The purpose of ecumenism

We’re currently in the Week of Prayer for Christian
Unity, which takes place January 18–25. It’s unsurprising, therefore, to see
Pope Francis, like his forbears, calling on Christians to pray for the restoration
of unity in Christendom. “In the face of those who no longer see the full,
visible unity of the Church as an achievable goal,” he said to a delegation of
Finnish Lutherans visiting Rome this past Friday, “we are invited not to give up our ecumenical efforts,
faithful to that which the Lord Jesus asked of the Father, ‘that they may be
one.’”

Note the implication in the first clause
there: There are “those who no longer see the full, visible unity of the Church as
an achievable goal.” However encouraging the pope’s words are, they include an
acknowledgement that not all is well when it comes to the ecumenical project. In
the above linked article, Cardinal Kurt Koch (head of the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity) explains that part of the problem is a fundamental
disagreement over what the purpose of ecumenism even is. The Catholic News
Agency quotes him as follows: “‘The main problem that we have today in the
ecumenical dialogue with all the Protestant’ communities . . . is the lack of ‘a
common vision of the goal of the ecumenical movement. We have two different
views. The Catholic view, (which) is also the Orthodox view, (is) that we will
re-find the unity in faith in the sacraments and in ministries.’” Conversely,
Cardinal Koch says, “the vision that I find today in the Protestant churches
and ecclesial communities (is that) of the mutual recognition of all ecclesial
communities as churches.”

It’s hard to argue with the cardinal’s assessment.
Some, indeed, many of the most prominent voices in mainline Protestantism seem
to have approached ecumenical dialogue this way in recent years. They want
merely for everyone to recognize everyone else as faithful Christians. “We’ll
keep our church; you keep yours. And we’ll all just get along together,
recognizing each other’s churches as acceptable alternatives.” There is a
danger that real doctrinal differences may be underplayed or ignored in such an
ecumenical framework, all in the effort to achieve “mutual recognition,” as the
cardinal says, of each other as equal manifestations of the Church.

But this is to seriously weaken the vision
of Christian unity evoked in Christ’s prayer in John 17. When Christ prayed
that all Christians would be one, he didn’t have in mind a unity in which doctrinal
differences remain—Protestants believing one thing and Catholics another, and
yet the two somehow assumed to be in fellowship with one another. Instead, he
prayed that all would be sanctified in the truth—truth which is found,
he says, only in the Father’s word. We must agree on this truth, then, in order
for our unity to be real. The goal of ecumenism cannot be unity in spite of
differences; it must instead be to come to a point where doctrinal differences
no longer exist, where doctrinal agreement has been achieved, and structural
unity can therefore be enacted as a result.

Regrettably, too few Protestants have
pursued this latter type of ecumenism. But some have. A recent example was seen
in November, when delegates of the International Lutheran Council (ILC) met
with Cardinal Koch and Monsignore Matthias Türk in Rome to discuss the possibility of opening up an international dialogue. At that
meeting, one of the things agreed on by all participants was the belief that
unity in doctrine was paramount; it is telling that ILC representatives praised
PCPCU representatives for making it clear that “that both unity and truth are a
priority for them.” The same ideals important to Catholics in ecumenical
relations are true then also for the ILC—namely, the belief that true unity
must be unity in the truth. Doctrinal agreement—on the sacraments and ministry,
as Cardinal Koch noted in The Catholic News Agency article above—is
essential to achieving true unity.

The goal of ecumenism will only be reached
when those on either side can look at the other and confess with the words of
Adam that this at last is “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” No
differences will then remain, and we can truly become one body—a visible unity
which will mirror the invisible unity which already exists in the Body of
Christ. The purpose of ecumenism must always be to seek an end to the divorce
that has, at least in our world, rendered the bride of Christ. And that is a
reunification that is possible only when doctrinal unity has first been
achieved.