Debate over the two hermeneutics
3) If the goal of true ecumenism is to be understood in light of the fact that Christ’s Church has never essentially lost its unity, does it not follow that the separated brethren must acknowledge the disputed ex cathedra and conciliar definitions of the past as part of the unity of faith which is sought ? And must not these definitions be understood in the sense always understood by the Catholic Church ?
The question is finally one about the nature of the Church. If the divisions among the Christians of the East and the Catholic Church and between the Catholic Church and the communities that issued from the Reformation in fact destroyed the one Church of Christ, leaving it in fragments, then the Catholic Church would have been one of these fragments ; hence she could not have held an ecumenical council after the split with the Churches of the East. The Catholic Church does not accept this interpretation of what happened. Because the fullness of the Church of Jesus Christ is found in the Catholic Church, then she could and did hold ecumenical councils, despite the existence of many separated Christian communities. To some of these councils she invited Orthodox Churches.
Therefore the solemn teaching of all general or ecumenical councils in history is binding on those in full communion with the Catholic Church. There could not be an authentic visible unity of Christians in one Church if some were allowed to hold themselves not bound by dogmas of the Church. In a Catholic understanding, an ecumenical council can pass decrees binding on the Church which are irreformable. When the bishops of the whole world are teaching in communion with the successor of Peter in an ecumenical council, they can define a doctrine to be held. The same has to be said of dogmas defined by the papal magisterium. In a 2005 report of the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission, Mary : Grace and Hope in Christ, it is suggested by Anglican members of the commission that Anglicans should not be required to accept the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and of her Assumption as a condition of the restoration of full communion. To this it is said in the report, « Roman Catholics find it hard to envisage a restoration of communion in which acceptance of certain doctrines would be requisite for some and not for others. » (63)
4) In comparison, how can we explain the model of “unity in reconciled diversity”, and how not to consider it as a fictitious by-word subversive of the unity of the Church ?
Of relatively recent times, the term « reconciled diversity » has been used to describe the goal of ecumenism and the unity to be restored ; it has begun to be found in the writings of some Catholic ecumenists. Perhaps there is some sense in which it could be used to cover the Catholic goal of ecumenism. However I have not seen any such explanation that is convincing, and I doubt whether there is one. It is a way of allowing the present denominations to keep their own theology and traditions and yet agree to mutual recognition, common worship and action, yet without having a full unity in faith. This is not the unity of the Catholic Church. [Page suivante…]
The origin of the term is revealing. It was, if I understand correctly, devised in the Lutheran World Federation. The idea is in line with some European efforts at fabricating unions between various churches of the Reformation ; it would call for agreement on certain basic Christian truths but allow considerable divergence in other theological beliefs, the overall unity being considered sufficient to justify tolerance of the areas of divergence and to warrant mutual recognition of sacraments and ministries. So it is exactly that, a reconciled diversity. It is not the Catholic unity that demands communion in one faith, one sacramental life and one ministry and teaching authority.
I heard the term for the first time in a meeting in the late 1970s. It was brought forward and defended by the then Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation. My memory is that in that gathering it did not win much acceptance. A number criticised it as settling for a lesser kind of unity. It was opposed by the Faith & Order Commission of the World Council of Churches at that time which was strongly promoting the idea of « conciliar fellowship » as the most promising concept of unity. Faith and Order presented conciliar fellowship as an explication of the organic union which made sense to Catholics and to a number of other Christian communities. At the time the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity of the Holy See gave no encouragement to the notion of reconciled diversity, seeing it as falling short of the Catholic goal of unity. Instead, Catholic members of the Faith & Order commission tended to feel that, while the idea of conciliar fellowship may have been incomplete, it did offer a possible way forward and had possible links with the Catholic understanding of the Church as communion.
The term « reconciled diversity » began to appear in the international Lutheran/Catholic dialogue. In 1981 it surfaced for instance in « Ways to Community », a summary of points of agreement from the discussions. There it is said that « unity is given in and with diversity. The different members of the Church have become part of a wider whole in a reconciled diversity, in which difficulties have not been dimmed but highlighted and thus made beneficial. » One feels this could have been said only by people who had no sense of a principle of contradiction ; it is just unreal, like saying black is white. Certainly it cannot be squared with a Catholic understanding of unity.
In this sense, reconciled diversity is about creating a common modus vivendi for separated communities ; of its nature it is relativistic, not a unity in truth that could deserve the name of communion. The concept of communion begins with the trinitarian life ; that of reconciled diversity sets out from the situation of divided Christian communities. It is a kind of coexistence with contradiction, an agreement to say that what are real divergences do not matter. Applied to the notion of a universal Church, it could only produce a collection of denominations of which the Catholic Church would be one. In no credible sense would there any longer be one, unique Church. As a process, reconciled diversity can only subvert the unity in one faith, one sacramental life and one ministry and teaching authority, which make up the one and unique Church which the Catholic Church claims to be.