“Making” Christian Unity: Joseph Ratzinger & Ecumenism
In 1986, a German academic journal invited Joseph Ratzinger to share his thoughts on the state of Christian unity. Recalling the Second Vatican Council, and the “tempo at which new and hitherto unexpected things suddenly became possible,” Ratzinger observed how many Christians, following the close of the Council, entertained the seemingly well-founded hope that divisions between Christians were nearing their end. Such Christians, however, were largely unaware of the “long struggle” leading to (and occurring during) the Council, and when the unity they desired did not so speedily materialize, short-cuts in pursuit began to be taken.
Egalitarianism & Chauvinism
Ratzinger holds that in the pursuit of Christian unity, to be avoided is a false egalitarianism which tends towards viewing the existing practices of others as de facto traditions, regardless of the relation such practices hold to the Scriptures or to Tradition. Concretely, a person motivated by false egalitarianism might view the Book of Common Prayer, or the Book of Alternative Services, as having worth simply because they are possessed by Anglican (Episcopalian) believers, rather than because of the relation such texts hold to the Scriptures or to Tradition.
To be avoided also is confessional chauvinism. In Ratzinger’s view, the Christian person is not to “interpret as truth that which is, in reality, a historical development with a more or less close relationship to truth.” Confessional chauvinism confuses traditions or practices with the Truth itself, and the result is a distrust of diversity. At the World Youth Day happenings of Cologne (in 2006), Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict, described ecumenism as being not what could be called an “ecumenism of the return.” The Pope described, as false, the approach which sought the denial of another person’s faith history. He stated that ecumenism was not to be seen as a movement towards “uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline.”
The Aim of Ecumenism
Aidan Nichols, in my opinion, is correct when he states that for Ratzinger, the true aim of the ecumenical endeavour is that separated confessions (for example, the Anglican confession) become authentic, concrete embodiments of the single Church. The interest of ecumenism, as Ratzinger noted in a 1976 lecture, cannot be linked to the precondition that particular confessions disappear. Rather, the interest of ecumenism is that particular confessions (like, for example, Anglican or Lutheran ones) be translated into the “full meaning of a binding community of faith in the Church.”
The Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans, I think, is a concrete rejection of confessional chauvinism. Here, Anglicans wish to place themselves in union with the Catholic Church and retain their own liturgical forms and practices. Examples might include the continued use of the Book of Common Prayer, or the continued practice of ordaining married persons. The October 2009 “Note,” published by the CDF, stated the hope of Pope Benedict that Anglicans desiring union with the Catholic Church find in this Ordinariate “the opportunity to preserve those Anglican traditions precious to them and consistent with the Catholic faith.”
Maximum Demands v. An Exchange of Gifts
An appropriate ecumenical pursuit distances itself from what Ratzinger calls maximum demands and opens itself to an exchange of gifts. Maximum demands, Ratzinger wrote in 1976, offer no real hope of unity, and as long as (and to the extent that) maximum demands are regarded as a requirement for unity, no other recourse exists “than to simply strive to convert one’s partner in the debate.”
Christian faith on the other hand, when properly understood, has a definite context, and a consequence of such a context is its search for unity, its openness to purification and to deepening, and its hope that others experience purification and deepening as well. Far from relativizing Catholicism, it is to be held that while the Church of Christ subsists in Catholicism, elements necessary for Catholicism’s own flowering may be sought, depending on time and circumstance, outside its visible boundaries.
While we do not make unity, neither do we, as Ratzinger asserts, “twiddle our thumbs.” In other Christian communities, the Catholic person should find, recognize, and acknowledge already existing forms of unity (forms which, to Ratzinger, are “not insignificant”). For example, Catholics and Protestants read together the Scriptures, and they share the profession of faith. Catholics and Protestants have in common the basic form of Christian prayer, and, to Ratzinger, these fundamental unities should correspond to a fundamental unity in action. Once put into action, such unity becomes concrete, and capable of being extended.
To Ratzinger, the Catholic person must be “unwilling to impose” on his or her partner in dialogue anything which might still threaten the core of that person’s Christian identity. The Catholic person, Ratzinger notes, should not try to force Protestants to recognize the papacy or the Catholic understanding of apostolic succession. We Catholics, he notes, should “respect” that our own reflection on these subjects often appears, to Protestant persons, as “manipulation” of the Scriptures.
In Paragraph 11 of Unitatis redintegratio, the text notes that within Catholic teaching “there exists a ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith.” The Catholic person is sensitive to what might appear to threaten the core of another person’s Christian identity, precisely because that Christian partner in conversation has already appropriated that which is at the heart of the Christian faith, even if he or she has not yet embraced truths which, while important, do not lie at center of the hierarchy of truths.
This appears why, in 1974, Avery Dulles suggested that certain Marian-related anathemas be removed as a gesture of good will. In the 1 November 1950 Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII had stated that should anyone “dare willingly to deny or call into doubt” that which had been defined about the Assumption of Mary, then such a person should be considered having fallen “completely from the divine and Catholic faith.” However, informed by Unitatis redintegratio, and evidenced in the Dulles Proposal, as well as in Ratzinger’s reflection on ecumenism, what emerges is, in the view of Richard Gaillardetz, the recognition that the central dogmatic content found within a text such as Munificentissimus Deus (the central dogmatic content being the promise of the integral bodily resurrection) is affirmed by those sometimes seen as affected by the anathemas, even if certain confirmatory features have not yet been fully appropriated (for example, that the reality of the bodily resurrection has been communicated in the bodily assumption of Mary).
An Unsatisfactory Approach?
Ratzinger understands that “many people will not like the concept [of ecumenical realities] when it is put in this way,” but as he has already noted, it is not we who make unity. By not imposing, and by not reducing ecumenism to simply the attempt to convert one’s partner in an ecumenical conversation, we “leave to God what is his business and his alone.”
Citing the divisions of one thousand years between Christian people, Ratzinger notes that what once seemed impossible no longer needs to be, given that one is to possess hope. Christianity rests on the victory of improbability, and Christian persons place their confidence in the Holy Spirit. Quoting the Protestant reformer, Philip Melanchthon, Ratzinger holds that Christian unity will occur “where and when God has seen fit,” and until that moment occurs, even “as separated brethren we can be one.”
K.
Kelly Wilson is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. Besides Vox Nova he writes at his blog Musings.
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Great post. Even though I came to the Catholic Church through the traditional route of RCIA in a Roman Rite parish—due to the absence of any potential Ordinariate group in my area—Anglicanorum Coetibus was a big part of what made the move finally possible for me. For the first time, I felt that the tradition I had grown up in was being respected, and that I didn’t have to throw away things both personally valuable and completely Catholic to become a different kind of Catholic.
Thanks David.
Ratzinger/Benedict doesn’t disappoint…and neither do you in this post. I may have to print and share this with others in a group setting. Thanks you.
Thanks Tausign. Feel free to share it.
Kelly,
It seems to me that sheerly from a cultural perspective — and leaving aside the theological ones for a moment — the Catholic Church would be in a great position to be a leader for ecumenism. It has a long and extremely impressive track record for dealing in a very savvy ways with diverse cultures, if one looks at the Jesuits for instance. Against that is always the proverbial “baptizing a thousand natives in the Zocalo” nightmare. But let us be clear at least there is very interesting career, as it were, for the Catholic Church in working with different cultures in amazing ways. The Jesuits in China…..pretty amazing. (Btw, I love the theory that Leibniz got his ideas from what’s-his name the Jesuit in China!). All this is an important background for understanding the specific matter of Christian ecumenism. For in some ways, the Catholic Church is ahead of the game in terms of skill. It was Protestant fiefdom that gave us “cuius regio, eius religio”. And that very limited vantage point, which is a very lamentable personal reality for many Protestants (just look at Rick Perry!) is something that could not be farther in ethos from the mindset of the Roman Church historically. The trouble is the Roman Church wants a sort of high-brow resolution to the whole thing, and that has led to the pseudo-high-brow faux-unity of the Witherspoon Institute types, who worship the idol known as Finnis and celebrate Finnis- Festivus dancing naked around a maypole covered in blood. Meanwhile, Protestants prefer a sort of low-brow, or even low-church answer. On one side the blah felt-banner types, and on the other the incredible idiocy of someone like Jesse Duplantis whose motto — I can barely believe it is true!– is something like “God doesn’t give big oil to the ungodly.”
I cannot see a resolution to the simple misprision of levels unless there is some basic acceptance of tolerance as an ideal in itself. But the key to accepting that is that though tolerance bay ultimately have its roots in Christianity, it involves aspects not entirely encompassed by Christina faith as well.
All that is needed to unite Christians is a universally available and universally shared communion. That is the cake. The rest is frosting and largely a matter of gustibus and candles.
It’s not that simple Rodak. It comes down to the relationship between the “Church of Christ” and the “Roman Catholic Church.” The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council rejected the pharse “is” (the Church of Christ “is” the Roman Catholic Church), but they also felt “is present in” was too weak. Understand that the Catholic Church views the Church of Christ as being “present in” various churches and, what we now call, ecclesial communions, in varying degrees, hence the goal is not to ignore such variations, and give the impression of unity by having shared communion. Rather the goal is that separated confessions become authentic, concrete embodiments of the single Church.
While I would agree that ecumenism is not properly reduced to the attempt to convert one’s partner in conversation, nevertheless love does impose a duty to try to persuade others to embrace the fullness of truth. I would suggest that ecumenical dialogue in the sense of “find[ing], recognize[ing], and acknowledg[ing] already existing forms of unity” is what should take place between Christian bodies; while attempts to convert should take place between individuals.
Yes, understanding that to convert is to become a Christian. To move from non-Catholic Christianity to Catholicism is to come into full communion with the Church
It is not the institution of the papacy or Apostolic Succession that separates Catholics from Protestants. It is that Protestantism has a wholly different soteriology from Catholicism–one that affects the cultures of all of the Protestant nations, and their politics. There is no hope in so-called “ecumenism” until the scholars and intellectuals of the Protestant Churches recognise that “salvation by faith alone” and “predestination of the elect” are heresies.
Benedict XVI Ratzinger does not work with these ideas, and won’t name them, because his Catholicism is closer to pessimistic Lutheranism (via his adulation of Augustine) and further away from Thomism than the personal faith of any of his recent predecessors, save John Paul II Wojtylwa. What we have now at the helm of the Roman Catholic Church are prelates who, in spiritual temperament, are closer to Protestant pessimism about human nature than John XXIII Roncalli or Paul VI Montini were.
What we now have–Protestant and Catholic–is the Prince of This of World, firmly in charge of it all. The devil is in the details.
Christian faith on the other hand, when properly understood, has a definite context, and a consequence of such a context is its search for unity, its openness to purification and to deepening, and its hope that others experience purification and deepening as well.
If we apply this to the individual faith participant we might see this as an excellent paradigm of conversion. In other words, the faithful member of Christ’s body is in constant formation to Christ (i.e. purification and deepening) and the proper goal is unity with the incarnate God in manifold ways, not least as holy peace in union with others. The Christiformed servant of God becomes a channel of grace to others by his presence and actions, and on rare occasion in words.
Unfortunately, our own lack of conversion may result in our being lulled into a ‘false purification’ of not being contaminated with the ideas of others. Similarly, our call to deepening of our own faith, when resisted, is sometimes misdirected towards a deconstruction of the faith of others. Faith battles, like their temporal counterparts, have predictable outcomes; resentments and wounds.
Thankfully, unity, respect and friendship travel as companions. The Spirit of Conversion reveals herself when the reality of Christ emerges in our joint impulse for unity.