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VOLUME TWELVE NUMBER TWO SUMMER 2004

Forty years on

This year we celebrate with joy the fortieth anniversary of the promulgation of its Decree on Ecumenism by the Second Vatican Council in 1964.

The Council (1962-65) was a climactic event in the life of the Roman Catholic Church. It was an exercise of teaching authority at the highest level in the Catholic Church: the Pope speaking together with his brother-bishops from all parts of the world meeting in Council. But into the life of the Council there was also integrated the active presence of observers from other Christian churches that were not in communion with Rome – an amazing new element in the experience of a Council.

The Council was the starting point for all the changes for the better that have taken place over the past four decades so far as interchurch families are concerned. The Decree on Ecumenism marked the official entry of the Catholic Church into the modern ecumenical movement; divided Christians could already recognise each other’s baptism into Christ. The Constitution on the Church re-thought the theology of the church in terms of the People of God and of communion, rather than in those of a perfect, hierarchical society. It became possible to think in terms of degrees of communion; the edges of the church became blurred; it was not simply a question of being ‘in’ or ‘out’. The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World changed the church’s perspective on marriage from that of contract to that of covenant. Marriage between Christians came to be seen as a community of love, patterned on the love of Christ for the church; an intimate partnership of life and love in which the spouses were engaged on the work of mutual sanctification. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy focused on the community aspect of church worship. The Declaration on Religious Freedom was immensely important for mixed marriages; it required respect for the conscience of the other Christian partner committed to marriage with a Catholic. And at the fourth session of the Council, many of the Observers broke the general rule they had agreed at the first session, not to make ‘common non-Catholic Christian statements’, when 23 of them signed a joint statement ‘on mixed marriages between baptised Christians’. The document was conveyed directly to the Pope (see ‘The Observers at Vatican II’ by Thomas Stransky CP, Centro pro Unione, Spring 2003).

One of the most significant texts to come out of the Council, so far as interchurch families are concerned, is to be found in the Decree on Ecumenism, n.8. It follows the call to the practice of ‘spiritual ecumenism’ – change of heart, holiness of life, and prayer for Christian unity. A decade earlier prayer with other Christians had been officially allowed (1949) but eucharistic sharing was entirely forbidden. Now, however, the Council stated that it could ‘sometimes be commended’. At the time this seemed unbelievable to many.

All the Council’s implications for the life and witness of interchurch families have not yet been drawn out. But we are on the way. And the fortieth anniversary of the Decree on Ecumenism is a good time to give thanks, and to re-commit ourselves in the service of that unity for which Christ prayed.

RR

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