WHAT IS ECUMENICAL RECEPTION?

Pope Paul VI spoke, in front of the non-Catholic observers at the Second Vatican Council, of ‘the true treasures of truth and spirituality which you possess’. This was an acknowledgement of a need for all churches to address not only ways of receiving and maintaining the common truths of the faith together, but the task of receiving from one another things which each is especially qualified to contribute.

Conversely, reception cannot be complete while separated traditions cling to consciousness of difference of belief. In the 1930s we find ‘The representatives of the Anglican Church would say …’; ‘The representatives of the Eastern Orthodox Church would say … Such assertions can still be heard, as we shall see in a moment. Such clinging amounts to a ‘looking backward to particular traditions’, and that (argues Lukas Vischer), clearly cannot be the last word if we are looking forward to unity.

That is not to imply in any way that the separate traditions have to be abandoned. Within each, reception has been going on. The problem is simply that it has been going on in division. The separated reception-processes with their varied emphases and special insights therefore stand in need of completion by being received by the rest of Christendom. The recognition that there has been separated reception is an acknowledgement that positions stated by only a proportion of the body of the faithful must ultimately be tested by the whole.