Photo by Seongyun from Getty images
In the long summer of Covid lockdowns I had the pleasure of meeting, digitally of course, Bishop Brian Farrell, who was then Secretary for the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. I had just begun serving as the Director of Ecumenism for Glenmary Home Missioners, a missionary society, and was energetic, ambitious, and green, so the prospect of meeting this kind, Irish bishop filled me with a healthy level of trepidation.
Naturally, I prepped my questions, leading with the simple, “What is the biggest change you’ve seen in ecumenism in the twenty years you’ve worked at the Vatican?”
Bishop Farrell’s response has guided my ministry ever since. He said that for years we have led with the question of church structure; this was important, and needs to continue to be discussed. But over the past few years, we’ve begun to lead instead with the question of our own experience of Jesus. This, he said, has opened up our dialogues by bringing more types of Christian groups to the ecumenical table and has further centered our conversation on Christ, who is the fullness of our unity.
Three years later, I shared this story with a group of Evangelical and Catholic theologians as we began the journey of ecumenical dialogue at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. The former, representing those Christians to whom the table of ecumenical dialogue has been helpfully extended by this shift, entered into this conversation with curiosity, led by the Evangelical unity ministry, Kingdom Mission Society.
Most of the Evangelicals had never experienced a Catholic mass, let alone met a monk like the ones they would encounter at the Benedictine abbey. In many ways, this was a whole new world, one that had previously been encountered only through reading books of medieval history.
The same group convened again, one year later, at Asbury Theological Seminary, the site of the “Asbury Outpouring”—a three-week gathering of continuous and completely unplanned prayer, music, and times of repentance, which brought tens of thousands from across the country to this two stoplight town. For many of our Catholic participants, and I daresay for us all, we had little experience with this kind of revival, which was reminiscent of those that took place in the ministry of John Wesley and Francis Asbury, by whose namesake the university was given. We heard stories from the students who took part in this time of worship, and entered the campus chapel where the majority of the gathering took place, and it felt as though we were on a pilgrimage together—entering into the space hallowed by the presence of the Spirit and held in a kind of oral tradition of the event.
Central to our meetings was the question, “How do we, Evangelicals and Catholics, see one another as Christian?” You may laugh at the simplicity of the question and the assumptions it carries. Of course we are all Christian!
But to hurry past the question overlooks the context in which the inquiry is posed. As a Catholic ecumenist I can recite chapter and verse of any number of ecumenical documents in response, and to do so may, especially with Evangelicals, calm the fears implicit in the question. But with the ecumenical movement stuck in Narnia’s proverbial winter without the reprieve of Christmas, even with our current resources, we might ask how this question, and those who ask it, may serve to warm the heart, quicken the imagination and bring us forward into a springtime of ecumenism?
How do our communions continually attune themselves—and ourselves—to the image of Christ? This, it seems to me, is a flowering of the ecumenical shift that Bishop Farrell shared with me years prior.
Evangelicals bring another perspective to the question of Christian identity, one by which Catholics can learn and benefit. Specifically, to ask the question of how one sees another as Christian implies that it can be experienced, that you can actually see it, even if it looks different than my experience.
Throughout our conversations, carried by both the prayers of monks and student revivals, we found our dialogue drawing out the implications of this perspective by centering on the word attunement. How do our communions continually attune themselves—and ourselves—to the image of Christ? This, it seems to me, is a flowering of the ecumenical shift that Bishop Farrell shared with me years prior.
The conversation between these Catholic and Evangelical theologians continues today. Papers have been shared, questions raised, friendships solidified, and the topic of attunement has carried with us until we produced the first draft of a statement titled, “The Gift of Being Christian Together.” Prayer and revision have brought it down to a single-page document.
“The Gift of Being Christian Together” highlights how faith is a gift through “Jesus’ saving Cross, His Resurrection, and the sending of the Spirit,” which is a grace that was highlighted by both our Reformed and Dominican theologians.
It also recognizes the reality that liturgical and doctrinal differences, “some substantial,” exist and yet “presume a shared, even if contested commitment to Christ.”
Frequently, our document extends the emotions we as theologians and organizers have had—the “delight” we experience in calling one another Christian, not because every obstacle has been overcome, but because we experience for ourselves another’s love for Christ.
We chose to end the statement by inviting repentance for the times we have failed to recognize the faith of the other, particularly those martyrs for the faith who share in what Pope Francis has called an “ecumenism of blood.”
In the spring of this year, “The Gift of Being Christian Together” was presented to the USCCB’s Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for review. One month later, we received their letter of recommendation for the document and its use by theologians and local communities for further study.
Evangelical groups have also endorsed the document, along with many individuals. Recently, the Gift has been translated into French by the Christian Forum in Switzerland who asked to use the document for their own gathering in the fall. And as we began preparation for our second phase of dialogues, centered on doctrinal development and formulation, I received unexpected emails from directors of evangelization and Evangelical pastors requesting help in organizing local study groups with their ecumenical neighbors.
I find that often the catalyst for ecumenical engagement is not by mandate, or even necessity, but experiential. We have experienced for ourselves another Christian’s love and faith in Christ, and this has led us to desire greater unity with these believers who at first seemed so different. As we experience the faith of others may this desire for unity only continue to grow.
