Ecumenical Memories and Longings

As Christian Unity Week ends, some memories.

 The Quiet Ecumenical Peace of Post-War USA

Our Catholic, childhood world (1947-1960) was parochial but quietly ecumenical. In our small, urban, ethnic world we were keenly aware that as a united country we had just defeated the Axis powers and were facing an even worse threat in global Communism. There was no profound culture war among us; minimal polarization. We swam every week in the YMCA as my father played handball even though Church guidance still warned against Protestant organizations. As a union and Democrat family we enjoyed an alliance with non-Catholics, including secular, socialist Jews and Southern Evangelicals. We all had family members who married Protestants and Jews. We knew who we were: Catholics not Protestants, Democrats not Republicans, working class not capitalists. But I recall no animosity, no demonization, no intense negativity. It was more like amiable rivalries between rival high schools or intramural teams: we competed without rancor and then went on with life; no hard feelings. Ike was iconic: he was not of our tribe; but in the bigger playing field, against Nazis and Communists, he was on our team and the captain at that. As a teenager I caddied, like my brothers, father and uncles before me, for affluent Jews in a relaxed manner, happy to make a few bucks. No class warfare there or identity politics there! In the academia, and especially theology, our scholars were deeply involved with the work of those outside of the Church. In short, the ecumenism that was clearly articulated in Vatican II was already percolating, at many levels,  in the decades leading up to it.

1960s:  Vatican II

Ecumenical passions intensified and united in the 1960s from several directions. Within the Catholic Church Pope John XXIII recalled the plea of Christ for unity among his followers. In our country, Martin Luther King proclaimed the gospel of the brotherhood of all men that united us, passionately, across religious lines. From our own local Seton Hall University, Jewish-convert Monsignor John Osterreicher led the Jew-Catholic dialogue that culminated in a ground breaking Vatican II document, renounced a shameful past, awoke deep awareness of the Jewish roots of our faith as well as a love of contemporary Judaism. The papal call of openness to the broader culture elicited a enthusiastic engagement, especially in the academy, with all the emerging sciences and liberal arts.

1970s: Charismatic Renewal and Evangelical Catholicism

The Charismatic Renewal was a welcoming of Pentecostal and Evangelical spiritualities into Catholicism. As such, it was a deep reconciliation with those branches of Christianity that had been entirely detached from the Catholic Church. At conferences, we heard from Jim Baker, Ruth Carter Stapleton as we read tons of literature on healing, deliverance from demons, praying in tongues, authority, gender roles (as mainstream Christianity was aping the broader culture in deconstructing them) and other. I recall a conference in which the speaker called for us to look around the bleachers and reconcile with members of other Churches:  I cried emotionally (not my normal modus operandi) in doing so.

Late 1970s to Present:  Culture War

The Roe decision and the broader triumph of cultural liberalism across elite culture birthed a new ecumenism, in strong contrast to the liberal coalitions and dialogues of the 60s: coalition of moral conservatives, especially Catholics and Evangelicals, in defense traditional values including powerless human life, marriage and sexuality, and religious freedom. This found expression in the Reagan legacy as well as First Things journal of Fr. Neuhaus, the Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue and a broad intellectual/spiritual movement.

Ecumenical Dead Ends

There are limits and boundaries to Catholic ecumenism as our legacy is incompatible with many of the stronger currents in today's world:

Cultural Liberalism.  Moral progressivism (as sterilization of sexuality, acceptance of "choice," deconstruction of gender, technologizing of "reproduction," etc.) is contradictory of Catholicism even as accommodation to it prevails across Catholic academics.

Marxism. The once fashionable dialogue and its progeny, Liberation Theology, has not born fruit as our faith is incompatible with its materialism, implicit atheism, and absolute dialectic of oppressor/victim.

Eastern Religions. No doubt there is value to serious dialogue between participants with depth knowledge of and engagement in their own traditions. Likewise, many seem to benefit from cultural practices like the physical exercises of Yoga. However, in general the "new-age-type" spiritualities seem in general to be retreats from Trinitarian Theism, Christ and his cross, the sacramental economy of grace and authentic Catholic mysticism in favor of a vague pantheism of nature and the expansive Jungian self.

Ecumenism Today

The ecumenical passions no longer burn so brightly.

- The internal Pax Americana of the 1950s is long gone.

- The liberal dialogue of the 1960s is diminished as mainstream Protestantism has surrendered to cultural progressivism. 

- The vigorous gospel activism of MLK has succumbed to the victim complex of BLM and CRT.

- Charismatic Renewal burned fiercely for a short period in the USA but has receded, but not entirely disappeared, although it is fierce in Africa.

- The moral passion of the pro-life movement, having triumphed in Dobbs, is greatly compromised by the contagion of Trumpian moral decadence.

- The Anglican dialogue is especially troubling, and not only in that denomination's capitulation to moral progressivism. Their sacraments, especially Eucharist and Orders, are not valid in our Catholic view; but they mimic us so closely. It is creepy. Last week Pope Francis allowed an Anglican Eucharist in a major Roman basilica. This is disturbing for a wholesome Catholic Eucharistic sensibility. A Pentecostal or Baptist prayer service would not have been a problem. But this faux-liturgy, in the presence of the Real Christ in the tabernacle, is deeply dissonant. Not good ecumenism!

- Catholicism in the Francis era suffers from a pontificate eager to accommodate the sexual liberation as the younger clergy are reactive against a culture turned dark and anti-Catholic. These later have few ecumenical propensities, whether for social activism or Evangelicalism, as they echo an earlier American Catholicism, defensive of our identity as  threatened by a hostile environment.

One might be consoled that the ecumenical, like all movements, especially those that flowed into Vatican II (liturgical, scriptural, etc.), has left an enduring imprint on our Church and society and then disappeared. There is truth to this. We visit the sick as volunteer chaplains in our local hospital and our prayer is warmly welcomed by almost everyone, regardless of creed, class or ethnicity...Jews, even the Orthodox, are especially congenial, and even Muslims and secular-agnostic types. Strikingly in the face of sickness and fragility, there endures a quiet ecumenical piety underneath the fury of the culture war. The Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue continues quietly; the moral coalition remains intact if contaminated; local ecumenical groups still work together to care for the homeless, hungry, addicted and mentally ill. So ecumenism lives on: modestly, almost anonymously, without fanfare.

We are seeing now the passing of priests now in their 80s; the cohort that were young priests during the Council; who drank deeply of the spirit of the time, including the good values of ecumenism, care for the suffering, and social justice. As we honor them, aware of their limitations and failures, I personally long to retrieve those noble passions that burned fiercely in that decade.  

It is a sadness to see a divide between this older cohort and younger priests who are more conservative. Even more tragic is the distance between priests of all ages and bishops who in light of the Dallas Charter are experienced, not as fathers and brothers, but as heartless, bureaucratic enforcers. (A tragedy predicted by Cardinal Dulles and identified by Monsignor Guarino.) A different development of significance is the increasing influence, in the Archdiocese of Newark and elsewhere, of priests of the Neocatechumenal Way. This association is so intense, self-contained and apocalyptically alarmist towards the world and the mainstream Church that it has little energy for even intra-Catholic, much less inter-Church ecumenism. Add to these dynamics the virtual-schism that has intensified in the Francis pontificate and we see clearly a fractured, polarized Church and churches, desperate for unity at multiple levels.

As I ruminate nostalgically, I grieve: the national harmony of the 1950s, the thrilling activism of the 1960s, the Charismatic-Evangelical enthusiasm of the 1970s, the martial fervor of the anti-Roe, pre-Trump, conservative, moral coalition; the Catholic restoration under John Paul and Benedict.

I fully share the theological conservatism of our younger clergy, especially as it is informed by the visions of John Paul and Benedict; even as I hope that the coming generations will preserve all the good of those earlier ecumenisms, especially as they were expressed in the thought and ministry of those two pontiffs. That is the promising path to a Catholicism that is deep in its traditional roots, critical of error, and welcoming of all that is True-Good-Beautiful in a wholesome ecumenism. 

The desire of Christ is clear, passionate, definitive: that we be one in him as he is one with the Father. The fire of Trinitarian faith, infused in us by our sacramental immersion and inflamed by our Eucharistic engagement/consumption, burns for "Communio" in every dimension of our lives. We do well to enkindle this fire: institutionally as prudence directs; theologically (Truth); above all in shared prayer and care for the suffering (Good); but also in the delight of mutual reverence and affection (Beauty)...alwasy in the charity and truth of Christ!