Category Archives: Ecumenism

The End of Ecumenism

Posted by on March 14, 2011 125 comments

By Halden Doerge and Ry Siggelkow

In recent discussions around here the issue of ecumenism has come up, and in particular the question has been raised about what we are to think theologically about the question of the church’s tangible disunity. In light of these discussions, my friend Ry Siggelkow and I spent some time working through what we think are some of the vital issues at stake in this important theological question, and to that end we offer these reflections in the hope that the cause of the church’s unity may in some small way be served.

That our concern is unity may not at once be obvious, as it is our contention that the most important way in which we can contribute to Christian unity and mission today is by actively working towards the end of ecumenism. Let us be quite clear about this, by “end” we do not mean “telos” or “goal.” We speak here not of working for the ultimate outworking and fruition of the project of ecumenism. Rather we are calling for the abandonment and termination of this project as such. Moreover it is our contention that this is necessary precisely for the sake of the unity of the church.

At the outset we must be clear what is meant by “ecumenism” as such. Certainly there are a variety of ways in which different churches and theologians have spoken of and pursued ecumenical endeavors, and there would be different lines of critique and engagement necessary in regard to many of the different forms that ecumenical impulse has taken in the history of the church. However, speaking broadly—but not, we contend, inaccurately—ecumenism can be properly understood as the effort of churches who, finding themselves not in fellowship with other churches, seek to bring about the unity that is lacking between them. Ecumenism speaks of the attempt, on the part of separated churches, to acknowledge and seek to address the reasons for their separation from one another.

What is important to see about the nature of ecumenism here is twofold. Ecumenism is fundamentally premised on the recognition of other churches as truly Christian, and on the recognition that, for various reasons, unity between these separated groups of Christians does not exist. Ecumenism involves the affirmation both of common belonging to Jesus Christ as Lord, and the affirmation that, despite this common belonging, we are not reconciled with one another for various reasons. The ecumenical problem, and its efforts to solve this problem are premised on this central conviction, that we are indeed brothers and sisters, but we are not reconciled and thus must work, through dialogue to become so reconciled.

As such, ecumenism inevitably takes the form of a sort of negotiation. Different communions, entering into dialogue with each other, learn to speak of the distinctives (theological, ethical, political, etc) that separate them so as to see if there might be a way beyond that division. Could it be that we are just misunderstanding each other? Or could we agree on a more basic compromise that would allow us to enter into full fellowship with one another? It is precisely these sorts of negotiations that make up ecumenism as we know it (a good example of this sort of effort can be seen in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation).

Over the past thirty or forty years postliberals of all stripes (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish) have sought to rethink the nature and purpose of ecumenism after “modernity.” The postliberals have rejected the traditional paradigm, with its concern for doctrinal propositions, as well as the old liberal paradigm that sought common ground on social and political fronts or in “religious experience” more generally. On the one hand there is no doubt that the unpopularity and rejection of these ecumenical visions has, at least to some extent, been bound up with the decline of mainline Protestantism. Yet, there has also been an acute sense felt among many that, although much headway has been made in official agreements and “declarations” between separated churches, this has failed to “trickle down” to the local, congregational level. Indeed, many have felt that too much ecumenical dialogue takes place among church leaders and officials at the expense of the interests and concerns of the laity and the local churches. The general trajectory of ecumenical dialogue in the postliberal vein has been a skepticism about “official” ecumenical dialogues toward a “local is better” approach.

Spurred on at least in part by George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine ecumenical dialogue in a postliberal vein has made a distinct turn away from the “abstract” and “universal” toward the “concrete” and the “particular.” In this perspective, what is needed for ecumenical dialogue to move forward is to attend to the commitments of particular communities and their practices, and to do this within a “grassroots,” lay context. The postliberal critique of liberalism (e.g., MacIntyre and Hauerwas) has shed light on the traditioned and culturally-conditioned character of all practices and convictions, whether liturgical, political, or theological. In this view, unity must be sought from the ground up so to speak, not by way of formal doctrinal agreement but by worshipping and reading Scripture together. It is by attending to these common practices that some shared vision may arise organically. This view finds the liberal view of “tolerance” distasteful, or worse, as a veiled form of oppression, but it places a high degree of value on difference and honoring the particularity of traditions. The hope is for a kind of mutually-enriching interpenetration of the treasures of each particular faith tradition. To avoid a naïve “foundationalism” each tradition is often understood as kind of self-contained whole—a “culture” in its own right. Against an overly speculative or dogmatic approach to ecumenical dialogue this approach moves forward primarily at the “practical” level by way of learning one another’s “culture” and “language” and the practices that flow from it and that inform it. In this view, little attention is given to formal doctrinal agreements, but there is rather a hope that if we begin to speak each other’s languages and learn each other’s culture through a set of common practices (e.g., reading Scripture together) then something fruitful might come out of it—hopefully some form of unity.

Much is to be commended in the postliberal turn to the “concrete” and the “particular,” perhaps especially its skepticism of hierarchy and formal doctrinal agreements, as well as its positive emphasis on the involvement of the laity. However, we are convinced that postliberalism still operates within the form of ecumenism as negotiation. In part, the problem is that postliberalism is unable to decisively break with the old ecumenical paradigm. In its turn toward the community and traditional practices as the site of ecumenical conversation, like the liberal paradigm postliberalism still works within the framework of a fundamental immanence. In its turn toward the “concrete” and against the “abstract,” like the traditional paradigm postliberalism tends to drive a wedge between doctrine and practice. The disregard of doctrine has often led to a strictly sociological perspective on the church and its practices so that the church in its visible empirical form becomes self-grounding and self-justifying.

The central problem with ecumenical dialogue in all forms is that it begins with the assumption that the empirical reality of the divided churches has fundamental theological import and that such division is something that we are charged to fix. The problem with ecumenical dialogue is that it assumes that we are the agents that bring about Christian unity. Ecumenical dialogue is unfaithful insofar as it assumes that the church as a configuration of practices is the active subject in bringing about visible unity. It is unfaithful not on account of its reliance on human agency, but because of a fundamental lack of faith in what has decisively been accomplished in Jesus Christ.

Thus, if we are to speak of the unity of the church we must begin anew, and most importantly, begin theologically. We submit that, theologically speaking, the one and only question that matters in regard to the church’s unity is: Is any given division between Christians something that, in Christ, is real? In Christ—in his work of breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, of calling those who were far off, and those who were near—is the division between, say, Protestant and Catholic a reality? Or, to put the question more biblically, “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor 1:13). This and this alone must be our question when we seek to address the unity of the church. The one and only question before our eyes must be the question of what, in Christ, is truly real. So therein lies the question: Is the division between Protestants and Catholics something that is real in Christ?

If our divisions are not real in Christ, then we have no business living as if they were. If, in Christ, we are in fact truly one, then any reason whatsoever that we might have for refusing full and unconditional fellowship with one another is illegitimate. The only way there could ever be a “legitimate” division between Christians would be if that division reflected something that is in fact a reality in Christ himself. This is precisely why the quest of ecumenism as negotiation must be abandoned. If anyone is in Christ, none of us can ever have a legitimate reason for being separate from one another. Any negotiation we might have cannot but be disobedience from the start if, in Christ, our divisions are not real. All such forms of ecumenism as negotiation, whether they admit it or not, ultimately proclaim that our divisions from one another are real. This is to speak against the Gospel. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is not that through his work we are now able to be at peace with one another, rather it is that “He is our peace” and that he, himself has “broken down the dividing wall of separation” (Eph 2:14). The Gospel is not that this reconciliation is a possibility that we may achieve, but rather that it is an actuality that we may joyfully affirm. Ecumenism as negotiation is a betrayal of this proclamation.

Where then, does this leave us? If we are to reject ecumenism as negotiation in all its forms, what then remains of the visible unity of the church? What is our task amidst the church’s radical and manifest brokenness and division? First and foremost our vocation is to name the situation truthfully, namely that all division between Christians is a betrayal of the Gospel and a refusal to acknowledge it as true. This of course is not proper ecumenical manners, but theologically it is imperative. All divisions must be acknowledged and confronted as refusals of the Gospel. They are our sinful and rebellious refusal to affirm the actuality of the reconciliation established in Christ. They are not, theologically speaking, conflicts of interpretation or misunderstanding. They are acts of rebellion (perhaps unintentional and ignorant rebellion, but rebellion nonetheless) against the Gospel and as such we must constantly test ourselves as to whether or not we are in the Faith (cf. 2 Cor 13:5).

Secondly, since all ecumenical negotiation is an exercise of refusing the Gospel, the next important step in living towards the reconciliation actualized in Christ is for us, as bodies of believers to cease to live under the regulations imposed by such ecumenical forms. The lines of division that are drawn and proclaimed between the churches are not something to be “resolved” through dialogue. Rather they are part of the form of this present world which, in Christ, is “passing away” (1 Cor 7:31). As they are not part of the new creation that is in Christ (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), we have no business acknowledging their power or seeking to appease it.

What is the upshot of this? It can mean nothing less than a call to all Christians and churches to “Welcome one another as God in Christ has welcomed you” (Rom 15:7). It means ignoring any pronounced wall of division that any person or community might seek to erect between Christians, no matter what its ecclesiastical source. It means we can never faithfully say “You are my sister or brother, but I cannot take eat with you for these reasons . . .” Such reasons are invalid in Christ. In Christ there is no longer any division and therefore any division that we acknowledge is to be counted among principalities and powers that crucified Jesus. To acknowledge them as legitimate is to betray the cross and the reconciliation it proclaims and effects.

The end of ecumenism is a risky proposition indeed. It calls us to attend first and foremost to the truth of Gospel, that in Christ, all our divisions, our violence, our alienation is done away with. And it calls us to cease living as if that were false; as if there were still some divisions that we need to negotiate our way through, as if there were still some alienations that Christ has not crucified in his own flesh. The end of ecumenism means the beginning of obedience, the obedience which refuses to say anything other than an unqualified Yes to fellowship, partnership, koinonia, indeed to living and dying with all those who follow after the Crucified One naming him as Lord.

Kingdom ecumenism

Posted by on March 2, 2011 18 comments

We are well accustomed to think of ecumenism in terms of how different denominations, communions, and systems of ecclesial organization and unity seek to come together in common. Ecumenism, as we have learned to understand and contribute to it involves churches (though the very name “church” is itself contested in the struggle) who are separated from each other by doctrine, practices, politics or some combination thereof. Ecumenical effort seeks to remedy this problem of inter-ecclesial division. Thus representatives of various ecclesial organizations meet and discuss their various theological, pastoral, and practical differences in a hope of finding ways to enter into communion with each other. What happens in ecumenism is a constant exercise of examining our differences and disagreements and seeing whether or not they are a sufficient obstacle, a truly relevant condition for us remaining separated from each other in fellowship (usually defined by taking the Lord’s Supper in common and acknowledging each other’s legitimacy in the ministry of the Gospel).

This, I think, is a fairly uncontroversial and commonly-held understanding of what Christian ecumenism is about. Ultimately ecumenism is about taking a look at the differences that separate Christians from one another and seeing if they can be resolved, or if they are really serious enough to keep us separate. This is ecumenism as usual.

Theologically speaking, however, I’ve come to find this understanding of ecumenism increasingly problematic. At the forefront of its problems is its fundamental lack of concern or regard for God, and in particular its willingness to proceed as if the triune God is not in fact a free and living Lord. If the proclamation of the Gospel truly requires the proclamation that “there is no ____ or _____, you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then our questions about unity must proceed, not on the basis discovering the legitimacy or non-legitimacy of our conditions of union with one another, but rather with the confession that all our conditions are illegitimate. It is precisely our conditions for receiving one another or refusing to do so that are nailed to the cross with Christ. What God has done in Christ and continues to enact ever anew by the Spirit is the abolition of all human reasons for not being at peace with one another. Christ has broken down, in his body of crucified, flesh any “legitimate reason” human beings might have for being separated from one another, from refusing to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters adopted together with Christ.

If the Gospel really is true, if God in Christ has really acted and continues to act as our free and living Lord to save and transform the world into the kingdom of God, our question can never be “What is the condition of our unity with one another?” There is no legitimate condition for giving ourselves away in love to one another other than the triune declaration Cross and Resurrection. If Christ has been raised, and if, in him all humanity is transformed and made new, there is no reason, doctrinal, political, pastoral, sacramental, or otherwise for us to legitimately refuse to receive one another. For us to refuse this, or try to fudge it seems to me to be nothing more than a refusal of the Gospel which proclaims, not what we ought to do and the proper conditions for doing it, but what God in Christ has in fact done and continues to do.

Thus, it seems to me more and more that, if we are to go on talking about ecumenism it must proceed in a manner altogether different than what we have come to understand as ecumenism in the last century. What is needed today is not an ecumenism of ecclesiastical organization and negotiation, but a kingdom ecumenism in which our only question can be “What is the God revealed in Christ, and active in the Spirit doing in God’s mission to save and transform the world, and how do we say  ‘YES!’ to that in all situations?” Our ecumenism must become centered firmly on the inbreaking Kingdom of God, wherever that is to be found in our world. Our goal as true “ecumenists,” as those seeking to witness to and participate in God’s oikonomia is to say “Yes” to whatever God’s transforming Spirit, the Spirit of the Living and Risen Jesus is doing in this world.

This, I think is the ecumenism we see in the book of Acts, in which the Apostles and the earliest Christians slowly and falteringly learn, bit by bit, that any prior conditions for unity that they may have, but be set aside in light of the freedom of the Spirit of Christ. Just so Peter learned to proclaim “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:47). Likewise we must learn to say “‘Can we withhold our fellowship, our table, our possessions, our friendship, partnership, and time from any of those in whom the Holy Spirit is active?” If our ecumenism is an ecumenism of the kingdom, in which our question can only be, “What is our free and living Lord doing in the world?” our answer must always be “No, we cannot withhold ourselves where the Spirit of Jesus is present in power!” An ecumenism of the kingdom means the end of insisting on our “legitimate reasons” for rejecting one another and calls us to “welcome one another as God in Christ has welcomed you” (Rom 15:7).

Ego te appsolvo

Posted by on February 9, 2011 14 comments

As I’m sure many of you have heard, there’s now a brand new Confession App on the market for Roman Catholics — available for iPhone and iPod Touch for a very reasonable $1.99! Appararently it’s gotten the imprimatur from at least one Catholic Bishop, and I was surprised to learn that it was developed in conversation with Catholic theologian Thomas Weinandy.

What are the theological implications of this? I submit that it falsifies, in pretty much every way, John Milbank’s thesis about there being a Catholic “alternative” to modernity.

Anabaptists and Ecumenism

Posted by on July 28, 2010 58 comments

I mentioned earlier Rowan Williams’ charitable comments about the Anabaptist/Mennonite stream of the Christian faith, and the important contribution it bears for the rest of Christianity as a whole. While I appreciate Williams’ comment greatly, the occasion — not the comment itself — reminded me of what I think is a common problem in the way in which Anabaptism tends to be “appreciated” in certain ecumenical circles (like the Ekklesia Project, for example).

It goes something like this: Anabaptism is important and helpful because, out of all the streams of the Christian tradition, it is the one that can teach us about how important it is to be pacifists. Thus, we the way that the Anabaptist witness is appropriated is generally by Catholic or mainline Protestant Christians embracing pacifism while remaining unchanged in regard to other theological distinctives. A good example of this is the Mennonite-Catholic dialogue group, Bridgefolk, which describes itself as “a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics who come together to celebrate each other’s traditions, explore each other’s practices, and honor each other’s contribution to the mission of Christ’s Church.”

Note the way this is set up: Mennonites have got peace and Catholics have got sacramentalism. Let’s slap the two together for extra ecumenical awesomeness! The Bridgefolk self-description goes on: “Together we seek better ways to embody a commitment to both traditions. We seek to make Anabaptist-Mennonite practices of discipleship, peaceableness, and lay participation more accessible to Roman Catholics, and to bring the spiritual, liturgical, and sacramental practices of the Catholic tradition to Anabaptists.” Again the mode of ecumenism at work here is clear: Mennonites have some good stuff to say about “discipleship” and “peaceableness” while Catholicism has got it figured out when it comes to “spiritual, liturgical, and sacramental practices.” All we need to do is appropriate these lovely elements and, viola! we have the perfect new instantiation of the Christian faith!

Now, to be sure I appreciate the way in which the contributions of the Anabaptist tradition to nonviolence and peacemaking are being appreciated by other elements of Christianity. I am truly thankful for this and I’m sure a lot of good comes out of groups like Bridgefolk. However, I think this sort of “reception” of Anabaptism is often a way of not actually taking Anabaptism seriously. The Anabaptist tradition is not, first of all, about “nonviolence” but rather about the nature of discipleship, the church, the world and the meaning of Christ’s Lordship. You can’t divorce Anabaptist’s theology of peace from their commitment to things like believer’s baptism, voluntary church membership, congregationalism, the rejection of clericalism, and yes, opposition to certain understandings of sacramentalism. To do so is to fail to take the tradition with any real seriousness. The same is true for Anabaptists and Mennonites who quickly latch on to quasi-Catholic enthusiasm about sacramental theology. (Indeed, most of what I’m saying here applies, vice-versa, to free churchers who think they can appropriate whatever elements of Catholicism they find compelling, a similarly-common tendency.)

The only point I really want to make here is that the assumption of some sort of easy give-and-take between the free churches and the establishment churches (Catholic or Protestant) is profoundly misguided. The Anabaptist tradition isn’t just “there” to provide mainline churches with a handy theological pacifism any more than the magisterial traditions are there to give free churches a nice way to think sacramentally. The divisions are much deeper, much more real, and indeed must more theological than such sorts of ecclectic ecumenism of convenience tends to acknowledge.

Anglicans and Anabaptists

Posted by on July 22, 2010 14 comments

Another interesting comment from Rowan Williams’ recent address focuses on the importance of the Anabaptist/Mennonite churches:

One other crucial focus today is, of course, the act of reconciliation with Christians of the Mennonite/Anabaptist tradition.  It is in relation to this tradition that all the ‘historic’ confessional churches have perhaps most to repent, given the commitment of the Mennonite communities to non-violence.  For these churches to receive the penitence of our communities is a particularly grace-filled acknowledgement that they still believe in the Body of Christ that they have need of us; and we have good reason to see how much need we have of them, as we look at a world in which centuries of Christian collusion with violence has left so much unchallenged in the practices of power.  Neither family of believers will be simply capitulating to the other; no-one is saying we should forget our history or abandon our confession.  But in the global Christian community in which we are called to feed one another, to make one another human by the exchange of Christ’s good news, we can still be grateful for each other’s difference and pray to be fed by it.

This strikes me as one of the few (I can’t think of any others, actually) occasions where I’ve heard someone of such high ecclesiastical office from one of the magisterial traditions take the Free Churches and their vital contributions to Christianity with some amount of non-patronizing seriousness. And for that, I am quite appreciative.

Umm, yes please!

Posted by on April 17, 2010 17 comments

I’ve got to say, this recent open letter from Hans Kung to the bishops of the Roman Church is quite arresting. Whether one agrees with every point Kung makes or not, I think the common quasi-catholic tendency to dismiss Kung as a half-baked liberal is simply laziness and disingenuity. As far as I’m concerned, as Protestant who longs for mutual openness, recognition, and unity between all Christians, Kung’s words here are, on the whole, right on.

Beckwith’s Rome

Posted by on March 24, 2010 34 comments

Jamie Smith has a review of Francis Beckwith’s book, Return to Rome up at The Other Journal. It certainly takes Beckwith to task for, among other things, making Rome in his own evangelical image. Definitely worth a read. Here’s an excerpt:

Beckwith has returned to the Rome of his evangelical dreams: a pure, pristine defender of truth, justice, and—not so surprisingly—the American way. No wonder, then, that he sees no tension between being “both Evangelical and Catholic.” His is an Evangelical Rome. This plays itself out in a curious conversation with his comrade J. P. Moreland. After reading Moreland a passage from an unnamed author who affirms that “the question about truth is the essential question of the Christian faith as such, and in that sense it inevitably has to do with philosophy,” Beckwith asks his colleague: “Guess who wrote this?” After Moreland reels off some favorite Protestant philosophers, Beckwith plays his gotcha: “It’s the Pope!” “He’s one of us!” Moreland replied in exuberance (78).

But somehow, I can’t imagine Benedict XVI on the faculty of Talbot School of Theology any time soon. So what’s going on here? Beckwith’s Pope is like Norman Geisler’s Aquinas: an anonymous evangelical. On a more macro scale, Beckwith’s Rome is evangelicalism by other means; that is, his is an intellectualized Catholicism—Rome as the home of the true set of Christian propositions or what Beckwith is wont to call “a Christian worldview.” Thus, he criticizes the Catholic teachers of his youth who “spoke of Catholicism as ‘our tradition’ rather than as a cluster of beliefs that were true” (36). The Rome to which he has returned is, ironically, the matrix of Christianity as an intellectual system—“ironically” because Cardinal Ratzinger (just a few weeks before becoming Pope Benedict XVI) has explicitly said that “Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or a moralism. Christianity is instead,” Ratzinger emphasized, “an encounter, a love story; it is an event.”

Satan and sex scandals

Posted by on March 17, 2010 11 comments

I’m sure we’ve all heard plenty about the recent round of abuse scandals among the Roman Catholic clergy. Of course this isn’t exactly new, but this time around it looks like they’re letting the Vatican’s resident exorcist come up with explanations for the phenomenon:

When you’re one of the most powerful institutions in the world and you’ve got an escalating series of sex abuse scandals erupting in such far-flung locales as Ireland,  Germany, Brazil and beyond on a near daily basis, how do you even begin to do damage control? If you’re the Catholic Church, maybe you say you’re going to investigate. You issue a few letters. And then just to cover all your bases, you do a little Satan blaming. In a bold and arguably wack move, the Vatican’s normally press-shy exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth has been granting interviews left and right lately, and they are a treasure trove of WTF moments.

You say you hadn’t been aware the Vatican even had an official exorcist? Thought that stuff was just for Linda Blair movies? That’s likely because, prior to last week, the Vatican had permitted its exorcist to grant one interview in the entire last century. Now, suddenly he’s doing the rounds like he’s got a new rom-com with Gerard Butler opening Friday.

Speaking to La Republica last week, Amorth, who in fact does have a new book, “Memoirs of an Exorcist,” to shill, said, “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” A few days later, he told the UK Times, “All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including pedophilia.” He also added that contemporary culture has “given in to the Evil One. You see it in the lack of faith, the empty churches, the collapse of the family. Compare the world of today to when I was a boy in Modena: families and parish communities were strong, women did not go out to work.”

I don’t know. If I were part of the Vatican superstructure working to get this matter settled, I don’t think I’d want this guy on my side.

Union with Christ, union with each other

Posted by on February 10, 2010 16 comments

It’s often commonly perceived that a central difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic ecclesiologies lies in that the former claims that one’s membership in the church is conditioned upon their union with Christ, whereas the latter tends to argue that one is only united with Christ through their membership in the church. Obviously this is caricature, but it does get at a common sentiment or style often found in various Protestant and Roman ecclesiologies.

But in turning the Roman Catechism again, I noticed something rather different. The Catechism specifically posits “the unity of all [the church's] members with each other as a result of their union with Christ” (789). This is the exact articulation of what is commonly perceived as the “Protestant” instinct, namely to  argue that the church’s mutual togetherness is constituted by Christ’s own indwelling of all Christians. In other words, even for the Roman Catechism one does not obtain union with Christ by becoming part of the church, rather through Christ’s act of uniting himself with you, you become part of the community of all those in whom Christ already dwells through the Spirit.

Just one thing, ctd.

Posted by on February 8, 2010 49 comments

My quote earlier from Joan of Arc about how Christ and the church are “just one thing” and “we shouldn’t complicate the matter” brought up the question of how some of the other quotes from the same section of the Catechism might qualify and illuminate that sort of crude language. Well, here they are (emphasis mine):

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God’s grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man…. The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does “head and members” mean? Christ and the Church. (Augustine)

Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself. (Gregory the Great)

Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person. (Aquinas)

Now, clearly all of these quotes use far superior language and employ greater sophistication than the quote from the Maid of Orleans. However, I don’t see how they amount to anything much different. To say that the church and Christ are “one person”, even one “mystical” person (definitely not a distinctly Pauline iteration of body of Christ language there), seems to posit a form of unity that is far too conflating. If Christ and the church are “one person” the very notion of distinguishing between the action of the church and the action of Christ is lost, thus rejecting the biblical notion of Jesus as the one who saves, who is the “one mediator between God and humankind” (1 Tim 2:5).

Just one thing?

Posted by on February 8, 2010 33 comments

As one might expect, the teaching of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church is heavy in its emphasis on the church as the body of Christ. In its discussion of the totus Christus, and the nature of Christ’s headship over the body there are several sources sited: Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and . . . Joan of Arc?

Indeed. Not only is Joan of Arc quoted, she is quoted as summing up “the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer”:

About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.

Now obviously I don’t want to make a statement by Joan of Arc out to be the height of Roman Catholic theological sophistication regarding the nature of the totus Christus. However, the Catechism clearly says that it sums up the teaching of the doctors and the sense of the faithful. As such this seems utterly inadequate and, in fact, an outright contradiction of the New Testament’s way of talking about Jesus and the church. Whatever the relation, Jesus and the church certainly are not “just one thing.”

One Irish Priest

Posted by on December 6, 2009 5 comments

In response to the inquiries about the routine cover-ups of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, one Irish priest had this to say:

There is no good in saying other than the truth. The church at this state has no credibility, no standing and no moral authority. The issue is now one of trust, and that is why it will take the rest of my lifetime as a priest to build up that trust again, because the trust and confidence in the church has been broken on a fundamental level.

Truth-telling always deserves promotion. I will pray for Fr Michael Canny, of the Derry Diocese of Ireland that he will not grow wearing in speaking the truth and trying to do what is right on behalf of those who have suffered.

He is certainly right that there is no good in saying anything other than the truth. Ecclesial faithfulness can mean nothing less than this.

Final Comment on Anglo-Catholicism

Posted by on November 2, 2009 22 comments

We’ve had plenty of discussion about the recent apostolic constitution from Rome regarding the admission of Anglo-Catholics into communion. Clearly there has been a lot of less than informed commentary from a variety of news outlets in the whole discussion. If there’s anything I’ve learned about Anglo-Catholicism from all this its that they are one bizarre group. Indeed, if you ask me this whole thing says far more about the nature of Anglo-Catholicism than it does about the Roman church. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Rome wants as many people as possible to become Roman Catholic. This has always been true. To be sure there are voices of ecumenical opposition from within the ranks, like Walter Kasper and Hans Kung who would like to see mutual recognition and reconciliation between Roman and Protestant churches, but in the main, the Vatican has always and unapologetically desired and sought the integration of all other Christians into itself. That’s simply business as usual. A traditional Catholic self-understanding seems to require an orientation such as this. Nobody should be shocked by this.

However, pause and consider for a moment what this whole thing says about the nature of Anglo-Catholicism (or at least the sort of Anglo-Catholics who are likely to convert to Rome through this recent pronouncement). Apparently Anglo-Catholics desire union with Rome because they truly believe everything that Rome teaches. Ok. But if that’s the case one wonders why they haven’t joined up with the throne of Peter long before now. After all, if I really truly believed that in order to be a part of Jesus’s church I needed to be submitted to the Pope, I’m pretty sure I’d get right on that.

But what we actually see here is an intricate process of making sure that any Anglo-Catholic parishes that come into the Roman fold are able to maintain their polity and liturgical practice. Being able to have their cake and eat it too is at the center of this whole arrangement. Now none of this is to say that the Anglican rite that will be preserved in these churches is somehow silly or irrelevant or worthless. I’m sure its a rich tradition that should be preserved. All I’m saying is that the level of priority it seems to be being accorded by the Anglo-Catholics is pretty crazy. If they really believe that the Pope is the successor of Peter and that all Christians must be in communion with him to be fully catholic, why the hell would they insist that they get their liturgical guarantees beforehand? If being Roman Catholic is as important to them as it seems to be to most Roman Catholics, why does this whole thing turn on them getting to make sure they can run their parishes and liturgies the way they want to?

It all seems to come down to an attitude of, “Well, we’d like to be Catholic, as long as we can still basically do our own Anglo-centric thing.” I suppose I get that and everything, and I’m definitely a fan of enculturated forms of liturgy, but there seems to be something pathological here. The bottom of this whole thing seems to be an issue of sentimentality rather than theology. The Anglo-Catholics seem desperate to preserve their distinctly Anglo nature more than anything else. If Rome is up for accommodating them, they seems happy to jump on board. But one wonders, would the Anglo-Catholics end up converting without these concessions? Would they want to be part of a Roman Catholic church that didn’t give them all their demands in advance? Would they want to be part of a Roman Catholic church that stuck by their doctrine and practice and required them to do so as well, rather than making special arrangements to accommodate their national and cultural sensibilities?

In short, the way this whole issue turns on liturgical preferences and being able to keep married priests says a lot about what sort of mass conversion this would really be if it happened. By bowing to the aesthetic and cultural sentimentalities of Anglo-Catholicism, Rome has made sure that any conversions that come from this will be of an utterly Protestant nature. The sort of Catholic longing that we see in Anglo-Catholicism seems to me to be little more than a sort of sublimity. What we have here is an aestheticization of catholicity which ultimately undermines the credibility of any Anglo-Catholic claim to really take catholicity itself seriously. If this whole debacle showcases anything it is that the “Anglo” designation  is far more determinative of Anglo-Catholicism than the “Catholic” one.

The Vatican’s Thirst for Power . . . according to Hans Kung

Posted by on October 29, 2009 10 comments

Kung has some harsh words for the recent apostolic constitution from the Vatican seeking to bring Anglo-Catholics into the Roman fold:

As I wrote in 1967, “a resumption of ecclesial community between the Catholic church and the Anglican church” would be possible, when “the Church of England, on the one side, shall be given the guarantee that its current autochthonous and autonomous church order under the Primate of Canterbury will be preserved fully” and when, “on the other side, the Church of England shall recognise the existence of a pastoral primacy of Petrine ministry as the supreme authority for mediation and arbitration between the churches.” “In this way,” I expressed my hopes then, “out of the Roman imperium might emerge a Catholic commonwealth.”

But Pope Benedict is set upon restoring the Roman imperium. He makes no concessions to the Anglican communion. On the contrary, he wants to preserve the medieval, centralistic Roman system for all ages – even if this makes impossible the reconciliation of the Christian churches in fundamental questions. Evidently, the papal primacy – which Pope Paul VI admitted was the greatest stumbling block to the unity of the churches – does not function as the “rock of unity”. The old-fashioned call for a “return to Rome” raises its ugly head again, this time through the conversion particularly of the priests, if possible, en masse. In Rome, one speaks of a half-million Anglicans and 20 to 30 bishops. And what about the remaining 76 million? This is a strategy whose failure has been demonstrated in past centuries and which, at best, might lead to the founding of a “uniate” Anglican “mini-church” in the form of a personal prelature, not a territorial diocese. But what are the consequences of this strategy already today?

First, a further weakening of the Anglican church. In the Vatican, opponents of ecumenism rejoice over the conservative influx. In the Anglican church, liberals rejoice over the departure of the catholicising troublemakers. For the Anglican church, this split means further corrosion. It is already suffering from the consequences of the heedless and unnecessary election of an avowed gay priest as bishop in the US, an event that split his own diocese and the whole Anglican communion. This friction has been enhanced by the ambivalent attitude of the church’s leadership with respect to homosexual partnerships. Many Anglicans would accept a civil registration of such couples with wide-ranging legal consequences, for instance in inheritance law, and would even accept an ecclesiastical blessing for them, but they would not accept a “marriage” in the traditional sense reserved for partnerships between a man and a woman, nor would they accept a right to adoption for such couples.

Second, the widespread disturbance of the Anglican faithful. The departure of Anglican priests and their re-ordination in the Catholic church raises grave questions for many Anglicans: are Anglican priests validly ordained? Should the faithful together with their pastor convert to the Catholic church?

Third, the irritation of the Catholic clergy and laity. Discontent over the ongoing resistance to reform is spreading to even the most faithful members of the Catholic church. Since the Second Vatican Council in the 60s, many episcopal conferences, pastors and believers have been calling for the abolition of the medieval prohibition of marriage for priests, a prohibition which, in the last few decades, has deprived almost half of our parishes of their own pastor. Time and again, the reformers have run into Ratzinger’s stubborn, uncomprehending intransigence. And now these Catholic priests are expected to tolerate married, convert priests alongside themselves. When they want themselves to marry, should they first turn Anglican, and then return to the church?

Just as we have seen over many centuries – in the east-west schism of the 11th century, in the 16th century Reformation and in the First Vatican Council of the 19th century – the Roman thirst for power divides Christianity and damages its own church. It is a tragedy.

Now, I realize that in the minds of many Kung is simply an ultra-liberal Catholic who should be cast out into the street. I can’t really say. I haven’t read enough of his work to really know. But something about this doesn’t really sound crazy to me. It actually sounds kind of honest.

H/T: Sub Ratione Dei

Ratzinger the Revisionist

Posted by on October 27, 2009 15 comments

David Gibson has some interesting commentary on the unexpected way Ratzinger’s papacy is turning out, as seen most recently in the whole move to bring in the disaffected Anglicans:

Thus far, Benedict’s papacy has been one of constant movement and change, the sort of dynamic that liberal Catholics — or Protestants — are usually criticized for pursuing. In Benedict’s case, this liberalism serves a conservative agenda. But his activism should not be surprising: As a sharp critic of the reforms of Vatican II, Ratzinger has long pushed for what he calls a “reform of the reform” to correct what he considers the excesses or abuses of the time.

Of course a “reformed reform” doesn’t equal a return to the past, even if that were the goal. Indeed, Benedict’s reforms are rapidly creating something entirely new in Catholicism. For example, when the pope restored the old Latin Mass, he also restored the use of the old Good Friday prayer, which spoke of the “blindness” of the Jews and called for their conversion. That prayer was often a spur to anti-Jewish pogroms in the past, so its revival appalled Jewish leaders. After months of protests, the pope agreed to modify the language of the prayer; that change and other modifications made the “traditional” Mass more a hybrid than a restoration.

More important, with the latest accommodation to Anglicans, Benedict has signaled that the standards for what it means to be Catholic — such as the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Mass as celebrated by a validly ordained priest — are changing or, some might argue, falling. The Vatican is in effect saying that disagreements over gay priests and female bishops are the main issues dividing Catholics and Anglicans, rather than, say, the sacraments and the papacy and infallible dogmas on the Virgin Mary, to name just a few past points of contention.

That is revolutionary — and unexpected from a pope like Benedict. It could encourage the view, which he and other conservatives say they reject, that all Christians are pretty much the same when it comes to beliefs, and the differences are just arguments over details.

And that could be the final irony. For all the hue and cry over last week’s developments, Benedict’s innovations may have glossed too lightly over the really tough issues: namely, the theological differences that traditional Anglicans say have kept them from converting, as they could always do.

Switch to our mobile site