Papacy, Protestantism and ecumenism - The World Council and the Christian World Communions

The apostle Paul said, "If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?" (1 Cor. 14:8). Perhaps not all the Christian confessions are sending out an uncertain sound. What is certain, however, is that the various messages they are sending out and the mere fact of their visibly separate existence often give rise to confusion, which compromises the clarity and effectiveness of the witness to Christ which each desires to give. How, in fact, can those outside the church throughout the world make sense of the many denominations which, sometimes contradictorily, claim to be expressions of the Christian faith? How can believers themselves quite often be anything else but uncertain, or at least disturbed, by their own divisions?

That is why ecumenical work is essential. For each confession, for each church, for each Christian community this certainly does not mean they must start by giving up their "specific charism" -- to use Oscar Cullmann's felicitous expression -- or reducing the various gifts entrusted to them by God to a monolithic uniformity. But it does mean for all of them discovering how their differing witness, far from being contradictory, mutually exclusive or confusing, can become so many musical parts, so many musical scores that together make up not a cacophony, but a symphony -- a symphony which may well contain discords, but discords which can be resolved.

Ecumenical work, which has been pursued now for more than three quarters of a century and which was greatly encouraged by the Second Vatican Council, has already unbolted several doors which were keeping the Christian confessions apart from one another in a way contrary to truth and to charity. The mass of the people, marked by centuries of confessional habit, culture and antagonism, have not yet become aware of this development, but it is none the less real and irreversible. Moreover, in a good number of confessionally mixed countries, cooperation between Catholic and Protestant parishes is a clear sign that attitudes have changed.

Confining ourselves to relations between Catholicism and Protestantism, we have, through the living inspiration of the Holy Spirit, discovered recently on both sides that we could and should transcend and move on from the different doctrinal positions which have hitherto seemed irreconcilable. Scripture and tradition, faith and works, word and sacrament are so many areas where what were thought of and experienced as opposing and mutually exclusive possibilities have been seen to have an underlying deeper complementarity. Even Mariology has shed its divisiveness and on both sides has been relocated within Christology, even including the immaculate conception and the bodily assumption.(1) Of course, much work, many conversations, much biblical and theological research are still necessary before we arrive at the point where we can play the score of the rediscovered symphonies together. It is no less certain that in these various areas, promising decisive first steps have been taken, opening up a vast quarry for ecumenical thought and action.

There is, however, one area where it seems clear that we come up against an insurmountable difficulty at the outset: the existence of the Roman papacy with all its implications for the very structure of the Catholic Church. In an address to the Secretariat for Christian Unity on 28 April 1967, Pope Paul VI put it very explicitly: What shall we say of the difficulty to which our separated brethren are still so sensitive? I refer to the difficulty which arises from the function which Christ has assigned to us in the church of God and which our tradition has so authoritatively upheld. The pope, we well know, is without doubt the most serious obstacle on the road to ecumenism.(2)

Why is this the most serious difficulty? The reason seems to me to be obvious: the doctrinal points I have just mentioned are capable of being interpreted. A doctrine can be explained; its meaning and implications can be examined; an interpretation can be suggested. But that cannot be done with the papacy and the church structure based on it, for there we are dealing with an institution. Strictly speaking, an institution cannot be "interpreted". You either accept it or reject it. And herein lies the ecumenical difficulty inherent in the papacy. On the Catholic side, there is the institution of the papacy, which regards itself as the organ founded by Christ validly to determine and express, by virtue of the promised help of the Holy Spirit granted to it as an institution, the contemporary testimony to the tradition of the apostles by the Holy Spirit. And, on the Protestant side, there is the contemporary testimony by the work of the Holy Spirit to the tradition of the apostles and of scripture, which is self-authenticating by the force of its own internal evidence and which is constantly calling the church afresh into being. On first sight one cannot see how these two positions, Catholic and Protestant, could be other than mutually exclusive.