Ecumenism and Authentic Renewal: A Response to Paul Johnson on Papal Strategy

For the sake of restoration and authentic renewal, thoughtfully conservative Catholics should embrace John Paul II’s strategy for Christian reunion.

Paul Johnson’s “The Strategy of John Paul II” (C in C, Sept. 1984) is a spirited and insightful statement which contributes greatly to our understanding of what this Pope may be up to. The following comments are offered not so much in criticism as in amplification of Johnson’s analysis. “John Paul has also put the brakes on the ecumenical movement,” writes Johnson, “though it should be emphasized that this movement acquired its own momentum and has created its own powerful lobby within the church.” The actual course of events, plus the ecumenical literature, plus numerous conversations with parties deeply engaged in the quest for visible Christian reunion lead me to the conclusion that it is misleading to suggest that John Paul has “put the brakes on the ecumenical movement” or that its momentum is sustained by a “lobby” within the Roman Catholic Church. It is more accurate to say that John Paul is seeking to redefine and revive a movement, the momentum of which is sustained in large part by his own bold initiatives.

Johnson notes John Paul’s assertion that “Only a church deeply consolidated in the faith can be a church of authentic dialogue.” This no doubt means in part that the Catholic Church must “get its theological act together” before reunion can proceed on a solid foundation. But it also means that John Paul is calling upon other communions to assert their doctrinal or, as we Lutherans say, “Confessional” integrity more fully in order to advance reunion. This is a point underscored by Cardinal Willebrands, head of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, when he addressed the Toronto convention of the Lutheran Church in America this summer. He made the argument even more strongly in his later address to the assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Budapest. At a September consultation in New York sponsored by the Center on Religion and Society, Archbishop John O’Connor reinforced this understanding of John Paul’s strategy. In other words, John Paul is only “putting the brakes on” a species of ecumenism that is theologically minimalistic and therefore offers no firm basis for advancing the desired reunion of the churches.

Since he is English, it is understandable that Johnson stresses Rome’s relation to Canterbury. I believe that stress contributes to the skewing of his otherwise admirable analysis. To be sure, since the 19th century it has been widely assumed that there is a “special relationship” between Rome and Canterbury and that Anglicanism is somehow the “bridge church” between Rome and an undifferentiated “Protestantism.” For some years now this assumption has been discredited among students of the ecumenical enterprise. It has been discredited in large part because of the manifest doctrinal disarray within Anglicanism, not least of all within the Episcopal Church of this country. Doctrinal vacuity has led many Anglicans who are concerned about Christian unity to rest their claims almost entirely upon “the historic episcopate.” The problem with this, according to Anglican Stephen Sykes, is that such a monothematic focus upon the episcopate has no warrant in the very catholic tradition which the episcopate presumably preserves. The goal must be, writes Sykes, “to establish Anglicanism on lines significant for the future of the world-wide church, not on the bogus grounds of its status as a so-called ‘bridge church,’ but on the grounds of its capacity to submit its inheritance to a searching theological appraisal.” (cf. The Integrity of Anglicanism, 1978). The possession of some vestigial appurtenances of catholicity without the content of catholicity is a weak reed upon which to rest hopes for reunion, and that is one reason for Canterbury’s rapidly descending role in Rome’s ecumenical priorities. To put it differently, in the thinking of Rome and others the apostolic succession of faith is more important than a putative apostolic succession of order, and the latter is utterly devoid of meaning in the absence of the former.

Thus, from the perspective of 19th century Anglo-Catholic hopes for reunion, it might seem that John Paul is putting on the brakes. Were Newman still around, however, he might observe that it is less a matter of Rome applying the brakes than it is a matter of Canterbury having lost its way and discarded the road map. Similarly, it might seem that John Paul is putting on the brakes with respect to that ecumenical Movement associated with the World Council of Churches. This is not the place to review the descent of the World Council into a narrowly politicized understanding of the church and its gospel. Suffice it to say that such a descent has happened and the result is an ever widening gap between the World Council and the Vatican. (For an analysis of this development from a World Council perspective see Thomas Deer, Barriers to Ecumenism, 1983.) The historic ecumenical quest — theologically grounded and directed toward the reunion of the churches — is not entirely absent from the World Council’s work even today. Hopeful attention is rightly paid, for example, to the “Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry” document recently produced by the Council’s Faith and Order division. Unfortunately, Faith and Order continues to be sharply subordinated to the Council’s program of liberationist activisms. One must not preclude the possibility that some time in the future both Anglicanism and the World Council might again play a critical role, in the Vatican’s ecumenical strategy, but John Paul seems to have concluded that that is not likely to be any time soon.

Alexander Schmemann, the premier Orthodox theologian and ecumenist who died last year, spoke of “the new ecumenical triangle.” By this he meant Rome, the Orthodox and the Lutherans. I believe that it is in this connection that John Paul, far from putting on the brakes, is working toward a redefinition and revival of the ecumenical movement. Paul Johnson is undoubtedly right in saying that the Orthodox must have a singular place in Rome’s ecumenical strategy. The burden of reuniting East and West rests primarily upon Rome, since it is clearly the symbolic and institutional center of Western Christianity. The Orthodox, as disparate as they are, also seek a strategy in this process. In dealing with Rome they feel they need a point of ecumenical leverage in collaboration with a major communion of the West. In the century past that collaboration was thought to be with Anglicanism. But today Orthodoxy’s disillusionment with Canterbury is even deeper than Rome’s — thus the new ecumenical triangle of Orthodoxy, Lutheranism and Rome. In all three communions, ecumenists are sometimes hesitant to describe it this way publicly, lest they seem to be excluding other Christians from the redefined ecumenical movement. Obviously, the ecumenical vision must encompass all Christians, but here we are speaking of strategy and thus of priorities.

It is critically important for Catholics, especially those who view themselves as conservative Catholics, to understand this new ecumenical situation. For too long, Catholics who are concerned about the current disarray within Catholicism have tended to lump ecumenism into the catalogue of causes undermining Catholic truth, identity and mission. To be sure, the first phase of post-Vatican II ecumenism frequently was theologically superficial and contributed to a climate of relativistic indifference to normative truth. But the beginnings of this second phase, affirmed as I believe it is by the strategy of John Paul, present a dramatically different picture. This redefined and revitalized ecumenism must now be viewed as an instrument of that “consolidation in the faith” of which John Paul speaks.

Consider, for example, the theological productions of twenty years of dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics in this country and internationally. In terms of intensity of scholarship and devotion to normative truth in scripture, creeds and tradition, these dialogues represent Lutheranism at its best and Catholicism at its best. Would that theological and pastoral conditions in both of our communions were as well ordered as these dialogues picture them and call them to be. Far from these dialogues “watering down” Catholic truth and identity, they present a vibrant and assertive Catholicism greatly superior to what most Catholics would acknowledge is the actual state of their church in North America and some other parts of the world. Precisely for the sake of restoration and authentic renewal in Catholicism, thoughtfully conservative Catholics should be championing the process of Lutheran-Roman Catholic reunion. An ecumenical movement that has as its foundation the three major communions of strongest confessional substance is a cause of high hope for all who care about the integrity and fullness of the catholic tradition.

As we are engaged in “healing the breach of the sixteenth century” Lutherans become more Lutheran and Catholics become more Catholic. This process is not motored by cultural forces which assume that truth does not matter, but is motored by that distinctly Christian truth that makes reunion imperative. Such reunion, when, by the grace of God, it comes, will give the lie to those secularists who have since the seventeenth century claimed that religion is inherently divisive and must therefore be confined to the so-called private sphere of life. Healing the division occasioned by the Reformation will be a powerful statement of Christianity’s unifying force and potential for the cultural reconstruction of the West.

The Lutheran connection is critical not only because Lutheranism is the largest non-Roman communion in the West, but also because the constituting vision of Lutheranism has always been reunion with Rome. That is, unlike other Christian bodies in the West, Lutheranism never intended to be a separate church but declared itself to be a reforming movement within and for the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. From the Lutheran viewpoint, Lutheranism’s existence as a separate communion is a tragic necessity forced by Rome’s recalcitrance in the 16th century. The Lutheran reformers insisted on only one thing: that Rome permit the free preaching of the gospel according to their understanding of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. The great news of this historical moment is that Rome does give that permission and, indeed, acknowledges that truth for which the Lutheran reformers pressed. (The cynic might observe that Rome seems to permit the preaching of anything today, but the permission I am referring to is not a matter of laxity but of agreement in truth.)

Superficial ecumenism downplays theology and seeks unity — or even the feeling of togetherness — in other areas. In the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue it is obvious that it is exactly in theology, in consolidation in the faith, that we are increasingly one. Some scholars on both sides believe that, theologically speaking, there is no barrier to reunion now. But of course, and again on both sides, more than theology is involved. There are institutional and other blocks to the “reception” of the dialogue results. By “reception” ecumenists mean that the churches must not only formally approve the dialogues, but internally digest and act upon the theological agreements achieved. It would be a great tragedy were this historic moment to be missed. It would be tragic in terms of visible unity and all that entails for the Church’s role in cultural reconstruction. And it would be tragic for our mutual consolidation in the faith. If a Lutheran may be so presumptuous, permit me to urge that it is past time for conservative Catholics to embrace the cause of Christian reunion as advanced by the ecumenical strategy of John Paul II.

Author

  • Richard John Neuhaus

    Richard John Neuhaus was a prominent Christian cleric (first as a Lutheran pastor and later as a Roman Catholic priest) and writer. Born in Canada, Neuhaus moved to the United States where he became a naturalized United States citizen. He was the founder and editor of the monthly journal First Things and the author of several books, including The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984), The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World (1987), and Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth (2006).

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