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The 14th Academic Consultation of Societas Oecumenica, Prague, 17th –22nd
August 2006:
a Report from an Interchurch Family Perspective for the Society of Ecumenical
Studies
I have never been to a meeting of the Societas Oecumenica before, although
the Society for Ecumenical Studies, established in England in 1994, is a corporate
member and any of us are entitled to go. Not many of us do, perhaps because
we are on the whole enthusiasts for ecumenism rather than ‘professionals’
in the way that many of those present from German universities and academies
appeared to be. Everyone seemed to be able to understand English, but people
asked why there were so few participants from England at Prague. Martin Conway,
formerly President of the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham and Chair of SES,
is of course a past-president of the Societas. But we don’t have anything
like the Irish School of Ecumenics in England (a member of its staff was elected
to the Committee at Prague), although maybe the Centre for Ecumenical Studies
in Cambridge will develop further in that direction. At Durham University, too,
there are stirrings of possible developments, and it was at the consultation
organised there early in 2006 on ‘Receptive Ecumenism’ that I first
met the Secretary of the Societas Oecumenica and learned about the Prague meeting.
I was drawn to go to Prague because of this year’s subject: ‘Ecumenism
of Life as a Challenge for Academic Theology’. Haven’t interchurch
families always wanted academic theologians to take their experience seriously
as raw material for reflection? I saw that Fr René Beaupère OP
from Lyon, who has worked with foyers mixtes since the early 1960’s, was
down to give one of the main lectures, and participants were invited to submit
short papers on topics that included ‘mixed marriages’. It seemed
an opportunity not to be missed.
Native French-speakers were in even shorter supply than the English; only Fr
Beaupère I think, although one could add Dr Antoine Arjakovsky, Director
of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies of the Catholic University of the Ukraine
at Lviv, inaugurated in June 2005, who also lectured in impeccable French. He
spoke of mixed marriages, too, in his lecture on ‘The Love of God as Foundation
for the Ecumenism of Life’, and as his was the first lecture of the first
full day of the conference, that was most encouraging. He was speaking specifically
in the context of dialogue between Greek Catholics and Orthodox in the Ukraine
and the very troubled history of relationships there. It was good to learn that
the Institute of Ecumenical Studies had been inaugurated with a colloquium on
‘Friendship as an Ecumenical Value’, and that many interchurch families
are able to enjoy eucharistic hospitality in the Ukraine. Later in the conference
it was very moving to hear his colleague from the Catholic University of the
Ukraine, Dr Myroslave Marynovch, speak of his ten years in the gulag. Labour
camp solidarity among the prisoners of conscience was a profound experience
that meant that he can no longer condemn ‘the Orthodox’ –
he remembers particular people with whom he entered into such deep relationships
in Christ. That will resonate with interchurch families.
Fr René Beaupère spoke on the ‘Grace and Challenge of Interconfessional
Marriages’. In the early 1960’s with the convocation of the Second
Vatican Council a more positive attitude to interconfessional marriages was
able to develop, along with a pastoral effort to support them. Over two decades
(roughly 1965-1985) a wealth of suggestions, confessional and interconfessional
recommendations were put forward. These addressed first of all the preparation
and celebration of marriage between Catholics and Protestants, then the baptism
and Christian education of their children, then the place of these families
in their parishes, their communities and the world. As a result these families
– or the most vibrant among them – became not a problem to be solved,
but a grace that if well received could bear much fruit. The churches have benefited
from the way interchurch families have been able to play a bridging role between
them, and the theological convergence texts (on baptism, the eucharist, marriage,
catechesis) have both benefited the families and have been stimulated by them.
But now that some of these couples have become, not simply the recipients of
pastoral care but recognised and active partners in the ecumenical process (at
least to a certain extent) they have become a challenge to the churches, unable
as they are to accept a slowing down of ecumenism. This challenge is not an
aggressive confrontation, but a conscientious appeal that calls not just for
words but for action. These couples, with their joint commitment in two churches,
are a living proof that the churches are no longer isolated blocks, but share
a common responsibility, a certain communion. More than ten years ago, said
Fr Beaupère, he and Pastor Jacques Maury asked the churches to consider
how their relationships were changed by the fact that in these ‘domestic
churches’ they had members common to them both, or at least partially
common. How could this be expressed in ecclesiology? ‘Interchurch families
seem to us to be “islands of reconciliation” within the one Church,
developing the potential contained in the reality of our mutually recognised
one baptism.’
Over a decade later, said Fr Beaupère, it is surely helpful to point
to three areas where interchurch families not only challenge academic theology
but even certain ecclesiastical institutions. The Orthodox should be brought
in here. First, the churches need to revise their theology of marriage and their
pastoral attitude to divorce. If the three great confessional families came
together on this question, could they not recover the fullness of the Gospel
witness in this field? Secondly, for fifty years pastors and priests together
have worked pastorally with interconfessional couples. There is a practical
mutual recognition of ministries here; have the churches accepted the ecumenical
consequences? Third, interconfessional families should lead the churches to
take more seriously the apparent contradiction between a mutually recognised
baptism and a eucharist which sets a boundary to sacramental sharing. Might
not certain differences simply evaporate in the fire of a eucharist where mutual
hospitality was practised? The list could be lengthened … .
Two of the short papers given in the seminar sessions at Prague picked up the
‘common members’ and the ‘domestic church’ referred
to by Fr Beaupère. My paper on ‘Double Belonging’ gave a
brief history of how the term has come to be used by interchurch families. It
raised the question of how the reality experienced by interchurch families could
be re-expressed in a way that would make it easier for their churches to accept
that reality, since there have been recent negative reactions to the term. Thomas
Knieps-Port le Roi, Editor of the INTAMS review, Journal for the Study of Marriage
and Spirituality, and a professor at Louvain University, spoke on ‘Interchurch
Marriage: Conjugal and Ecclesial Communion in the Domestic Church’. He
reviewed the official theological and practical approach to interchurch families
in the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council, explained how
interchurch families see themselves, and pointed to the need for further study
of the nature of the ‘domestic church’ and its place in Catholic
ecclesiology. This is crucial for a theological understanding of interchurch
marriage.
Interchurch families were rather marginal to the discussions of the Consultation,
but it was encouraging all the same to see how Ecumenism of Life as an ecumenism
of human relationships in Christ came through now and again to lighten the conceptual
approach of many of the participants. Antoine Arjakovsky rejoiced that some
theologians engaged in ecumenical dialogue have the agreement of their bishops
for the participation in eucharistic celebrations of the other confession –
as, for example, in the case of the Groupe des Dombes. At that level, he said,
academic theology becomes indistinguishable from ecumenism of life. It is no
accident, perhaps, that his example is a long-lasting dialogue group that has
practised spiritual ecumenism from its inception. Ecumenism of life and ecumenism
of the Spirit are not identical, but they are closely linked, as Professor Bernd
Jochen Hilberath of the Tübingen Ecumenical Institute, President of the
Societas, said in his opening lecture on the first evening. Catherine Clifford
from St Paul University, Ottawa, pointed out that theological dialogues engage
people, and they change people. Another resonance for interchurch families.
The newly-elected President of the Societas, Dr Ivana Noble of the Ecumenical
Institute of the Protestant Theological Faculty, Charles University, Prague,
is a Hussite pastor married to an English Roman Catholic. It is rare nowadays,
she said, that people are brought up exclusively in one tradition. I recall
an interesting exchange on ‘identity’, following Fr Beaupère’s
lecture, between her, the lecturer and Dr Arjakovsky, in which the latter offered
a trinitarian undergirding for persons in mixed marriages. It is good to know
that he is thinking of the possibility of his Ecumenical Institute organising
a consultation on interchurch marriage in Lviv.
Ruth Reardon
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