A waste of time?
Garvey, John
OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey A WASTE OF TIME? THE ORTHODOX & THE WCC he World Council o f Churches was, until the Second Vatican Council, the most famous and visible symbol of ecumenism....
...The questions raised at Canberra go to the heart of ecclesiology, and reflect differences between Christians which extend beyond the membership of the WCC...
...Among other things, the delegates commented on Dr...
...There are different ecclesiologies at work here: one, generally individualistic, 392: Commonweal though attentive to communal concerns, sees the church as the collection of individuals who are committed to the following of Christ...
...Looking at it selfishly, it has been good for the Orthodox...
...It was never without controversy, and its tendency in recent years to respond somewhat predictably to the latest trends in liberal politics has brought it a share of ridicule...
...WORLD WATCH ]. Bryan Hehir REORDERING THE WORLD ]OHN PAUL II'S 'CENTESIMUS ANNUS' n 1891 Leo XIII shaped his encyclical, Rerum novarum, on the theme of "new things...
...This was criticized by many of the Protestant delegates...
...The WCC Canberra Assembly dealt with a number of predictable issues and administrative concems, issuing statements on the Gulf War, conflicts within and between nations, and the WCC's own financial difficulties...
...It isn't...
...This is obviously at variance with the opinion of other WCC members, many of whom are bothered by the Orthodox refusal to participate in their liturgies, and the refusal of the Orthodox to admit them to Communion...
...She feels the need to learn more about us, and that's good...
...An Orthodox delegate told me that a woman came up to him at the end of the assembly, very upset that at the closing ceremony God was referred to as "Father...
...What attracted most press attention was a presentation by Korean Presbyterian theologian, Dr...
...But how one interprets Christ and the Holy Spirit and their relationship to the Father is an open-ended question, because no one can claim to have a finally appropriate view of God...
...Where there is no real Communion, a celebration of the Lord's supper becomes merely symbolic--which may not be a problem for someone from the Reformed tradition, but definitely would be for someone Orthodox or Roman Catholic...
...Such a reading is defensible if Centesimus annus is read in the context of John Paul's other major social teachings, Laborem exercens (1981) and Solicitudo rei socialis (1987), as well as his 1979 address to the United Nations...
...For a similar reason, the denial of open Communion to all is an unfair exclusion from what is, finally, only another metaphor...a metaphor central to Christians, the symbolic affirmation of our unity...
...Member churches include Protestant denominations of almost every variety, as well as most of the world's Orthodox churches...
...The real question about intercommunion under these circumstances is not whether it can be done, or should be, but what it means...
...Even referring to God as "Father" and baptizing in the traditional trinitarian way is rejected by some Protestants (there are churches where baptisms are performed with words like "parent" and "child" substituted for "Father" and "Son"), because these are seen as culturally limited metaphors...
...Now that those fundamental changes have taken place, Centesimus annus celebrates the change and moves to an analysis of what the moral order requires within and among states...
...A couple of events there revealed problems that must be dealt with at some point in the relatively near future, if the WCC is to survive in anything like its present form, and they reveal deeper divisions in the whole of the Christian world...
...Meetings of the WCC have brought them together from all parts of the world, and the meetings have borne fruit...
...The fullness of Christianity is already found in Orthodoxy, in the opinion of the Orthodox member churches...
...The Eucharist is not a metaphor for a desired unity but the expression of a present unity--which plainly does not exist--in the Body of Christ, who is truly present among us eucharistically...
...Chung Hyun Kyung...
...Some observers have suggested that these problems show why the ecumenical enterprise is doomed from the start...
...Looked at as part of the larger ecumenical picture, it would be a betrayal of Christian charity if the Orthodox churches abandoned the WCC because of these frustrations...
...what has become part of the church's practice is the result of the community's discerement, a discernment in which the Holy Spirit is present...
...The other ecclesiology is centered on the belief that the Holy Spirit guides the vision of the church, seen as the Body of Christ, the presence of Christ in the world...
...It is the light by which we try to see and interpret the present...
...This was done in part as a rejection of "Eurocentric" approaches to Christian tradition...
...this would never happen, she said, at the church she attends in Manhattan...
...But it is significant, and a bad sign, that the very use of biblical language--the language that made it possible for the WCC to form in the first place, the one thing that used to unite us--now divides some of us from one another...
...Another point of division between the Orthodox and Protestant delegates involved the Eucharist...
...A major accomplishment of the Leonine papacy was the way in which he began 14 June 1991:393...
...it is not something we can stand apart from, reinterpreting it as the moment's urgent needs make their claims on us...
...In February of this year the WCC held its Seventh Annual Assembly in Canberra, Australia...
...At the same time, it is important to realize that we are at a crucial moment in the relationships among churches...
...Chung's approach to theology fresh and exciting tend to regard the Christian religion as a set of metaphors without specific content, which may be used creatively to underscore a point of view held strongly by an individual or group...
...Chung's presentation reveals something more profound in the division between the Orthodox and many WCC participants, however...
...As with the United Nations, it is easy to see the WCC as a largely ineffectual grouping...
...This would probably not have happened if it were not for the WCC...
...Many delegates thought it a wonderful presentation, but others (the Orthodox particularly) found it deeply problematic...
...her combination of dance and text identified the Holy Spirit with the spirits of ancestors and the spirits of nature...
...The participation of the Orthodox in the WCC has always been qualified: Orthodoxy considers itself to be the apostolic church...
...Our tradition is rich in respect for local and national cultures, but we find it impossible to invoke the spirits of 'earth, air, water, and sea creatures.'" With regard to intercommunion, the Orthodox wrote, "For the Orthodox, the Eucharist is the supreme expression of unity and not a means toward unity...
...Recently, representatives of the Oriental Orthodox (that is, the nonChalcedonian churches of Armenia, Syria, and Malabar, and the Coptic churches of Egypt and Ethiopia) and the Eastern Orthodox churches concluded that they now have no theological differences which stand as barriers to communion...
...The effects of nineteenth-century political, intellectual, and economic life and the stances of his two predecessors (Gregory XVI and Pins IX) had effectively pushed the church to the margins of public life...
...It was really the good news and the bad news," he said...
...Though the Roman Catholic church is not a member, Catholics serve on WCC commissions...
...Chung's presentation: "We must guard against a tendency to substitute a 'private' spirit, the spirit of the world or other spirits for the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son...
...It doesn't matter, from this perspective, that the Holy Spirit has not traditionally been identified with the spirits of nature or the spirits of ancestors...
...tradition itself is seen as a confining and limited thing (except, perhaps, when it is nonEuropean and non-Western...
...As a result of all this, the Orthodox delegates felt it necessary to issue a statement on Orthodox participation in the WCC...
...He has articulated his view of a world less controlled by the superpowers, his conception of a united Europe--separated from the "logic of the blocs"--and his conviction / that the peoples and nations of the developing world deserve a different status than the one accorded them by the cold war...
...When Leo XIII wrote Rerum novarum, his primary concern was to respond to the suffering of workers in the industrializing world, but he also designed the encyclical to complement his larger effort to restore the church's voice and role to a central place in the public life of the world...
...they are presently trying to work out a complete restoration of communion between their churches...
...It is important for many other members (quite a few of them are more sympathetic to the Orthodox position than to the free-wheeling extremes that oppose it) that the Orthodox remain...
...It is considered a betrayal of a God-given heritage to reject that language for reasons which are essentially political...
...The danger here--apart from what seems to me to be an absolutely inadequate ecclesiology--is that the church does little more than reflect, in a vaguely religious way, the concerns and passions of whatever cultural assumptions dominate its members...
...Though committed to a search for Christian unity, Orthodoxy does not accept the common WCC belief that there is a larger church of which Orthodoxy forms a smaller component, searching for a unity yet to be achieved...
...others would argue that their emergence as points of controversy and potential dialogue are strong arguments in favor of ecumenism...
...Although many Orthodox delegates attended an ecumenical eucharistic service, they did not take the bread and wine, and held their own eucharistic liturgy separately at which other delegates were present, but were not able to receive Communion...
...in 1991 John Paul II has given us Centesimus annus as we debate the need for a "new world order...
...The f i r s t was held at Amsterdam, in 1948...
...The differences are profound, and they have led a lot of Orthodox to think of the ecumenical movement as a waste of time...
...The reaction to Dr...
...The language used traditionally by the church is considered appropriate--it would not have been received into the tradition if it were not...
...Long before the change that has occurred in world politics, the pope had argued that the old order was morally unacceptable and had been developing his conception of reform for the international order...
...Those who find Dr...
...They regard this as mere triumphalism...
...One way to read this new encyclical is as the pope's contribution to the "new order" debate...
...The present situation in the ecumenical movement is for us an experience of the cross of Christian division...
...But the WCC has been, and continues to be, an important sign and source of hope for Christian unity...
...For the Orthodox, however, tradition is the way the church discerns the way God has worked and is working among us...
...but like the United Nations, the WCC offers an important forum, a way of taking the pulse of a larger community--in this case that of Christian churches, rather than nations...
...At the same time, she told him that her contact with the Orthodox made her understand that she must make an effort to learn more about the Orthodox position...
...The Orthodox asked whether it was time for Orthodox and other member churches to review their relations with the World Council of Churches, and scheduled a meeting of Orthodox churches to discuss the issue...
Vol. 118 • June 1991 • No. 12
