| |
||
The Methodist team on the Roman Catholic/Methodist Committee has included two members of AIF for some time. Recently Margaret Nichol has been replaced by Gill'Walsh. Here Alan Baxter, a Methodist local preacher who has served on the Committee for ten years, reflects on its work.
At AIF Swanwick 1992, Keith Lander asked me about the Roman Catholic/Methodist Committee. "Isn't it like banging your head against a brick wall?" I heard myself saying that the real point of the dialogue was that we were still trying to find the brick wall. What is confusing is that for most of the time Catholics and Methodists seem to be on the same side.
The Roman Catholic/Methodist Committee in England and Wales has been talking for 25 years. Its main task is to shadow and predigest the work of the Joint Commission between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council.
The focus is unashamedly theological, and I have stopped worrying about it. In fact, I have been converted to thinking that theological work is vital in the long run.
On the AIF video, Margaret Minoletti says that there is a lot more to the questions posed by the existence of interchurch families than can be answered simply by saying, "Yes, you can share communion." She goes on: "There's a long road in front of us and we've got to travel down it together." Bishop Vincent Nichols picked up that point at the Swanwick conference. He said that we need to keep in mind that there are real differences between the churches, and we need to work on those things. This is what I meant when I said that we were trying to find the brick wall: the essential task of the official interchurch dialogues is to locate and clarify the differences. To use a military metaphor, the broader interchurch process, which includes interchurch families, needs permission to speak, a common language, and a good map of the minefield we are setting out to cross.
Permission - We found that we have in common the Bible and several creeds and councils, not to mention the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Of course, we knew that already in theory. By meeting, talking and praying together we have discovered it in a more direct way, and the discovery gave permission to go further. It created a degree of trust. Catholics and Methodists have official permission to work and pray together, but there is more to giving permission than simply having confidence in one's own position and accepting the good faith of others. For people who are not theologians, these talks provide a kind of safety check. (Be warned: talking to other Christians can seriously damage your prejudices.) To justify our existence, talks like ours have to start a conversation. You can carry it on wherever you like, in your own home, parish, or anywhere.
Language - It is easy to conduct interchurch life in the politically-correct language of well-meaning diplomacy. Generally people are not rude enough. But in the search for clarity and understanding we have reached a stage where fudging will not do. So we have learned that "justification" means the whole business of salvation in Catholic-speak, while Methodists use it to describe stage one of a process of growth. We agree that we all depend utterly on the grace of God, though the role of "merit" is more of a mystery, and purgatory is a new concept for Methodists. Again, Methodists find the idea of Tradition (capital T, and sometimes with definite article) difficult to separate from "the past" or "history". But finding words in common, or at least understanding the words as others use them requires time, thought and testing out.
Mapping minefields - We are still talking about "Authority". What are Methodists to say about the papacy? Methodists have been given a specific historic task which is probably completed. Now we have to realign ourselves and move on. In theory, it should make us willing partners in ecumenical work. But we have accumulated a lot of excess baggage in 250 years and not much experience of peaceful change. Most of the changes in Methodist history have been achieved at the expense of people parting company. Catholics are not the only ones with a history to live down, or outmoded trappings to discard. So long as both Catholics and Methodists are in a state of change, we have to be very careful how we tread.
The next item on the agenda is our common humanity. This means that we shall be talking about ethics, and possibly catching up with the fact that, throughout the world, Catholics and Protestants are able to co-operate in promoting Christian values. I suspect that the differences this new area of discussion is going to reveal will not follow predictable lines.
"Interchurch marriages have often been seen as a problem rather than as an opportunity. It might be better to see them as small-scale ecumenical projects where the issues between Catholics and Methodists are felt at the sharp end."
From Can the Roman Catholic and Methodist Churches he Reconciled?, a Report approved by the Methodist Conference of 1992 and sent down for discussion and comment. [Comments to be in by March 1994.]
Return to Journal index
Produced by the Association of Interchurch Families, England
If you find any broken links, are having problems with any page in this site, or would like to suggest a page to link to, please contact the |
Go to Top |