WCC: The Church: Towards a Common Vision (other languages)
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity: The Catholic Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision" (the document: 2019 Catholic Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision")
The typical Roman Catholic continues to conflate the patriarchate of Rome with the Church Universal, just as Latin progressives are ultramontanists when the occupant of the "see of St. Peter" suits them.
I note that the WCC started off as a Protestant endeavor and even today, the patriarchate of Rome is not an official member of that body. Maybe this is to put it in wordly terms, but it is rather presumptuous for Protestants to put themselves on a equal level with Apostolic Churches, when their dispute is first of all with the patriarchate of Rome. Do any of them recognize their denomination in the early Church? Can any of them say that their doctrines are from the Apostles, when there are other Apostolic Churches, not just Rome, that objects to them? Maybe paradoxically they are tied as partners, even if as unequal partners, to the patriarchate of Rome when it comes to engaging the other Apostolic Churches.
When the WCC has as members Christians who are heretical on one or more points that are not included in statements of mere Christianity (which may be reconcilable with Roman Catholicism), do these documents really matter? Orthodoxy with no orthopraxy does not matter. There will be no real reconciliation with Christians who are actually liberals and feminists -- their communities will disintegrate, even those that profess to be "Catholic." (Take a look at the leadership for the Anglican Diocese of London. An ecclesial community that has no future.) There can be reconciliation with conservative and traditional Protestants who have rejected liberalism and feminism, and perhaps the key is not further "agreements" between them and Latins but to take fresh look at Scripture and Tradition, and not through the lens of medieval Western Christianity, whether it is in the form of scholasticism or in a form that rejects scholasticism but doesn't go far enough to question other parts of the inheritance from late medieval Latin ecclesial tradition. Let Protestants recognize the insufficiency of "sola scriptura" and the need to engage in a discussion about Tradition with the other Apostolic Churches, who need to be recognized as senior members in the dialogue.
Heresy needs to be recognized as heresy, even if this offends the world, and there need to be consequences for those "ecclesial communities" which persist in heresy. I'm not referring to disputes about sacraments or justification or ecclesiology, as those need to be revisited, but that which should be beyond doubt, the commandments revealed by God to His Church, including those commandments pertaining to "gender roles." If an "ecclesial community" embraced same-sex "marriage," but professed a "mere Christianity" that was compatible with Roman Catholic teaching, could there still be dialogue? Or should such denominations be left to wither?
This is a great expression of why ecumenism is so valuable – in addition to following the will of Christ that we would all be one, that the world might believe, our dialogue provides ways for the Catholic Church to more easily receive the practices and wisdom of synodally experienced churches, even as we might share some of the gifts of structures of primacy. But, in the meantime, we can see here more clearly how and where Pope Francis is leading the Catholic Church back to the renewal of synodal structures first renewed in modern Catholicism at the Second Vatican Council.
Maybe synodality needs to be recovered in the west, but what has passed for synodality since Vatican II is really not. Eastern Catholics need to recover synodality as well, but be willing to hold to their synods against any possible interference from Rome.
If we do this – and this, perhaps, is where you the reader come in – if we make TCTCV an object of study beyond academics and ecumenical specialists; if ecclesiologists explore how ecumenical convergence statements like these have a kind of magisterial authority analogous to that of conciliar, papal, and other forms of ecclesial teaching; if pastors and liturgists renew or return to liturgical practices of doing all thing we can do together, together; if parish book clubs and college courses, seminary formation programs and priest study days, take this text seriously – if we do all this, then we might help better form our Catholic Church for dialogue with our fellow Christians, for renewing our Church, particularly as a synodal community that listens to each other and to the Spirit together, and for the day when a common vision of the church will allow it to be more fully a sign of unity and an instrument of God’s peace.
Latins should first reconsider their ecclesiological presuppositions as they relate to other Apostolic Christians, instead of assuming their presuppositions are of Tradition. (They can't help it given their beliefs about the papacy.) More and more non-Latin Catholics will disagree with them. What will Rome do at that point? Start excommunicating them again?
Academics who are insulated in their ivory towers are probably the last ones who should be engaged in any sort of ecumenical dialogue. Perhaps the same could be said of monastics who are completely cut off from the world as well. What skin in the game do any of them have? They can defend themselves by arguments from authority, and in practice cannot be held accountable by other Christian faithful.
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