031774 cn The Spirit Is Moving all over the land

As the hymn proclaims: "The Spirit is a-moving ... all over, all over the land."

In a relatively brief span of months, significant developments in inter-Church relations, ecumenism and efforts toward achieving Christian unity have taken place, and there has been new movement toward healing age-old Christian rifts.

Capped by a startling convergence reached by Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians on papal primacy, the events of the past year alone may have advanced all previous ecumenical gains, especially in terms of openness, free exchanges of views, and the extent of agreement on doctrinal issues.

A partial listing of ecumenical developments in recent months helps make the point. They include:

- An international Anglican Catholic commission issued last December a statement of "basic agreement" on ministry and ordination and said it was offering ''a positive contribution to the reconciliation of our churches and ministries."

- Major inter-Church talks on the ultimate creation of a "United Church of Britain" achieved a giant step when representatives of Anglican, Catholic, United Reformed, Baptist and Methodist Churches, and the Churches of Christ urged a common effort for "visible" Christian unity.

*The recognition of a solid and meaningful consensus on the Eucharist evolving among theologians of diverse Christian groups, including Anglican,

Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran and other Protestant churches.

- For the first time, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem participated in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, a move viewed as an important step toward a fuller and more active Greek Orthodox involvement in the ecumenical movement.

Pope Paul and His Holiness Amba Shenouda III, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, embraced at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, in a gesture symbolic of a mutual desire to heal 15 centuries of separation of the Coptic and Roman Catholic Churches.

Key '73, while not the widespread evangelical success its sponsors hoped it to be, attained a significant ecumenical gain on the grassroots level, bringing together interdenominational teams and stimulating cooperative activity by thousands of Christian congregations across the nation.

It was announced that an unprecedented dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational) will be launched in 1974.

A joint Anglican-Lutheran report called for a "greatly increased measure of intercommunion" between the two Churches.

The Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission met for the first time at Oxford, England.

-Spokesmen for Catholic Eastern Orthodox theological consultations in the U.S. (held just ten years after Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras announced plans for the historic meeting with Pope Paul in Jerusalem) agreed that they look forward to "full, visible communion one in faith and able to celebrate the Eucharistic ministry." The upsurge in ecumenical developments in recent months may have been correctly prophesied in August, 1973, when Dr. Robert Huston, chief ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Church, said that the "ecumenical euphoria" of past years has passed but may lead to serious ecumenical development.

Speaking at a workshop on U.S. church dialogues sponsored by the- Graymoor Ecumenical Institute, Garrison, Dr. Houston indicated that the difficult but important work on ecumenical questions was about to get started.

Likewise, Father Arthur Gouthro, S.A., director of the Graymoor Institute, declared that indeed "the honeymoon is over. But the ecumenical movement is by no means dead. There are signs of health and strength everywhere."

Dr. Paul Empie, retired head of the U.S.A. National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation and cochairman of Lutheran-Catholic dialogues in the U.S. since 1965, told a similar workshop at Graymoor that "genuine progress" has been made and a considerable theological consensus reached. But he added that much work was still to be done.

He said, however, that he was confident the many differences which cannot be resolved "are not insuperable obstacles to unity."

Dr. Empie's words, too, were prophetic, because some seven months after his talk, Lutheran and Catholic scholars reached a theological understanding on the papacy. Publishing a Common Statement on the primacy of the Pope, they said the papacy, "renewed in the light of the Gospel, need not be a barrier to reconciliation" of the two Churches.

The March 4, 1974, statement, in fact, urged the two Churches to "take specific action toward reconciliation."we have again found common ground (they had already reached convergence on baptism, ministry, Eucharist and other doctrinal matters).

"There is a growing awareness among Lutherans of the necessity of a specific ministry to serve the Church's unity and universal mission, while Catholics increasingly see the need for a more nuanced understanding of the role of papacy in the universal church."

Only a few months earlier, the Anglican-Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) issued a major statement expressing "basic agreement" on the doctrinal matters of ministry and ordination.

The consensus statement, which did not treat authority or papal primacy, was described as offering "a positive contribution" to the reconciliation of the two Churches. The Anglican-Catholic commission had earlier reached a major consensus on the Eucharist.

Like most ecumenical developments, the AnglicanCatholic statement had broader implications.

Orthodox Theologian Father John Meyendorff of St. Vladimir's Seminary, Crestwood, said he saw the agreement on the nature of ministry as having a positive effect on relations between Anglican and Orthodox churches. Agreement on such issues, he observed, may lead to a time when "the good Lord will reveal to us the way" of overcoming particular areas of disagreement.

Although the Catholic Lutheran and Catholic Anglican statements of recent months have captured paramount ecumenical attention, developments in other areas of interreligious cooperation and dialogue are significant.

In London last February, 50 representatives of Anglican, Catholic, United Reformed, Baptist and Methodist Churches, the Churches of Christ and some smaller denominations concluded in a communiqué "that God wills the visible unity of all Christian people." They also called upon "the Churches in this land to commit themselves to this end." The major inter-church talks, exploratory in nature, stemmed from initiatives by October, 1972, by merger of the English Congregationalist and Presbyterian Churches.

In a related development, it was noted by an agency of the British Council of Churches that some 46 designated "areas of ecumenical experiment" are operative in England and that during 1973 clergy and lay people representing more than 60 ecumenical projects took part in five regional conferences on ecumenism.

Elsewhere, ecumenical thrusts have been initiated by Catholics and Baptists in the U.S.; by Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants in India; by Russian Orthodox and the Vatican in Moscow; by the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic Churches in Geneva; and by Anglicans and Lutherans in London; to name just a few.

Though most of these dialogues are of a preliminary nature, representatives of the Orthodox, and Catholic Churches and the National Christian Council in India created a Coordination Council for Church Unity and elected three top Church leaders as the council's executive board. The council is now undertaking programs to foster ecumenical relations among the churches on the grassroots level.

The general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Dr. Edmond Perret of Geneva, has cited the "positive significance" of talks between the Alliance and the Vatican's Secretariat for Christian Unity. Also, a commission set up by the Alliance, the Vatican secretariat and the Lutheran World Federation is now studying the questions of Christian marriage.

Last October, a Joint Commission of the Catholic Church and World Methodist Council launched a special study of "common witness and evangelization," at a meeting in Zurich, Switzerland. The topics were chosen because these concerns are expected to be treated at the 1974 World Synod of Catholic Bishops in Rome and because the World Methodist Council has set 1975 as a "Year of Evangelism."

The ecumenical surge has even spilled over into the nonChristian - world. The World Council of Churches has slated an April, 1974, dialogue with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and others in Colombo, Shi Lanka, to seek common efforts in building world community.

In a recent microcosm of the ecumenical impetus called the Trinity Institute in New York, three leading Church figures the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey; Cardinal Suenens of Belgium; and Prior Roger Schutz of the French Reformed Taize monastery in France - keyed on the action of the Holy Spirit in achieving church unity.

While Dr. Ramsey epitomized the Spirit as the source of "true spiritual renewal" in our age, Cardinal Suenens urged Christians to see the Holy Spirit as "gobetween" to bring Christians from "co-existence to communion." Brother Roger added that the Spirit must be seen as a "universal" force that seeks the unity of all men through love.

Cardinal Suenens on several occasions mentioned the Charismatic Renewal as recent evidence that Christians can achieve communion on a "deeper" level through the Holy Spirit who provides the "binding force of unity."

Although tremendous strides in ecumenism and towards Church unity have been made on the theological and ecclesial levels, many experts in the field believe that ultimate progress in ecumenism must come from the grassroots. Father Meyendorff and Father Gouthro are among these.

Said the Orthodox priest: "Official statements and dialogue groups are not themselves the road to union. The high level enterprises are less important than increasing grassroots understanding between ordinary Christian people who may not be schooled in the fine points of theology."

Father Gouthro, asking rhetorically "where do we go from here?", said this will be decided "not so much by theologians who have made such tremendous contributions to the ecumenical movement, but by the masses of believing Christians who occupy the pews of our local churches... " (Religious News Service)