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The way of love
Love is the key to all our growth in Christ. It seems to me that it must be your greatest asset as you live out your vocation as interchurch families. Your own 1994 response to the Called to be One process made the point: "Falling in love helped us to begin." It has struck me as strange and perhaps a little sad that your leaflets, notepaper and other publications all quote the first part of Pope John Paul's comment when he visited this country in 1982: You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity - the negative part - but do not go on to quote the second, more positive, part of his remark: Express that hope in prayer together and in the unity of love.
The primacy of love
What is that love? One contemporary ecumenist, echoing the German theologian Martin Buber, has defined it as "the responsibility of an I for a Thou" (William G Steele, "Double Belonging", English ARC paper, 1990). It may seem strange to you that a celibate religious sister should be addressing you on the subject of married life; I assure you it does to me! All I can do is reflect back to you some of the thoughts and aspirations I have found in your own published material, together with a few snippets gleaned from elsewhere in the ecumenical scene. It has been pointed out by a member of an interchurch family that the interchurch couple "is ecumenical by its very existence", but interestingly the writer went on to associate this in the first place NOT with the two-churchness of the marriage, but with "the strength of our love, for without love, without intimate knowledge, there will be no unity" (Franqoise Deblock, Interchurch Families, Summer 1994). Similarly, the comment already quoted - "Falling in love helped us to begin" - was expanded to explain that "our unity is the sharing in love which we learn from God." Others have observed that interchurch families witness to the universality of God's love which knows no limits, boundaries, or constrictions. It was the present Pope who pointed out that a family - any family - is "not holy because it is perfect, but because God's grace is at work in it, helping it to set out anew each day on the way of love" (Familiaris Consortio, 1981). We can take considerable comfort from that word "holy". It really has no synonym - it just means godlike, to do with God, and yet all its well-founded cognate words in English, whole, wholesome, healthy, surely evoke some of the significant dimensions of marriage.
Love one another
You know better than most that a healthy marriage is the product of continual hard work in learning to live together, however strong the initial love. In your 1988 response to the Not Strangers but Pilgrims process, you dwelt on the fact that God's grace is needed to keep you together, in a developing relationship that passes through many stages which have their mundane and routine aspects as well as their exalted ones. St Paul, who saw marriage as the sacramental sign of the union between Christ and his Church (Ephesians 5: 25), and who waxed lyrical about this union in Colossians 3: 16 ("Let the word of Christ in all its richness find a home in you ... with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs to God") is, two verses later, warning husbands not to be sharp with their wives, and parents not to irritate their children (Colossians 3: 19-21)! Yet you know too that the energy is there to sustain your interpersonal growth; it flows from the mutual commitment to love one another in the power of Christ's unifying love (Joseph Laishley, S.J. AIF Centrepiece on Confirmation, 1981).
It seems to me that this word "love", so much a part of your vocabulary, is not heard often enough in the ecumenical movement. We talk about accepting each other, respecting the traditions, convictions and consciences of others, about converging, drawing closer in co-operation and commitment, but we seldom seem to talk about loving each other. It was a great Dominican theologian and ecumenist, Yves Congar, who died recently, who wrote in an early work, Divided Christendom (1936), "We have to learn to LOVE these different theologians before we can come to understand them." He was speaking there about the Orthodox Churches, but it is surely a maxim that must apply to all "others" who are "different" from ourselves. The same writer who defined love as "the responsibility of an I for a Thou", Fr Billy Steele, ecumenical officer for the Roman Catholic diocese of Leeds, also protested that "the divisions between the churches are scandalous not because division makes for inefficiency and weakness (Jesus died in weakness after all) but because of the lovelessness they portray, a lovelessness which obscures the proclamation of the truth that sets us free" (English ARC paper, 1990).
A charismatic reality
My dismay at being asked to address this gathering was slightly alleviated by the fact that I received the invitation on the same day as the publication of a document produced by a synod of bishops in the Roman Catholic Church discussing consecrated religious life (Briefing, Catholic Media Services, 20 October 1994). I was struck by a number of parallels between your situation and ours. The tidy-minded bureaucratic church does in fact find religious orders like my own something of an awkward anomaly. We do not fit precisely into any neat category, and while our presence and participation in the Church are undeniable, and generally reckoned as valuable, our activities and demands often bewilder and irritate the authorities. Bishops treat such problems with formal diplomacy, but the traditional conflict between the parish priest and the superior of the local convent is a familiar standing joke with Roman Catholics.
Cardinal Hume reminded the synod that religious orders are a charismatic reality at the heart of the Church, an element of its intrinsic nature which is both charismatic and institutional. They each exhibit a particular gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Church admits for them a just autonomy of life, government and discipline, so that they can preserve their own nature, purpose and character. Such autonomy is an example of subsidiarity which requires that the affairs of a smaller unit shall not necessarily be taken over by a larger one. Autonomy and dependence are twin dimensions of all groupings within the Church, dimensions to harmonised by charity which is at the heart of the Church's communion.
For "religious order" read "domestic church" - just as surely a charismatic reality at the heart of the Church, with the same right to preserve its own nature, purpose and character. This view of the domestic church obviously calls for an ecclesiology of communion, which sees the Church as both spiritual and sacramental, charismatic and institutional, held together by partnership and constant mutual dialogue.
A domestic church
Every valid marriage between baptised persons is a true sacrament and so gives rise to a domestic church which is bound to bear witness before the world. A spiritual union founded on common faith and hope working through love, it is called - like the Church universal - to be a sign of unity for the world. Such is your vocation. The Christian family in fact constitutes a specific manifestation of ecclesial communion - that is why it can be called a domestic church (Rene Beaupere, "Double Belonging", One in Christ, 1982, no. 1, p.32). It is the basic "household of the faith", so often alluded to by St Paul in his letters, in which the Church of Christ first took visible form.
As the first manifestation of the Church, the family is a classic example of diversity within the unity of love. Those early house-churches exhibited far more diversity than does our average contemporary family, for they included not only parents and children but also an extended network of relatives and dependents as well as clients and employees, servants and slaves. And they were distinctly hierarchical! Yet it is clear, above all from St Paul's letter to Philemon, that in such a household all baptised persons were regarded as equal disciples of Christ, in whom "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free" (Colossians 3: 11).
A spirituality earthed in human experience
The Church does pay lip-service to this notion of the domestic church, but perhaps we need to insist more on the substance and validity of the concept. For a family, in a wide spectrum of its life and activity, and especially for young children growing up, to all intents and purposes the domestic church is the Church. Again Fr Billy Steele emphasises that "when Christ recognises me, and through his Spirit begins to recreate me as his brother, I do not become a monad isolated from all other relationship. If we are already members of one another in our humanity, race, nation and family, in our recreation in Christ this fundamental human characteristic is not destroyed but fulfilled." As the 1993 Pastoral Letter of the US Bishops put it: "You are the Church in your home." The household community is the bearer of authentic human and spiritual values - and so of Christian ones, which are recognised and fostered there; these must not be minimised or disregarded in favour of more abstract theological requirements, which can have little impact on children in their earlier years unless they are enfleshed in the ordinary domestic virtues. Jesus challenges us to be fully human - the more human we are the closer we come to God in Christ. Real growth consists in meeting the ordinary human challenges which lead us on to adulthood, and all our visions need to be earthed in particular situations. We need a spirituality earthed in the human experiences of our time.
Pastoral care for the couple as couple
What is true of any domestic church is equally true of the interchurch family, with the additional characteristic that, in this cell of the Body of Christ, that holy body is made visible in two Christian traditions, not just one. It is a structured expression of Christian love of a type which has, as yet, no parallel in the Church as a whole (Ernest Falardeau, SSS, Interchurch Families, 3,1, January 1995). And the Church as a whole must accommodate itself to recognise and serve the domestic church, and all such similar embodiments of Church; otherwise it becomes too individualistic, or too institutionalistic. It risks becoming either an association of like-minded individuals piously seeking personal salvation, or a bureaucratic institution arranging the externals of life in a tidy but barren manner. It must be a primary task of the Church, at area, parish, district, or diocesan levels, to serve those natural units - the domestic churches, established by God himself. Surely priests and pastors do not confine their care and concern to one half, "their" half, of the interchurch couple. True Christian ministry must serve the couple as a couple, and what is true for the local minister must be true for the Church as a whole.
Fostering the unity of marriage
The primary desire of the interchurch couple must be to foster and preserve the unity of their marriage. It is significant that this is now recognised as the predominant concern of the Roman Catholic Church in its regulations about mixed marriages; the Catholic partner undertakes to do all he or she can "within the unity of our partnership" to bring up the children in the Roman Catholic Church. But unity, whether of the Church as a whole, or of the local church of diocese, area, or circuit, is also a prime concern of church authorities such as bishops. Can some way be found not only to avoid opposing these two frameworks of unity, but actually to yoke them together? There is surely some community of interest between the local church and the domestic church; neither is simply a natural grouping, but both are living cells where Christians meet and share at a deep level in Christ's name. In some parts of the world the base communities are seen as a quasi-structural mediating stage between the smallest cells in the Body of Christ and the larger structural units. Without necessarily adopting that ecclesiology, there may perhaps be some harmonising lessons we can learn from it. One such could well be a greater appreciation, reverence and respect for the God-given ministry and leadership of baptised lay people.
Exercise your prophetic role
It seems to me that the vocation of the domestic church, and so of the interchurch family, is to live communion for itself and on behalf of the rest of us, just as the offering of the first sheaf sanctified the whole harvest; and then to exercise a prophetic role in demonstrating that possibility of communion to the Church and to the world.
Communicate your characteristic spirituality
You yourselves have constantly begged to be regarded not as a problem but as an opportunity, and have spoken of the opportunities that interchurch marriage provides for spiritual growth. Others have recognised and commented on this, but its real development must come from yourselves. How can you communicate your own characteristic spirituality to the rest of us, so that we can see and appreciate it, just as we can see and appreciate a Benedictine or a Jesuit spirituality, a Methodist, a high Anglican, or an evangelical spirituality?
The ecumenical potential of interchurch families was beautifully developed when they were described as "the conjunctive tissue which closes the edges of the wound, heals the sore, repairs the breach of division ... Joints are united again, nerves are readjusted, arteries are restored through which flows the life of Christ" ("Double Belonging" by Rene Beaupere, O.P. in One in Christ, 1982 no. 1, p.32). You are this by your very existence; can you reflect on and develop the spirituality implied, in such a way that the rest of us can share it to some degree?
A radically new way of life
You have an obligation to preach the Gospel you have grasped. The Gospel we seek to reflect in all our church traditions is meant for the whole world, and our differences can be seen as a hindrance to that outreach and proclamation. Will you convince the rest of us that they can indeed become an asset as we share our various insights? The Declaration made at Swanwick in 1987 by virtually all the churches in this country was a commitment to establish a radically new style of working, but this demands a shift in thinking, feeling and action at all levels in all churches. Can you, who have established that radically new way of life for yourselves, show the rest of us how we should build on the creative, ecumenical relationships of the many, rather than continuing to rely on the ecumenical activities of the few? (Elizabeth Templeton, CCBI Assembly Report, 1994)
Dialogue of life, action, experience
Communion obviously demands in the first place communication, and we know that in spite of many words this often does not take place; our deeds or our body language contradict or obscure our words. Marriage must be the prime example of non-verbal communication, and someone has pointed out that the interchurch family is the eminently suitable forum for all types of ecumenical dialogue - the dialogue of life, the dialogue of action, the dialogue of religious experience. It is also a highly suitable forum for theological discussion if we take seriously the sensus fidelium, that instinct for the faith implanted in every baptised Christian. But theological or doctrinal consensus is only one aspect of a more comprehensive consensus, a deeper togetherness, a "feeling together" (which is what the Latin word consentire means) that does not rest on doctrinal agreement but on a common participation in Jesus Christ. Can you find ways to share the fruits of your own on-going dialogue more fully with the rest of us?
Spiritual osmosis
It has been said that an interchurch family is a sort of communicatio in sacris, an exchange of sacred realities, where both partners share together in the gifts and riches received from each church, and further, where each accepts responsibility for the values and principles championed by the other community. This can suggest to the rest of us that unity will not be forged by a carefully balanced assembly of structures but rather by a sort of spiritual osmosis, which would allow us all to absorb the Spirit offered to us in the lives of others, to allow the truly evangelical values carried in the life of another community to penetrate our own ecclesial cell. Presumably this happens among you; can you teach the rest of us how to appreciate and share in the process?
Personal and relational communion
The contemporary family is no longer hierarchically structured (though I am not trying to undermine parental authority). Roles and relationships within it are seen rather in terms of personal characteristics and needs. Our archetypal example of ecumenism - the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is one in which the personal and relational dimension is not just primary, but in fact constitutes the Godhead, as far as we can grasp this. And there multiplicity is perfectly ordered and held together by giving and receiving love. Should we not learn from the interchurch family that the personal and relational aspects of ecumenism must precede the organisational, that growth in institutional unity can only spring out of growth in personal communion? The full, visible unity of the Church does require canonical bonds of communion, but such visible and canonical bonds are but the sign and guarantee, not the source or cause, of unity.
Unity in difference
You can teach us about unity encompassing diversity; you can teach us, too, about the reality and cost of diversity. St Paul told the Colossians, "There is now neither Jew nor Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or freeman." We do believe this, desperately, and hang on to that belief by the skin of our teeth. We know that differences are transcended by our new identity as Christians, but clearly they do not go away. If we could really live together in communion, bearing the cost of difference, as you do, never again saying to one another, "I have no need of you", we should have come to a deeper level of communion with a God who suffers (Mary Tanner, Without a vision the people die, Irish School of Ecumenics, 1993).
Even that 1994 synod of bishops recognised that in a church which defines itself as communion, this diversity-in-unity must be lived at the affective level. Lingering suspicions of each other have to be banished; rivalries between different vocations among the people of God can have no place where we are all Christians, supposedly partners in ministry. You, the interchurch family, the smallest unit of Churches Together, embody for us the relativity of difference as you demonstrate that unity is possible, despite the real and sometimes agonising differences that do not disappear. You remind us that the domestic churches of the New Testament exhibited a variety of ecclesiologies which were not harmoniously reducible to one tidy model, and that diversity, and even denominational barriers, do not inhibit grace.
Into the hands of God
You experience the pain of diversity most keenly in the area of sacramental life, and your responsibilities as parents underline your on-going need for full communion, expressed in eucharistic sharing.
The present limited pastoral provision for this, at least as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, represents the current understanding of partial but imperfect communion between our churches. Your grave and pressing need is recognised by the permission for, and even encouragement of, the admission under certain conditions of non-Roman Catholics, especially marriage partners, to the Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church, because you are in a fuller degree of communion with each other than are the churches you represent.
But even you are not yet in perfect communion while you preserve your loyalty to distinct church communities. Even you, as well as your churches, are still on the journey, a journey the stages of which are liturgically as well as personally mapped out. Our present, limited, sacramental sharing reflects this theology of stages of communion (cf. Code of Canon Law, 844, and Directory ... on Ecumenism, 129, 159-60). Marriage can now be ecumenically celebrated in either church, but not in both, and its primacy over any undertakings about the upbringing of the children is recognised. In one sense baptism has an absolute dimension: it is baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ as well as baptism into a visible community. But it is into a visible community, and as such the beginning of a process rather than an isolated event. We agree that Christian initiation is an ongoing process, but the churches to which you adhere are not always in agreement about the liturgical shape of that process. Should infants be baptised? Or should conscious, responsible believers seek baptism for themselves? If baptism is given in infancy, how do we each understand confirmation? And how do we handle the questions about membership of the visible church that this raises?
If you commit yourselves to a two-church upbringing for your family, you commit yourself to growth in knowledge and understanding of your partner's church and all it stands for. You yourselves are still on the ecumenical journey, however far ahead you may be of your respective churches. And a journey allows for dynamic changes; it allows for patterns of companionship to alter and merge. Some of your publications record the experience of those who have found themselves growing in their "interchurch vocation".
You insist that your need is great, and that the timespan available for your journey as parents, the childhood years of your children, is so much more limited than that seemingly available to the Church at large. Is this really true? While the rest of us cannot fully understand your pain and frustration, we can sympathise; but must we not also gently say, "Remember, you do not have to do it all!" As long as you continue to put your best foot forward, you can leave the end of the journey, even the journey of your own family, in the hands of God.
Wounded and blessed
The repeated conflict you encounter between institutional theory and your own experience prompts you to be continually pushing at the boundaries, sacramental, canonical, social, and in so doing you discover truths and principles which can be applied elsewhere. Don't stop! Accept your prophetic vocation, with the sobering realisation that the prophetic gift is never easily handled, either by those to whom it is given, or those to whom it is addressed. This was the burden of the contribution made to that 1994 synod by the head of my own order, Fr Timothy Radcliffe, the Master General of the Dominicans. He said:
If we respond wholeheartedly there will inevitably be moments of tension. Any renewal, any bold experiment, will often be seen as initially threatening or suspect. (When the Dominicans arrived in the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, the troops had to be called out to protect them from the diocesan clergy!) Our challenge is to discover how we can live these moments of tension fruitfully, as part of our journey to the Kingdom, as building up the Body of Christ rather than tearing it apart.... Difficulties must be overcome by a sincere dialogue in charity.... True charity heals us of fear ... fear is corrosive of all communion. Too often in the Church we are afraid, afraid of debate. There is no need for fear.... The mystery of our communion in the Spirit does not mean seamless unanimity.... Dialogue requires of us mutual esteem, reverence and harmony.... It is fruitful when it is the struggle to learn from each other. The mediaeval disputation, as practised by such as St Thomas Aquinas, was based on the assumption that one's opponent is always, in some sense, right. It is easy to identify another person's errors, but do I have the courage to hear what he may teach me.~ The struggle of true dialogue is like Jacob wrestling with the angel - it leaves us wounded and blessed.
Sr Mary Cecily Boulding, O.P.
Recommendations from Churches Together in Marriage: Pastoral Care of Interchurch Families, Churches Together in England and CYTUN, 1994
1 That the churches explore together the extent to which the sense of dual commitment/double belonging experienced by some interchurch families can be recognised pastorally and given formal expression in church discipline and structures.
2 That the churches look together at the "double belonging" experienced by some interchurch children and address the ecclesiological questions which this raises.
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