Is the Modern Ecumenical
Movement a Waste of Time?
The Most Revd Dr Peter Carnley AC
The planned commemorative Evensong at St George’s Cathedral at 5.00pm and Sunday 10 November 2024 will undoubtedly be an ecumenical event of momentous historical significance. This is not just because it will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the Decree on Ecumenism,
Unitatis Redintegratio at the Second Vatican Council 60 years ago, on 21 November 1964.
Though this stands as one of the most important developments in the history of twentieth century ecumenism, given that it brought the Roman Catholic Church formally into the ecumenical movement, its contemporary commemoration will also have a significance in its own right. After all, it is not often that the commemoration of an historic decision of the Roman Catholic Church is celebrated in an Anglican Cathedral, let alone with the Anglican Archbishop, presiding, and the local Roman Catholic Archbishop preaching. This milestone itself justifies the party that is planned outside the Cathedral afterwards. Meanwhile, Archbishops Kay Goldsworthy and Timothy Costelloe are to be applauded for their ecumenical leadership.
Even so, and despite the huge advances that were made in the work of the reconstitution of the unity of the Church through the second half of the twentieth century, it has to be acknowledged that there are those who think that the whole ecumenical enterprise has really been a failure.
It certainly has to be admitted, for example, that, despite the production of more than a dozen agreed statements by successive embodiments of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, (ARCIC) the actual hope of achieving a fully reconciled Church has not been achieved.
Indeed, the ordination of women, and particularly the consecration of women bishops in the Churches of the Anglican Communion in the last decades of the twentieth century appears to have thrown a new spanner into the works. Then the creation of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in Britain by
Pope Benedict XVI, apparently as a way of attracting Anglicans back into the fold of Rome, while allowing them to retain a great deal of their Anglican identity, culture and liturgical ethos, has not really helped the fostering of friendly relations.
Even so, the negative view that the twentieth century ecumenical movement has not reached its intended goals is somewhat jaundiced. The complexity of what is in fact a varied set of outcomes calls for are a little more careful consideration.
I well remember, for example, the passing of an important resolution at the 1988 Lambeth Conference which welcomed the encouraging advances that had been made between Anglicans and Lutherans at that time, and then outlined a detailed agenda of work for the decade ahead. I have to own that I had a direct interest in this resolution, having myself drafted it and then having to struggle to ward off attempts to modify and weaken it by a resolutions editing committee which favoured what seemed to me to be little more than a pathetically general motherhood statement of benign intentions. Fortunately the detailed agender of work prevailed. Its outline of proposals included the then innovative idea of ‘interim eucharistic hospitality’ to deepen bonds of affection and interpersonal communion at the same time as outstanding issues and differences of theological opinion were being sorted out.
As it turned out, before the next Lambeth Conference met in 1998 concordats of full communion had actually been entered into, at least with Lutheran Churches which had retained the episcopate at the time of the Reformation.
Meanwhile, significant advances have been made in relation to the restoration of the episcopate in Lutheran Churches where it has been lost. This includes Australia where some peculiarities of the Lutheran experience, not least the experience of those with a German background of being interned during the Second World War, has meant that Australia has further to go.
But, the mutual recognition of ministry, for example, by The Episcopal Church of USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church now means that in North America a Lutheran can be appointed to be the Dean of an Anglican Cathedral, or even elected as the bishop of an Anglican Diocese and vice versa. Indeed, this has already happened. In this case it is quite simply not true that the goal of a Church fully reconciled has not been met.
On the other hand, the hard fact that new developments have added a further complication to the Anglican-Roman Catholic engagement and made it more challenging, does not mean that nothing has been achieved.
Walter, Cardinal Kasper, who was for many years the Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has observed on a number of occasions that though the Anglican consecration of women bishops means that full communion must for a time be put on hold, we need to celebrate the enormous importance of the achievement over the last generation of what he speaks of as ‘spiritual ecumenism .‘ The more anonymous and informal achievement of unity of heart and mind, and a sense of sharing in a common mission to the world in friendly cooperation and with generosity of spirit is not to be overshadowed and lost from sight in a single-minded quest for the formal and overt achievement of structural or institutional unity.
Indeed, Anglicans well know that structural unity by itself can be seriously defective. Diversity of viewpoint can very easily lead to inter-personal tension and internal division which means that purely technical and institutional unity alone is not enough.
Unity does not mean that a rigid uniformity of viewpoint must necessarily be achieved; honest disagreement and debate is to be welcomed in the pursuit of truth. But arrogantly divisive sectarian and partisan attitudes must constantly be called out and deplored. Both the unity of outward and visible structures and the inward and spiritual unity of heart and mind are essential ecumenical outcomes.
The goal of full communion and the mutual recognition of ministries between Rome and Canterbury may at present be on hold, but the achievement of ‘spiritual ecumenism’ of a significant quality and depth may be celebrated with gusto. This will certainly be the case in Perth on 10 November. This is clearly not just a waste of time, but rather another important step forward as we look in hope towards the Christian Church of the future fully reconciled - in God’s good time.
+Peter Carnley
Fremantle, WA