarship of the Anglicans, the order and sacraments of the Roman Catholics, the warm fellowship of the Methodists, the Presbyterian desire for good preaching, and the Lutheran respect for sound theology. There will be the Baptist concern for individual salvation, the Congregational respect for the rights of the lay members, the Pentecostal reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit and the Quaker appreciation for silence. We will find there the Mennonite sense of community, the social action of the Salvation Army and the Reformed love of the bible, all wrapped in the Orthodox reverence before the mystery of God.
The unity we seek is like a fleet of ships sailing together under a common flag. Each ship has its own shape and form, its own crew and officers, but all sail together in the same direction in frequent communication, and when there is a decision to make that affects their course, they draw abreast of one another and through consultation determine the way forward.
Religious communities in the Roman Catholic church provide one of the best models for how full communion or corporate union might actually work. Each religious community has a very different style, ethos, spirituality, and internal system of organization. Paulists are very different from Trappists, Maryknollers from Benedictines, Jesuits from Franciscans—but they all belong to the Catholic church. What this demonstrates is the necessity of unity in dogma, but diversity in piety and internal procedures of governance. Each of these communities has its own constitutions and by-laws, its own superior—yet all are ultimately accountable to an episcopal authority in a unifying structure.
Ecumenism contains a vision of the Church in its deepest reality, in its present and eternal destiny, made up of saints and sinners, you and me, the people of God, loved with an eternal and unerring love and called to be one in Christ. It is a vision of the Church wherein we are all marching towards the house of our Creator, our common home as sons and daughters. When each of us prays and works for unity, the Church, in us and through us, corrects a little its compass course in fidelity to God.
The significance of friendship with members of other churches holds some important implications for the way we do our ecumenical tasks together. For example, ecumenical gatherings need to build into the schedule time that encourages social interaction between people. The coffee break or cocktail hour before dinner may be more important practically speaking than the long theological discussions that went on during the afternoon dialogue consultation.
The last fifty years have seen a wonderful array of formal statements of agreements between churches. But like so many seeds, they will be effective only if the ground has been prepared. That ground is the people of the various churches which have sponsored the process leading to the agreed statements. Now that the theologians have done their work, the baton is passed to the churches’ membership at large. They must have the opportunity to come to the same conclusions as did those who officially represented them in the official church dialogues.
While the pandemic prevents our initiating such ecumenical gatherings now, it will eventually pass. And when it does, let’s make among our top priorities the sharing of life and faith on the local level with members of different neighboring churches. Let’s come out of our seclusion with a new vision.
People who have been living next door to each other, attending town, neighborhood or school meetings together, coaching local children’s teams, supervising scouts, mixing socially in living rooms and backyards can now be called upon to expand their sharing of life to include a sharing of faith, to discuss what they hold in common as Christians and how they could learn from what separates them. By serving one another and sharing spiritual and material resources, we will be building up the body of Christ “from below”, from the ground level. With the living stones of our lives we will build a spiritual house.
All the doctrinal agreements arrived at in formal dialogues between the various churches will have little impact if there is no commitment to one another at the level of the local congregation, if there is no community-building from below. Clearly, very little is going to happen ecumenically without it.
In the years ahead, we Christians must learn to be both hosts and guests. To be hosts, we must be firmly rooted in a particular tradition of response to the gospel and thereby have a home into which we can welcome another, providing ecumenically hospitable space for reflection together, for speaking and listening.
The years ahead will be filled with the challenging task of giving an increasingly visible witness to the gospel of reconciliation which we commonly claim and which together we seek to preach and serve. Discernment and decisions await us that will test our commitment to one another and to God’s call.
As a result of concerted effort, models of union are evolving. A substantially common understanding of the nature of our unity is expressed in the Greek word koinonia (communion). The Church, as a mystery, is the community of those who, because of Christ, are no longer separated. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of “separated Christians.”
Our koinonia with each other is linked with an infinitely deeper one from which it is inseparable. Our fellowship is rooted in God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The reality in which we participate is the life of the Trinity which, though shared by three “persons”, is a single divine life. This insight enables us to see that human diversity in unity mirrors the divine life.
Paulist Tom Ryan served in Montreal, QC, for 15 years as director of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism, working in all ten provinces of Canada; then for 5 years as founder-director of Unitas, an ecumenical retreat center, followed by 21 years as founder-director of the Paulist National Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations (POEIR), located sequentially in NY city, Washington, DC, and Boston. He will now be handing off the baton to his successor, Paulist Fr. James Diluzio, the new director of POEIR.