Anyone wishing to learn what has happened to ecumenism over the past forty-odd years will find answers and explanations in this book. And anyone wishing to learn how the disappointments and setbacks previously encountered might be avoided and the different Christian churches drawn closer together in the future will also find answers and practical direction here. This is an excellent volume, one that should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in engaging in ecumenical activity from now on: thirty-two different contributions from well qualified contributors, most but by no means all British/Irish, eliciting from one continental participant the flattering observation on the “English” Roman Catholic scene: “a minority church overflowing with intellectual and theological talents” showing “greater vitality” than many of its continental majority sisters! The editor has left no stone unturned in his efforts to ensure not only that theological ideas and principles are clearly aired but also that the practical difficulties of converting ideas into practice are confronted and overcome. Topics covered range from what Roman Catholics have to learn from Anglicans/ Methodists/ the Orthodox to Managing Change in the Irish Civil Service, and Psychoanalytic Perspectives on factors inhibiting Receptive Ecumenism. The book is clearly divided into five sections, which the editor in the Preface usefully boils down to “three concerns”: the imaginative-constructive, the critical-constructive, and the practical-organizational. Contributions are invariably insightful, scholarly and informative and all but a few are written in clear, accessible prose. The publishers have produced a most attractive volume, and indexes, bibliography, notes and the potted biographies of all the contributors are exemplary.
Products are only as good as the preparation that goes into their making, and it is not surprising that the high quality of this book is the result of on-going collaboration over a number of years between the Theology Department at Durham University and other theological institutions in the anglophone world, and that it is in many ways the fruit of an international colloquium on Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning held in January 2006 at Ushaw College. Receptive Ecumenism is the key idea and is well explained by the editor in the form of a self-critical question: “What can we learn, or receive, with integrity from our various others in order to facilitate our own growth together into deepened communion in Christ and the Spirit?” (his italics). There are many references to Pope John Paul II's felicitous remark that ecumenical dialogue is not just “an exchange of ideas” but “an exchange of gifts” and this in turn inspires several contributions searching out what Catholics might learn from the institutional practices and theological cultures of other churches as well as what others might freely take from the Catholic tradition. This marks a decisive shift away from the fairly common Roman Catholic attitude of “let them come to our truth”: in place of this approach space is given here to the easing of ecumenical engagement by focusing on practical activities of mission and service rather than “on unravelling arcane matters of faith and order” considered to be “blocking the way to structural unity”. The lessons of the last forty years are that it is not enough to clarify ideas and reach agreement on theological topics that once divided Christians but that such enterprises need to be accompanied by “a slow and difficult growth in maturity” and by facing up to the responsibilities revealed by inter-church conversation and action. Yves Congar's comment – that the church is not something finished but a dynamic entity that grows internally in its striving for its own unity and externally by its striving for unity with the world – is quoted with approval by Cardinal Walter Kasper, and in many ways Congar and Kasper are the heroes of this volume. Kasper, to whom the book is dedicated, provides a Foreword as well as one of the key chapters, and his theology of the Holy Spirit is the subject of one excellent paper while his “communio-ecclesiology” features strongly in others. Indeed, the notion of the Church as first and foremost a communion is shared by just about all the contributors, Catholic and others, and several references are made to Congar's mocking of much erstwhile catholic ecclesiology as amounting to little more than “hierarchology”. The lament that stands at the centre of the volume, the plangent hope that inspires it, is well expressed in a quotation from the Orthodox Metropolitan, John of Pergamon: “it is a pity to hold the same conviction on the importance of the Eucharist but not be able to share it at the same Table …”
The Petrine Ministry, recognised by Pope John Paul II as a major obstacle to Christian unity, comes in for a good deal of comment. This is one Catholic “gift” which not a few other churches are not prepared to accept – at least not in the form in which it is currently exercised and has often been exercised in the past. Here again Kasper's observations are illuminating, as he claims that the participants in the First Vatican Council were “traumatised” by political events and cultural developments at the time and, because of this, defined the papacy in terms of absolute sovereignty: but what was intended as a response to an extreme and exceptional situation has become a normal one (p. 207). A new word I learned in this book was “re-reception”: there is a good deal about how older doctrines might be “re-received” in the light of later developments, and there is a belief that the claims for papal primacy made at Vatican I need to be “re-received” in light of the comments on collegiality to be found in the documents of Vatican II. In one of the finest chapters, Hervé Legrand quotes Congar's comments on how “the reception of the ideas of the Second Vatican Council had run up against the reality of the institutions resulting from the First”. Despite the fact that Vatican II's vote in favour of collegiality was the “backbone” of the entire Council and its “centre of gravity”, the actual situation forty years on is that the bishop has technically become a “functionary of the pope”– a view reinforced by the “revised” Canon Law of 1983. Legrand draws the logical conclusion that research into the institutional implications of agreements will be needed to support ecumenical dialogue in the future (p. 393).
But what emerges most strongly from this volume is that what is needed if the ecumenical movement is to bear fruit is not only the overcoming of practical difficulties but growth in holiness, meaning wholeness, and conversion to Christ by the power of the Spirit. Here once more Kasper's observations on “Spirit Christology” and “Ecclesiology as a function of Pneumatology”, a subject on which the West has much to learn from the East, point the way forward: institutional changes are needed but they must be based on sound theological developments. That is where “the Call to Catholic Learning” comes in.
No one reading this book will be left in any doubt about the obstacles and difficulties that lie in the path of ecumenical progress – several contributors refer to the current “ecumenical winter”. But the book also heartens by pointing to the progress already made, remarkable in so many ways, and also by furnishing conceptual tools and spiritual principles and ideals that need to stand at the heart (a good word) of ecumenical practice if Christians are going to take it seriously. As these varied contributions make clear, there are so many riches waiting to be received, if only we have the will and spiritual capacity to receive them.
