Synod Process Paints Promising Future for Ecumenism

By Father John Crossin, OSFS

The Vatican’s release today of the working document and survey for the 2015 Synod on the Family reminds us that the Synod process begun in 2014 will continue into most of next year. The 2014 Synod on the Family was very encouraging from the point of view of an ecumenist. There are two aspects that I think were particularly significant for Christian unity.

Pope Francis invited all the participants to speak their minds. They were to say what they needed to say. And there were disagreements.

This openness sends a message to our Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican colleagues that, should we come into full communion, their voices would be heard. I believe that they have some fear that in full communion with such a large hierarchical church their voices would be lost or drowned out.

This Synod sent the opposite message. All voices will be heard though of course not all will get their way.

A related experience of the Synod was that there are different schools of thought in the Catholic Church. Adherents do not always agree with one another.

This has been true for centuries but is not always quite so evident. Catholics realize that the various schools of thought have distinguished members. Most members tend to think that they are the best, have the truth, preserve orthodoxy and have the correct pastoral approach. It seemed clear at the Synod and in the immediate preparatory time that the adherents of the schools represented points of view that can be far from definitive.

There are different schools of thought in Anglicanism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism. The witness of the Synod is that there is room for multiplicity in unity.  Full Communion with others would bring even more diverse ways of thinking. Pope Francis has noted on more than one occasion that unity is not uniformity. This diversity could be of great benefit to a Synodical process of discernment of God’s will for the Church.

One danger of multiple schools is that they can become isolated from each another.  Living and working in ‘gated communities’ of the like-minded can make it difficult to hear the voices of others outside the group. Pope Francis describes this as the risk of becoming self-referential.

A process that encourages all to listen for the voice of the Spirit while engaging one another‘s best thoughts and practices can contribute to our progress toward Christian unity.

Father John Crossin, OSFS is executive director of the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He tweets @crossinusccb.

(CNS Photo/Paul Haring)

Bridging Unity and Love: the Pope and Other Christians

Easily the most significant issue dividing Catholics from other Christians is the role, and even the mere existence, of the pope. Even popes have weighed in on this. In 1967, Pope Paul VI acknowledged that the papacy was "the gravest obstacle in the path of ecumenism."

The tragedy here is that the papacy is a ministry of unity, not division. While most of the world looks at the pope and sees some kind of "supreme ruler," the actual papal job description, if you will, is more like the hub of a wheel that connects all the spokes, the point that brings everything together. This is why, in Catholicism, local dioceses and their bishops are said to be "in communion" with the bishop of Rome. Even the Latin name for the pope, Pontifex Maximus, means "chief bridge builder."

Which is why Pope John Paul II tackled the thorny question of the papacy and other Christians in his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint (That They All May Be One). The challenges of this letter will be one focus of the next round of the Catholic-Reformed dialogue in the United States, beginning January 28.

What John Paul II said

Pope John Paul issued an invitation to other Christians to dialogue with him about the nature of his office. How could he exercise his authority as pope, he wanted to know, in a way that would promote unity among all Christians, not just Catholics?

To illustrate what he meant, the pope described the papacy in biblical and pastoral terms, as a ministry of love that helps the authentic voice of Christ to be heard. He added that the pope must have the authority necessary to carry out this role and ensure unity among Christians.

Other Christians respond

• The Church of England responded in 1997, noting that their dialogue with Catholics had already agreed on the need for a universal primate at the center of the Church. Such a bishop, they said, would work in communion with the rest of the world's bishops and ensure that local or regional churches didn't strike out on their own or take positions abhorrent to the rest of the Church.
• The Lutheran bishops of Sweden noted in their response that, despite the historically negative view of the papacy taken by Lutherans, progress was possible if the pope's ministry were clearly integrated into the college of bishops. Even Martin Luther, they said, wrote that the papacy would be acceptable if it were clearly subordinate to the Word of God and if an agreement could be reached on the question of justification (which happened in 1999).
• The Presbyterian Church-USA welcomed the inviting spirit of John Paul II's encyclical, as well as the new language he used to describe his ministry. They expressed doubt over concepts like infallibility and entrusting a universal ministry to one person, but left room for an essentially spiritual ministry exercised by a person of "extraordinary spiritual insight and incandescent personhood."
• Orthodox Christians have never officially responded to the encyclical, but in 2007, an international dialogue of Catholics and Orthodox approved the Ravenna Statement, which agreed the bishop of Rome held a place of honor among bishops in the ancient Church, and that he should also exercise some sort of primacy in the Church today. While much more dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox is required, this document is still a breakthrough.

The way forward

As Catholics and Reformed Christians meet this month to discuss this challenge from John Paul II, perhaps the best response from Catholics and other Christians is to take seriously the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25) and ask God to help the leaders and scholars gathered in dialogue to see old questions with new insight and move closer to each other as they move closer to Christ.

This post is adapted from "A Pope for All Christians?" a resource developed by the Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is available from USCCB Publishing.

John Henry Newman: Heart Speaks to Heart

The beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman on September 19 in Birmingham, England, may not draw much media attention, but it is still noteworthy.

Newman’s beatification will be the first one Pope Benedict XVI has presided over. One senses that the theologian/scholar/Pope Benedict might feel a kinship with Cardinal Newman, a great intellect of the Victorian Age, and a figure of renown in both Anglican and Catholic traditions.

Newman was born in 1801 and died in 1890. He converted to Catholicism in 1845 after study and struggle to understand God. His efforts with the Oxford Movement to bring Anglicanism back to its Catholic roots led him instead to join the Catholic Church. Conversion brought no end of grief for him. Anglican scholars felt betrayed; Catholic scholars were suspicious. He must have felt quite bleak when he wrote in his journal in 1863. “O how forlorn and dreary has been my course since I have been a Catholic!” he wrote. “Since I have been a Catholic, I seem to myself to have had nothing but failure, personally.”

He was a prodigious writer who promoted the need for the church to engage the world, a position that did not always make him friends. As a Catholic he fiercely defended the faith, to the point where he nearly went to jail for intemperate words while sparring with an anti-Catholic zealot.

He was a man of intellectual rigor, but writings reveal a humanness too. He expressed it in his motto as a cardinal: “heart speaks to heart.” A favorite poem, written in 1833, when he was 32, is “The Pillar of Cloud.” It reveals both the intellectual quest for God for which he was known, and the deep reach of a soul, to which most can relate at some point in their lives.

LEAD, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home –
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, -- one step enough for me,
I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O’er moon and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.