- Feb 5, 2002
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It’s the ecumenical dog that doesn’t bark. We need him to bark, but he rarely does, and then he’s quickly shushed. It’s the matter of conversion. When we pray for Christian unity, as we do this week, we pray not only for kindness and fellow-feeling and some very foggy idea of joining together in the future, after a gradual convergence somewhere in the middle.
We pray for our separated brethren to give in.
The Truest Unity
For Catholics, the truest unity requires living together within the Catholic Church. As the bishops said quite plainly at the Second Vatican Council, those they called “our separated brethren” do not enjoy “that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those who through Him were born again into one body, and with Him quickened to newness of life. … For it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is ‘the all-embracing means of salvation,’ that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation. We believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head.” The dog barked then.
Our Protestant friends believe the same thing, even the invisible Church ones. Their idea of true unity may not be Christians joined together in one body (the Church being invisible), but it excludes the Catholic distinctives. It excludes faithfulness to the pope and the Magisterium, our rather elaborate (and to them odd if not insane) doctrinal and moral structure, and believing we must live inside the Church and not outside. They’ll let us be Catholics in the hoped-for unified Christianity, as long as our Catholicism is basically Protestantism.
We want them to give in. They want us to give in. When we both pray for Christian unity, we mean this. Otherwise this would be the Week of Prayer for Christian Friendship. This dog doesn’t bark, though. Until someone brings up conversion, and then people bark back. Mention, in the midst of ecumenical good feeling, the troublesome fact that Christian unity will only come when some Christians convert, because however wonderful they are they’re wrong, and your friends will react as if they’d all gathered in a cozy hot tub and you’d peed in the water.
The State of Things
Continued below.
The Ecumenical Dog That Doesn't Bark - Catholic Herald
We pray for our separated brethren to give in.
The Truest Unity
For Catholics, the truest unity requires living together within the Catholic Church. As the bishops said quite plainly at the Second Vatican Council, those they called “our separated brethren” do not enjoy “that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those who through Him were born again into one body, and with Him quickened to newness of life. … For it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is ‘the all-embracing means of salvation,’ that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation. We believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head.” The dog barked then.
Our Protestant friends believe the same thing, even the invisible Church ones. Their idea of true unity may not be Christians joined together in one body (the Church being invisible), but it excludes the Catholic distinctives. It excludes faithfulness to the pope and the Magisterium, our rather elaborate (and to them odd if not insane) doctrinal and moral structure, and believing we must live inside the Church and not outside. They’ll let us be Catholics in the hoped-for unified Christianity, as long as our Catholicism is basically Protestantism.
We want them to give in. They want us to give in. When we both pray for Christian unity, we mean this. Otherwise this would be the Week of Prayer for Christian Friendship. This dog doesn’t bark, though. Until someone brings up conversion, and then people bark back. Mention, in the midst of ecumenical good feeling, the troublesome fact that Christian unity will only come when some Christians convert, because however wonderful they are they’re wrong, and your friends will react as if they’d all gathered in a cozy hot tub and you’d peed in the water.
The State of Things
Continued below.
The Ecumenical Dog That Doesn't Bark - Catholic Herald
