Opinion

Church unity will not happen during our lifetime

Challenge is to walk together in pursuit of truth and justice, learning from one another’s strengths

A Christian worshipper with her fingers in the cross-shaped five holes of 'Mary's Column' at the Church of the Nativity, the traditional place of Jesus's birth in Bethlehem. File photograph: Getty Images

Michael Burrows
Mon Jan 16 2023 - 00:30

Sometimes on bleak Irish January evenings it is hard to rekindle one’s enthusiasm for the various worthy local initiatives and liturgical events that accompany the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which has been a feature of this month in the ecumenical calendar for very many years. It extends from January 18th to 25th.

As I have sought to re-energise my own ecumenical vision I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to do so in the context of the Eternal City where I have served since 2019 as chairman of the International Board of Governors of the Anglican Centre In Rome. This remarkable institution, generously accommodated in one of the city’s great Palaces — the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, but a short walk from the Vatican — has been, since Vatican II, a veritable embassy for the Anglican Communion in Rome (ACR) — a place of hospitality, networking, study and theological encounter.

I have learned much concerning, for example, the plight of the island nations of the global south in the face of global warming and rising sea levels

Like so many diplomatic missions in the area of the Vatican, the ACR demonstrates that Rome remains a place where some of the most important international conversations and exchanges of ideas — political and economic as well as theological — continue to take place. The resident director is Mauritian archbishop Ian Ernest from whom I have learned much concerning, for example, the plight of the island nations of the global south in the face of global warming and rising sea levels. Such crises present obvious challenges to all people of faith who are called to work together to safeguard God’s creation.

The ACR in its work is a beacon for what today is often termed “receptive ecumenism”. While keeping our eyes on the ultimate goal of full organic unity, we also realise that this will not happen in the lifetime of any of us. The immediate challenge is to walk together in the pursuit of truth and justice and to learn from one another’s strengths as we share the journey.

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For far too long, not least in Ireland, separated Christians engaged in negative self-definition and consequent caricature of others — “we” did not do things precisely because “they” did them! Receptive ecumenism removes the scales from the eyes that once tolerated this mindset.

The late Pope Benedict XVI, with unique insights, probed in his writings the very person of Jesus in a manner that is a gift to Christians far beyond his own tradition. His good friend Archbishop Rowan Williams offers to disciples far beyond the Anglican world a quality of spiritual writing that reflects one of the great public intellects of our time. These are things to celebrate.

At present, the Anglican Centre in Rome is monitoring the accumulating contributions to the exploration initiated by Pope Francis concerning synodality in the life of the people of God. We may think we have much to share with Roman Catholic friends concerning our long experience of synodical discernment and governance. But we also have lessons to learn — the Anglican (and certainly the Church of Ireland ) approach to meeting in synod owes perhaps more to often adversarial neo-parliamentary procedure than to a more Spirit-infused model of how to hear the quiet voices which can often be the ventriloquists of what might emerge as unity in truth.

We also share across the ecumenical spectrum a passionate and mutually receptive concern for the safeguarding of the environment. There is no doubt that the utterances of Pope Francis, rooted in the encyclical Laudato Si have been pivotal in providing a theological imperative for environmental action.

When the Bishop of Rome utters on such matters, Christians outside his own communion do well to listen. Indeed there is a linear connection between the teaching of Francis and the Anglican initiative, encouraged at the international Lambeth Conference of bishops last summer, that there should be a global “Anglican forest”. It boils down to practicalities such as the planting of a tree by all who seek Confirmation in many of our dioceses this year.

It is that powerful reality of a common family which Christian unity week seeks to celebrate and which no prejudice or theological contention should ever put asunder

But the ACR is supremely about personal contacts. For me, one repeated joy has been encounters with the prominent cardinal from the Philippines, Cardinal Tagle, who was also a keynote speaker at the Lambeth Conference. In his address there he moistened many episcopal eyes by describing, when he was a bishop in his home country, being asked at a youth event to sign the T-shirt of a young man.

At a similar event the following year, the young man told the future Cardinal that he had never washed the shirt afterwards but kept it nightly under his pillow. For this young person, the lonely son of a migrant father whom he had not seen for years, the signed T-shirt was movingly his one piece of evidence that he belonged to a family.

It is that powerful reality of a common family which Christian unity week seeks to celebrate and which no prejudice or theological contention should ever put asunder.

Bishop Michael Burrows is chairman of the Commission for Christian Unity and Dialogue and Church of Ireland Bishop of Tuam, Limerick, and Killaloe.

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