Deeper Conversion to Christ -- an Ecumenical Perspective

By Father John Crossin, OSFS

Recently Pope Francis set off a flurry of media commentary with his pre-Christmas "challenge" or "Examination of Conscience" for members of the Curia. I read through his 15 points and thought that this was a good examination for almost anyone. In fact, I noted a number of things that I myself need to work on. [I am not mentioning them here!]  I was confirmed in my belief when our Provincial Superior in his weekly email update confessed that he too need to work on a number of the items listed by Pope Francis—and encouraged all member of our Province to do the same!

January 18-25 is the celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. This week, just slightly more than 50 years after the promulgation of the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, is a good time for a little personal examination.

The section on "Renewal and conversion" of Saint John Paul II's encyclical on ecumenism Ut Unum Sint deals with conversion [# 15-17]. Those section in my copy are all marked up and falling apart. I think conversion is central to the spiritual maturity that is necessary for Christian Unity.
Here are two of my favorite passages:

• …there is an increased sense of the need for repentance: an awareness of certain exclusions which seriously harm fraternal charity, of certain refusals to forgive, of a certain pride, of an unevangelical insistence of condemning the "other side," of a disdain born of an unhealthy presumption. Thus, the entire life of Christians is marked by a concern for ecumenism….
• Each one therefore ought to be more radically converted to the Gospel and, without ever losing sight of God’s plan, change his or her way of looking at things [#15].

One of my New Year's resolutions is to leave room for the Holy Spirit, to try not to have things all planned out the way I think they should go. Now I have told one thing I need to work on!
To take the next steps toward Christian Unity we will all need "to go deeper" in our relationship with Christ.

Father John Crossin, OSFS, is executive director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Prayers for Christian Unity Apply to Catholics Too

By Bishop Denis Madden

As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity draws to a close, maybe it would be a good idea for Catholics to resolve to spend the other 50 weeks of the year praying for Catholic unity. This is something Catholics already do at every Mass, praying for the Church and for the pope, whose unenviable job it is to hold the entire Church together. The least we can do, with our prayers and our actions, is make that job a little easier for him.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church in the United States suffers from increasing division. Journalist John Allen described this in 2009 as a kind of "tribalism" in which a variety of groups within the Church all "speak their own language, follow their own heroes, and engage members of the other tribes largely as sparring partners in ideological debates."

One could argue that Catholics get along better with members of other faith traditions who happen to share our views on certain hot-button issues than we do with our fellow Catholics whose lived-out faith has a different emphasis than our own. If this is the case, maybe it would help if Catholics involved in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue shared some of the lessons we have learned in promoting harmony between people of faith with divergent views:

1. Pray together. It's simple, but it's an essential part of ecumenical dialogue especially because prayer brings us closer to Christ. The classic image of ecumenism is that of different Christians like spokes on a wheel with Christ at the hub. The spokes are closest to each other when they're closest to the center. Catholics have the added benefit that they not only can pray the Creed and read the Scriptures together, but also share in the sacraments, the signs of God's grace that unite us as a Church.

2. Do good works together. This approach shifts the focus away from divisive issues and allows both parties to witness to their faith through actions. It could be volunteering at a soup kitchen, helping at-risk youth with their homework, visiting the sick and imprisoned or any of a number of ministries. We encounter Christ in the poor and the marginalized, so this work would allow otherwise warring Catholics to encounter him together.

3. Try to understand one another. Our culture often fixates on proving to the other guy how wrong he is. The goal of dialogue is to understand the other. It's easy to assume someone acts a certain way for the wrong reasons. But Catholics should recognize our differences as a vital diversity, part of the richness of the Church, the one body with many parts. As St. Paul says to the Corinthians in this Sunday's readings, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you.'" Whether someone is passionately defending the unborn, the poor, the immigrant, the worker, etc., all of these efforts are part of a consistent bigger picture.

4. Always charity. When all else fails, choose to love. The Church is a family. Family is about not always having things exactly as we want them, about learning patience. It's about loving and supporting one another in spite of our failures and flaws. Pope Benedict recently said that divisions among Christians "disfigure" the Church. We have no option but to put our best face forward.

Bishop Madden is an auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and chairman of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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.