Full Communion:
the week of prayer for Christian unity
Each year at the Easter Vigil, parishes have become used to receiving
into the Catholic Church those who have already been baptized
with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We
call this reception a “coming into full communion”, which means
that those who were already one with us through baptism are now
becoming fully one with us so that they can receive all the gifts
that Christ wants his people to enjoy. “Full Communion” in this
sense means complete sharing of all Christ’s gifts, made visible
in the Church.
Each year from Jan. 18 to 25, all those who call Jesus “Lord”
pray that we may some day be in full communion with one another,
as the Lord himself prayed (John 17: 22). The annual week of prayer
for Christian unity acknowledges that full communion will be a
gift, something we have to pray God to give us, since we can’t
achieve it ourselves. Unity is always a sign that the Holy Spirit
is active; and the desire for full, visible unity among Christians
is a sign that the Spirit is reminding us of Christ’s will for
his people.
Christ prayed that all his disciples would be one so that the
world would believe (John 17-23). The modern ecumenical movement
began early in this century when Protestant missionaries gathered
in Edinburgh, Scotland, to decide how to prevent their denominational
differences from paralyzing their mission. That meeting laid the
groundwork for the foundation of the World Council of Churches
almost 50 years later, in Amsterdam, after the Second World War.
I remember reading in grade school the Chicago newspaper accounts
of the 1948 meeting of the World Council in Evanston.
While Catholics have long prayed for Christian unity during the
annual observance, Catholic involvement in the modern ecumenical
movement began in earnest after the Second Vatican Council. The
Council called the Church “the sacrament of unity of the human
race” and went on to explain that we couldn’t be effective in
this mission unless all Christians were visibly one. The Holy
See created a Pontifical Council I for ecumenism and began a series
of conversations with other Churches and Christian faith communities.
The purpose of these conversations is to clarify doctrine and
history in order to pinpoint exactly the sources of our disunity
and separation. This important work goes on, but it alone cannot
restore unity.
Unity means full communion, the mutual and visible sharing of
all the gifts Christ gave his people. When the Second Vatican
Council wrote of Christ’s Church “subsisting” in the Catholic
Church, the Council meant that all Christ’s gifts are to be found
in the Catholic Church but that many of them, like baptism and
grace, exist also in other Christian communities, where they can
sometimes be better treasured and used than they are among ourselves.
The Council called these gifts, historically separated from the
Church which first received them from the Lord, “vestiges of the
Church”. Their presence in other Churches and faith communities
reminds us that we are already one but not fully so. This partial
separation from our brothers and sisters in Christ is a source
of great spiritual sorrow and should move us to pray for full
unity.
For some, the very absence of open hostility among Christian communities
is enough. Most Catholics are grateful that we recognize Orthodox
and Protestant Christians as truly our brothers and sisters and
vice versa, but the Lord expects more of all of us. It is important
that we increase the opportunities to be visibly together, to
pray together to the extent possible, and to work together for
social justice. The challenge now is to continue the quest for
full visible communion in the face of the doctrinal and historical
obstacles that cannot be wished away or dissolved by good will
all around. The recognition of common baptism and the clearing
up of misunderstandings and false impressions leave us now with
questions of substance, issues on which someone will have to modify
a belief or a practice heretofore considered essential. These
changes or conversions cannot be forced; they must be the work
of grace.
The sources of division among Christians are sometimes doctrinal
and sometimes historical. Between Catholics and Protestants, doctrinal
divisions about the nature of grace, the seven sacraments, the
relation between Holy Scripture and the Church and, increasingly,
different interpretations of Christ’s teaching on marriage and
sexuality remain unresolved. Doctrinal and moral differences are
perhaps fewer between Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, but
they are more clearly drawn and often expressed with more animosity.
Between Catholics and Orthodox, whom we believe to share all the
gifts of Gospel, sacraments and apostolic governance, the divisions
are largely historical, except for our different understanding
of the universal ministry of the Bishop of Rome. Historical memories
are often, however, as hard to heal as doctrinal differences are
difficult to resolve. Pope John Paul II will continue to confess
our historical sins before the next millennium, with the hope
that this will advance the search for unity. But the request for
forgiveness must be mutual.
In the last generation, the Catholic Church has attempted to change
its presentation of the faith and many of its practices to help
all Christians move toward a re-united Church. Interestingly,
the Catholic Church just a few decades ago was often accused of
“adding” to the Gospel, whereas today it is more often accused
of not sufficiently accommodating the Gospel to the modern age.
Even as ecumenical conversations continue, some Christian faith
communities have been changing their moral convictions in ways
that the Catholic Church must consider a betrayal of the Gospel.
More troublesome for the ecumenical movement than contemporary
Protestant changes in doctrine and morals is the lack of clear
authority in many faith communities. What does it mean for Catholics
and some Protestants to come to a common understanding of a point
of faith if there is no one who has authority to sign it on the
Protestant side? Some years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury
had the courage to raise this very question at a meeting of the
bishops of the Anglican communion. The Pope has more recently
raised the question of the manner of his exercising primacy within
Catholic communion. These questions bring us back directly to
Christ’s commissioning of his apostles (Mat. 28: 18-20) and its
historical and ecclesial consequences.
It is a long way from the sending of the apostles to the week
of prayer for Christian unity in 1999. When one visits the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which covers the sites of
Calvary and Christ’s tomb, one walks into a building which is
divided among Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Ethiopians, Copts and
other historical Churches, each one guarding its turf. This is
what we have made of the body of Christ in the last thousand years.
As we enter the next millennium, we ask the Lord to forgive us
and to lead us, in his way and in his time, to the full communion
he wants us to enjoy. God bless you.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Chicago
