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February 19, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
COMMENTARY
Ecumenism - The Path Forward
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
I was very blessed during my theological formation
to have had the privilege of taking classes from two
very renowned Catholic scholars, Avery Dulles and
Raymond E. Brown. The former was an ecclesiologist
whose books often became textbooks which were pre-
scribed reading in seminaries and theology schools.
The latter was a scripture scholar whose scholarship
stands out, almost singularly, still nearly 30 years after
his death. Nobody questions the scholarship, the per-
sonal integrity, or the faith-commitment of these men.
They were in different theological disciplines but
what they shared, beyond the high respect of scholars
and church persons everywhere, was a passion for ec-
umenism and a capacity to form deep friendships and
invite warm dialogue across every kind of denomina-
tional and interreligious line. Their books are studied
not just in Roman Catholic circles, but in theological
schools and seminaries in Protestant, Evangelical,
Mormon, and Jewish seminaries as well. Both were
deeply respected for their openness, friendship, and
graciousness towards those who held religious views
different than their own. Indeed, Raymond Brown
spent of his most productive years teaching at Union
Theological Seminary in New York, even as he, a Sul-
pician priest, more than anything else cherished his
Roman Catholic identity and priesthood. After losing
his own father and mother, he spoke of the Roman
Catholic Church and his Sulpician community as “the
family that still remains for me.”
And what these two shared in their vision for
ecumenism was this: The path towards Christian
unity, the road that will eventually bring all sincere
Christians together into one community, around one
altar, is not the way of somehow winning the other
over to our own particular denomination, of getting
others to admit that they are wrong and that we are
right and of them returning to the true flock, namely,
our particular denomination. In their view, that’s not
the route forward, practically or theologically. The
path forward needs to be, as Avery Dulles puts it, the
path of “progressive convergence”. What is this path?
It begins with the honest admission by each of us
that none of us, no one denomination, has the full
truth, incarnates the full expression of church, and
is fully faithful to the Gospel. We are all deficient in
some ways and each of us in some ways is selective
in terms of which parts of the Gospels we value and
incarnate and which parts we ignore. And so the
path forward is the path of conversion, personal and
ecclesial, of admitting our selectiveness, of recogniz-
ing and valuing what other churches have incarnated,
of reading scripture more deeply in search of what
we have ignored and absented ourselves from, and
of individually and collectively trying to live lives
that are truer to Jesus Christ. By doing this, by each
of us and each church living the Gospel more fully,
we will “progressively converge”, that is, as we grow
closer to Christ we will grow closer to each other and
thus “progressively converge” around Christ and, as
we do that, we will eventually find ourselves around
one common altar and will see each other as part of
the same community.
The path to unity then lies not in converting
each other over, but in each of us living the Gospel
more faithfully so as to grow closer to each other in
Christ. This doesn’t mean that we do not take our
divisions seriously, that we simplistically assert that
all denominations are equal, or that we justify our
divisions today by pointing to divisions that already
existed in the New Testament churches. Rather we
must all begin by each of us admitting that do not
possess the full truth and that we are in fact far from
being fully faithful.
Given that starting point, Raymond E. Brown then
gives this challenge to all the churches: “recognition
of the range of New Testament ecclesiological diver-
sity makes the claim of any church to be absolutely
faithful to the Scriptures much more complex. We
are faithful but in our own specific way; and both
ecumenics and biblical studies should make us aware
that there are other ways of being faithful to which
we do not do justice. … In short, a frank study of the
New Testament ecclesiologies should convince every
Christian community that it is neglecting part of the
New Testament witness. … I contend that in a divided
Christianity, instead of reading the Bible to assure
ourselves that we are right, we would do better to read
it to discover where we have not been listening. As we
Christians of different churches try to give hearing to
the previously muffled voices, our views of the church
will grow larger; and we will come closer to sharing
common views. Then the Bible will be doing for us
what Jesus did in his time, namely, convincing those
who have ears to hear that all is not right, for God is
asking of them more than they thought.”
Indeed: God is asking more of us than we think.
Catholic Schools
Saint Leo the Great School Crab Feed
On February 9, the sixth grade
class of Saint Leo the Great held their
annual Crab Feed to raise funds for
science camp. Over 250 attendees
enjoyed music, raffles, auctions and
CRAB! The students worked hard to
decorate the gymnasium into a nau-
tical themed restaurant filled with
beautiful handmade centerpieces and
netting on the walls.
For dinner each table shared family
style salad, pesto pasta, rolls and deli-
cious local crab. After all the crab was
devoured the dessert auction ended
and tables were treated to over a dozen
cakes and baked goods that were auc-
tioned off to the highest bidder. The
night was a huge success and the sixth
graders spent the last hour dancing
and laughing after such hard work.
For more information regarding Catholic Schools visit,
www.dsj.org/schools.