I am very much enjoying this dialogue. Thank you for your prayers, Father.
I have certainly found the words in
Ut Unum Sint quite cheery, I can see why it is a favorite of yours.
Ut Unum Sint is read in continuity with Pope Leo XII’s
Satis Cognitum and Pope Piux XI’s
Mortalium Animo, reading these three encyclicals really opens our eyes to the beautiful unity of the Church. Pope Saint John Paul II offers such a loving, passionate pep talk reminding us of our duty to pray for Christian unity, and Pope Leo tells us what that unity that JP2 asks us to pray for looks like.
You are incorrect. Theologically and in my regard about
Ut Unum Sint.
It’s not a matter of “cheery words.” They are profoundly serious concepts that re-order theological thinking. This encyclical expresses what the Church believes and teaches in areas which have been fundamental to my work. One doesn’t get to choose to live in a past era; it is the Magisterium, speaking its teachings today, to which we are faithful.
Ut Unum Sint supersedes previous documents. I fully embrace its vision and mandate.
The mind of the Church on ecumenism fundamentally changed at Vatican II. As the Council Fathers said, “The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council.” They charted a course ahead very different from that previous. That is what Pope Saint John Paul II implemented and greatly expanded.
The texts you cite are from an era in which Rome was not engaged in the nascent ecumenical movement. That changed. As did Rome’s vision and approach regarding how she viewed non Catholic Christians – in their own regard and in relation to her.
To read what Pope John Paul II wrote as a continuation of Pope Leo XIII or Pope Pius XI would be a fundamental error. Rather, it is the approach of the Council to which you must look for the Saint’s orientation. Similarly, how popes before Vatican II envisioned a Church restored to unity would be radically different from today and no longer even relevant.
To be clear: John Paul II was not making a “pep talk”. He was as expressive to the contemporary Church as the documents you cite were to the contemporary Church of their day…except that was a time which has passed and he re-orients how the Church thinks and speaks about these matters today.
John Paul’s encyclical indicates the inadequacy of past formulations. The Church, confessing this, uses language, concepts, and analogies better suited to a new understanding because, with reflection and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, there is a deeper theological awareness of these matters. That in part is what John Paul was articulating in
Ut Unum Sint.
One cannot look to Tertullian’s initial use of
persona in the 2nd/3rd century yet ignore how Chalcedon will use Tertullian’s thought in the 5th century. The past informs the present but the present knows more than the past. Such has been the work of the Spirit from the Church’s beginning as, across centuries, the Church under His guidance ever more precisely formulates in human words the
depositum fidei. We saw it with Trinitarian theology, Christology and, lately, Mariology.
So with ecclesiology. What was begun in
Unitatis Redintegratio continues forward. That is why the earlier language you cite is now seen as inadequate of what the Magisterium articulates. It is not a matter of other Christians existing “outside the Church”; today the Magisterium ever more understands the relationship of these Christians to the Catholic Church in a deeper and fuller way since, as the pope articulated, “we all belong to Christ.”
This is also why John Paul said “the very expression separated brethren tends to be replaced today by expressions which more readily evoke the deep communion — linked to the baptismal character — which the Spirit fosters in spite of historical and canonical divisions.” The words of the Council Fathers, who sought the new language of a new era of ecumenism, is no longer adequate in the face of the developing awareness that is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
There is more reason that the Council Fathers at Vatican II charted a new course for the work of Christian unity. Not only is the language you quote no longer employed by the Church…neither is the model presented for Church unity. It would have been unimaginable in either pontificate you cite that Anglicans, while retaining their proper name as Anglicans and their heritage which they developed before and after the reign of Henry VIII, would enter into full communion with Rome and become Ordinariates in the Catholic Church…that they would moreover have their own liturgy that retains
treasured elements from the English reformation…and that the Roman Church would acknowledge that she is enriched by receiving into herself this heritage of the reform.
The paradigm of the Anglican Use Ordinariate of the Roman Rite foreshadows that the restoration of unity is no longer seen in Rome or by her dialogue partners as non Catholics closing shop, turning their back on what they had lived, and becoming Roman Catholic…the previous model. That would deny something fundamental that the council taught: God Himself is at work in the worship of those who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church – and where He is at work, the Church is compelled to recognise and confess that. The centuries of existence of these Christians, with the Spirit at work in and through them, has a consequence that has to be accounted for. It is about restoring unity and full communion among “all [who] belong to Christ.”
