Ecumenism, Theory of

ECUMENISM, Theory of. - A word derived from "ecumenical," that is, universal, which is used in modern times to indicate every kind of religious activity that is not limited to the internal problems of a Christian Church. In the proper sense, ecumenism is the most recent theory devised by interconfessional movements, especially Protestant ones, to achieve the union of the Christian Churches. Here we speak of ecumenism in the strict sense.

I. NOTION OF ECUMENISM

Ecumenism presupposes as its basis the equality of all Churches before the problem of union.

This under the threefold aspect of psychological, historical and eschatological: a) psychologically all the Churches must acknowledge themselves equally guilty of the separation, so that, instead of accusing one another, each must ask forgiveness; b) historically no Church, after the separation, can believe itself the one and total Church of Christ, but only a part of this one Church: consequently, none can claim the right to oblige the others to return to it, but all must feel the obligation to reunite among themselves, in order to reconstitute the One and Holy Church founded by the Savior; c) eschatologically the future Church, resulting from the union, cannot be identical with any of the Churches now existing. The Holy Ecumenical Church, which will arise in this new Pentecost, will equally surpass all the individual Christian confessions. One sees at once that such theories are in contrast with the Catholic faith. They nevertheless offer a certain advantage of a practical order, cutting off every rivalry among the various Churches, and setting out the whole arduous problem of union on a plane without orthodox and heretics, without victors and without vanquished. Hence unionist reviews with the title Oecumenica have multiplied; indeed the two most important international unionist associations, Life and Work and Faith and Order, merged in 1946 into a single one with the title "Ecumenical Council," whose first congress was held in Amsterdam from 22 Aug. to 5 Sept. 1948.

II. PROTESTANT ECUMENISM

Given the origin of ecumenism, it found a broad welcome in the Protestant field. Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and the other minor sects constitute the most numerous element of ecumenism, which also found in the Protestants its principal authors; and this even though there does not reign among them a perfect agreement (v. further below).

III. ORIENTAL ECUMENISM

The separated Easterners ought logically to take a position against ecumenism, since they, like Catholics, proclaim themselves the one true Church of Christ. Nevertheless, the principal spokesmen of the Eastern Churches and the most renowned authors show themselves ready to range themselves alongside the Protestant ecumenists.

The thought of the Easterners has been gathered in the volume Il problema ecumenico nella coscienza ortodossa, published by the YMCA (3, d.) of Paris. In general it may be said that the Eastern ecumenists, principally Russians, link themselves to the concept of the "universal Church," so frequent among Russian thinkers of the 19th century. Some distinguish between the essence and nature and the form of the Church (in the language of Catholic theology these concepts correspond to the body and the soul, or to the matter and the form of the Church), in order to say that the future ecumenical Church will preserve the form of their Church, but in a new body, more universal, through which it may develop all its fullness of life and of holiness. Others, more radical and without theological scruples, such as Nicholas Berdyaev, distinguish the spirit and the confession, too narrow in its dogmatic formulas. All these scaffoldings of the Eastern Church, like those of the other Christian Churches, are destined to disappear in the future Church; the spirit, on the other hand, will remain intact in the fusion with the other Christian Churches.

IV. CATHOLIC ECUMENISM

For Catholics the paths of ecumenism in the original sense of the term are closed, principally after Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Mortalium animos (6 Jan. 1928) and Pius XII in Orientalis Ecclesiae (1944) reaffirmed the genuine concept of the unity of the Church, and traced the method to be followed in promoting the return of the dissidents.

Pius XII writes (Orientalis Ecclesiae): "That theory does not lead to the most desired return of erring sons to the sincere and just unity in Christ which places as the foundation of the concordant consent of the faithful only those heads of doctrine on which all or the majority of the communities that glory in the Christian name find themselves in agreement, but rather the other which, without accepting or diminishing any of them, integrally receives every truth revealed by God.

Let it be added that the Congregation of the Holy Office, on 5 June 1948, in recalling the canonical prescriptions that forbid mixed gatherings, says that these prescriptions "must all the more be observed when it is a question of the so-called ecumenical conferences in which Catholics, laymen and clerics, may take no part whatsoever without the prior consent of the Holy See." These directives were confirmed in the Instruction of the Holy Office of 20 Dec. 1949 on the "ecumenical movement." Nevertheless some Catholics who favor the unionist movement support ecumenism, not understood in the Protestant manner, but as a tactic that seeks points of contact with dissident Christians, from whom, according to some, Catholics would have various lessons to learn. All this seems at the very least inopportune, since the use of a term which, in its current sense, involves anti-Catholic theories lends itself to confusions.

In 1934 the hieromonk Alessio van der Menschbrugghe, in the article Danger du formalisme, in Oecumenica, 1 (1934), pp. 312-28, and Oscar Bauhofer in the book Einheit u. Glauben, Einsiedeln 1935, show an open inclination in favor of ecumenism. Abbot P. Coutourier adheres to it in his articles in the Revue apologétique (1937), as does Fr. M. J. Congar in the book published in 1937 in Paris: Chrétiens désunis. Principes d'un «oecuménisme» catholique.

But this attempt is of a nature to raise grave reservations. In fact, if for Catholics ecumenism means what the dissidents intended in coining the word, it entails the admission of the separate and Protestant Churches as parts of the true Church, as well as the affirmation that the Catholic Church does not possess in itself at present the essential fullness. Fr. Congar can hardly escape the necessity of admitting at least in part these postulates assigned to ecumenism; not only are individual separated persons of good faith members of the true and only Church, but their Churches also possess such and so many elements of the true Church that the dissidents are saved in their Churches, which can for that very fact be considered not totally detached from the one Church founded by Christ for the salvation of souls. As for the Catholic Church, it clearly lacks nothing essential, but it does lack a certain degree of perfection. Thus a certain equilibrium and equality is re-established: although in a different manner and degree, all of us without distinction move toward union in order to integrate what is lacking in the individual Churches.

It must be confessed that even this use of ecumenism has encountered among Catholics an almost general distrust. They find it too bold and dangerous; non-Catholic ecumenists such as P. G. Habert (Un «Oecuménisme» catholique, in Oecumenica, 5 [1938], pp. 10-23) ask themselves whether this ecumenism does not rather reduce itself to an artificial complex of formal ecumenical gestures empty of real meaning.

Maurizio Gordillo