Poetry
Stanko, Mary Rudbeck
Earlier, in 1985, even more discouraging words came from Kenneth Briggs, former religion writer for the New York Times: "A few days ago I read about another one of those headlined 'steps' toward...
...Consider these scattered examples from the United States alone...
...But still the ice says yes, and calls me to its comely hues and hard realities...
...That conviction takes the form of institutional ecumenism that occurs in religious organizations that have opened their doors and hearts---or mem- bership-to women and men from other persuasions...
...Christians pray together more frequently and not just on Thanksgiving Day, which is slowly becoming the nation's first ecumenical holy day of nonobligation...
...As the tide of enthusiasm ebbs for top-level negotiations between ambassadors representing different churches, a new realism surfaces with regard to the efficacy and speed of bilateral commissions and canonical dialogues...
...The august-sounding Second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will probably see its worthy handiwork sink into ecclesiastical quagmire...
...If recent history is a sound guide, the Anglican and Catholic theologians will send their victorious findings on to church authorities and settle back to twiddle their thumbs for a good long while, perhaps forever...
...I want the snow to fall enough to make a foothold, to cover the necessary sense of mortality which makes me more alert then I would like to be...
...25January1991:49...
...Increasingly, religious publishing houses have become ecumenical in their marketing and their choice of authors...
...At the present time, a dozen or more English editions are read and studied jointly by Christians without regard to denomination...
...Many of them have overcome theological hurdles that were once thought to be insurmountable...
...In the Peoria diocese, where more than fifteen thousand persons have made a Cursillo during the past decade, 25 percent of the Cursillistas were Christians other than Catholics...
...Horgan, a sturdy supporter of institution- alized ecumenism, wrote: "Throughout the United States ecu- menism is taken for granted...
...Recent and historic exchanges will, it now seems, continue to stumble along as they have with the Orthodox since Constantinople in 1054, with Protestants since Augsburg in 1517, and with the Polish National Catholic Church since Scranton in 1900...
...Institutional Ecumenism What then sustains the ecumenical movement today and buoys its hopes for improved interchurch relations...
...Most social programs, whether shelters or soup kitchens for the homeless in our cities...or assistance and referral services for troubled farmers in rural America, are ecumenical (inter-Christian) or interreligious (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu...
...They also pray together at retreats, on Martin Luther King Day, and in ecumenical prayer services such as the one held in 1987 in South Carolina where Pope John Paul II preached...
...The problem is that these steps seem to be going in circles...
...Earlier, in 1985, even more discouraging words came from Kenneth Briggs, former religion writer for the New York Times: "A few days ago I read about another one of those headlined 'steps' toward Christian unity...
...I fall to it and embrace even the beginning when I was born before the fish came, before warmth made my body strong enough to crawl ashore and wait for the cold and lasting winter...
...Altos and tenors in church choirs are often ecumenically diverse, as are the organists...
...It is the conviction, amazingly successful in practice, that separated Christians should do everything together except what conscience demands that they do apart...
...I'd rather drag my heels on solid ground, lazily gripping the soil which joins me with the march of seasons, not eternities...
...Not many years ago Martin E. Marty served as president of the American Catholic Historical Association...
...At the Harvard and Chicago divinMary Rudbeck Stanko Transition The ice is a frozen tomb of memories where, at a glance, I can see my ancestors smiling reflectively and affectionately up at my shoes, watching me as I whistle and hold onto the air for balance...
...With each impressive ecumenical document, the goal seems ever more elusive...
...We have come a long way in the United States since 1910, the year when a worldwide Week of Prayer for Christian Unity had its beginnings...
...Through practical cooperation at the local institutional level and through joint witness on behalf of the poor and powerless, authentic ecumenism advances...
...In the meantime, other ecumenical approaches beg for re-examination...
...What keeps twenty-first century ecumenists busy and on track...
...These institutionalized developments bring joy and new promise to the beleaguered ecumenists who serve on official interchurch commissions...
...Since that time, thousands of models of insti- tutional ecumenism have come into being, many solidly estab- lished...
...The staff and students of many educational institutions have become ecumenically diverse...
...Civil celebrations have an ecu- menical and/or interreligious flavor...
...Protestants and Catholics once clung possessively to their own Bibles and were urgently discouraged or forbidden to read the others...
...Furthermore, the American Bible Society, whose historical ethos has largely been Evangelical Protestant, appointed a Catholic Texan as general secretary...
Vol. 118 • January 1991 • No. 2
