One Body and One Spirit--The Papacy and Anglican Ecumenism

The outpouring of affection toward Pope John Paul II, during the final days of his life, and the striking pilgrimage of millions of people to Rome to view his body and participate in his funeral, was an unmistakable sign of the love and respect he garnered from the world, particularly the young. With the election of his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, the Roman Catholic world looks ahead for new hope, leadership, and direction. It is, of course, at this time, a special obligation of the non-Roman Catholic Christian world to hold the new pope and the members of the Roman Catholic Church in our prayers.

This great story of a papal transition raises the question of how Christians from various traditions are, by virtue of their Christian confession solemnized in Baptism, united to each other. In his first address to the world, pope Benedict set forth his commitment to ongoing ecumenical work in rather strong language: “The current Successor of Peter feels himself to be personally implicated in this question and is disposed to do all in his power to promote the fundamental cause of ecumenism. In the wake of his predecessors, he is fully determined to cultivate any initiative that may seem appropriate to promote contact and agreement with representatives from the various Churches and ecclesial communities. Indeed, on this occasion too, he sends them his most cordial greetings in Christ, the one Lord of all.”

These remarks are set against the backdrop of the Second Vatican Council, which, in various ways, reached out not only to the non-Roman Catholic Christian world, but also to believer and non-believers alike. Speaking of the saving work of Christ, the council declared in reference to non-Roman Catholic believers, “The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. For there are many who honor sacred scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and of action, and who show a true religious zeal. . . . They are consecrated by baptism, through which they are united to Christ.” (Lumen Gentium, Nn. 2, 15)

Although we may object to the claim that non-Roman Catholics do not profess the faith in its “entirety,” the admission that true Christians are found outside the Roman Catholic Church was a remarkable and important concession at the time and brought the Roman Catholic Church fully to the work of ecumenism. A great deal has happened since that time, and, despite the rather slow pace of institutional change, a great deal of genuine affection and prayer now binds the entire Christian world. Some significant theological work has also been accomplished since the council, unraveling old animosities and misunderstandings and producing some rather impressive joint theological statements.

Anglicanism came to the ecumenical task quite early, in the years immediately preceding the First World War, and has since remained committed to this important work. Long before the modern ecumenical movement, however, Anglicans recognized and openly admitted that they did not perceive or confess their particular ecclesial community to be the only one, or the only right one, or even the best one. Simply, Anglicans have always known that they bear their Christian confession alongside those of other denominations.

For instance, when Richard Hooker, perhaps our finest theologian, was under immense pressure to “unchurch” Roman Catholics at a time, in the seventeen century, when this was a common protestant position, he refused. Although believing that the Roman Church was defective in some ways, he remained convinced that it was a church nonetheless and had within it the instruments of salvation. Lancelot Andrewes, a famous preacher and theologian of the same period, remembered, in his private prayers, the whole church throughout the world. He prayed, “Let us pray for the catholic church; for the churches throughout the whole world; that is, for their truth, unity and stability; that all charity may flourish and truth may live. For our own Church; that what is lacking in it may be supplied; what is unsound, corrected; that all heresies, schisms, scandals, as well public as private, may be removed.” There is something remarkably generous and even beautiful in this position, saying, even saying openly, that we not only acknowledge others but even confess faults in our own church for which we seek correction.

There is a price to pay however. Anglicanism, precisely because it is what one scholar has called an “undifferentiated Catholicism” must constantly seek Christian truth in dialogue with those outside its own boundaries. The typical Anglican appeal to the “undivided church of the first five centuries” means precisely that Anglicanism is not self-insulated or protective. It looks to the very foundations which also belong to other Christians. The fact that Anglicanism was in significant ways forged in the fire of the Reformation means precisely that we cannot dismiss Protestantism, although it is not uncommon to find Anglicans of a high-church bent who play down this identification. The fact that the nineteenth century Catholic Movement within Anglicanism has influenced every aspect of our liturgy and theology means precisely that we cannot dismiss theological development throughout the middle ages all the way to the present time. Anglicanism claims the whole of Christian history, much of which unfolds in the turmoil and cross-fertilization of various religious communities and theological conflicts. While this is a generous and beautiful position, it is not one which can be maintained without hard work and not a small amount of psychological strain. After all, we are denied the peace and rest of knowing that we are right, or that our expression of the faith has a fullness which others lack.

The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is a modern testament to our understanding of the church. He was raised a Presbyterian, but joined the Anglican Church in his youth. His doctoral dissertation was on the theology of Vladimir Llosky, one of this century’s finest Russian Orthodox theologians. He has written on Karl Barth, the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, and he has dedicated significant attention to translating the works of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, a great Roman Catholic theologian who was a favorite of Pope John Paul II. More recently he has written a collection of reflections on famous Eastern icons, again showing his deep sensitivity to Orthodoxy. And he continues to produce a stream of deeply penetrating essays, talks, and books on urgent moral questions.

But this all happens in the heart and mind of one person who is situated in the Anglican Communion, and now occupies its most prestigious post. His vocation, like that of all Anglicans, is not one simply of trying to be broadly informed or generously sympathetic to other traditions. Rather, these Christian traditions must, in some measure, be internalized as expressions of Christian truth, which is why there is always a great psychological and spiritual cost in our Christian development. We do not stop as if we have arrived. We continue with open and broken hearts, searching for the One Risen Lord as he is variously revealed in scripture, tradition, history, art, industry, and all aspects of human culture.

There may be no question of the rest of us thinking with the same depth as the current Archbishop. But that is not the point. Rather, Anglicanism is itself a summons to an ecumenical view of the Christian faith. Though rooted in our distinct tradition, we may joyfully receive the pope’s promise of a great ecumenical work, an effort to which every Anglican is summoned by the facts of our history and the mandate of our Lord.

Pray that we may be one.

A Real Difference

Arriving home, I am greeted, not with a welcome, but a command. “You need to change your clothes.” This abruptness has its neurological justification. Allison, my older daughter, is cognitively impaired, and, like many other people similarly challenged, the world takes on a remarkable clarity. This, of course, is a fresh break from academic jargon and ecclesiastical sidestepping. She’s right. I need to change my clothes. I need to change from parochial father to domestic father, and, notwithstanding all that has been said, rightly, I believe, about the indelible character of ordination, people in my position ought to know when to set one role aside for another. It’s time to dance and talk and cook. While changing from black shirt to beige, I notice an advertisement sewn into my shirt. I had never seen it before. This MUST mean something. There it was, plain as day, the following words: “The Ultimate Shirt.” I put it on. I waited. Nothing. That is, nothing spectacular. I went downstairs and lived my domestic life.

Not exactly nothing. I had changed, and this is precisely what Allison expected and deserved, a father who is present here and not there.

We are all, more or less, dressing down these days, so there is less to notice about the distinction of particular dress as associated with either a role or status. But this was once very very important, and so has been fully exploited as a theological theme. To put on something carried weighty meanings. The Old Testament priests identified as “Aaron and his sons,” who made sacrifice for the people, wore ornate and opulent vestments: “You shall make sacred vestments for the glorious adornment of your brother Aaron. And you shall speak to all who have ability, whom I have endowed with skill, that they make Aaron’s vestments to consecrate him for my priesthood. . . . they shall use gold, blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine linen.” (Ex. 28:2,3) This would have been quite impressive against the muted colors of the Middle East, a dramatic announcement of the privilege and danger into which the priest is called in praying for the people. But that is not all. “You shall take the other ram; and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hand on the head of the ram, and you shall slaughter the ram and take some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear and on the lobe of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hand, and on the big toes of their right feet, and dash the rest of the blood against the side of the altar. Then you shall take some of the blood that is on the altar, and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his vestments and on his sons and his sons’ vestments with him; then he and his vestments shall be holy as well as his sons and his son’s vestments.” (Ex. 29:19-21) This ancient rite, we are advised, was performed to consecrate the senses, the ear for hearing, the hand for touching sacred things, the foot for walking rightly upon holy ground. (The New Jerusalem Biblical Commentary) And who could doubt that something very important is at stake. The finest vestments worn by the elect priests, now dripping in blood is, if alien to our world, still a powerful image. They were being fitted to a task, made apt for a particular function, and they knew graphically its great importance.

Something of this lay in the background of St. Paul’s injunction to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 13:14) After a long discourse on baptism in which he insists on a mystical and real identification of the baptized with Christ’s death and resurrection, he moves to a series of moral injunctions, a typical pattern in his epistles. That is to say, a theological transformation-- union with the very life of Christ-- implied a moral transformation. The injunctions are not, however, grounded in simple commands. Rather, he holds out the illustration of a completely new person, fresh, forgiven, risen, and newly vested with a new identity. This is, by Old Testament standards, less dramatic visually, but even more dramatic by its potential application. While a few wore the Aaronic robes dripping in the blood of rams, everyone and anyone may put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, to review the baptismal teaching: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3,4) There is little escaping the sense that baptism implied a total and mystical transformation, which St. Paul illustrated, and which succeeding generations have also illustrated with a “baptismal gown.” Two days ago, I gathered with a family for a baptism. The mother stepped aside for a few moments to clothe her infant daughter in a long and elegant white dress. Does the mother know? Does anyone really know the wonder, glory, joy, even fear of giving a child over to the care of God? A little infant, and a new creation.

It is possible to describe the Christian life according to secondary goods: encouragement, education, nourishment, hope, joy. None will, of course, do justice to the thing itself, which is why so often liturgical and sacred texts are replete with expressions such as “the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same” and “grace upon grace” and “eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard what great things the Lord hath prepared for those who love him.” That “thing” is the Lord himself, reigning and yet suffusing bodies and souls, the blood and bone of those who come to him in faith. Christ is, in baptism, put on, a new and living identity. This is all invisible to a naked eye, and so we can, quite anonymously, go about the business of playing one role and then another. We work, which in my case means priest-ing about once in a while, we play, we listen to music, attend to children, help parents, all the while knowing, even without speaking, that we wear an identity which we cannot and will not remove. To be vested in Christ, is to be alive in the very source of life. But does anyone know, do I, the glory which this is, the wonder which it holds, to have a life hidden with God in Christ? And always.