A Spirituality of Ecumenical Dialogue

This is an adaptation of a chapter in my D.Min. project (1998) discussing the methodological considerations undergirding the approach I followed in developing an ecumenical parish mission. The principles outlined touch on the areas of ecumenical witness, the pedagogical methodology of Paulo Freire, and prayer as a vehicle for ecumenical outreach. I was a faithful Catholic and an optimistic ecumenist when I wrote this; I came to have serious questions about the track record of the ecumenical movement (and then its honesty) in the years following the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification." I then came to doubt the teachings and ecclesiological claims of the Catholic Church, and returned to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in which I was raised. I'm no longer an ardent ecumenist; I believe in the priority of seeking the Truth of God's Word rather than grounding our relations in subjectivism. Nonetheless, I believe in building and maintaining friendships with people of all faiths. I also believe that our efforts to evangelize (to witness to Christ, and to call others to faith in him) must be grounded in honest friendships and mutual respect. So some of these principles would still apply.

Principles for ecumenical witness

As we step out nervously into the arena of ecumenical witness (and, yes, confrontation), we must not be discouraged by the appearance of prejudice or suspicion. Our encounters take place before an ever-present backdrop of centuries of division, distrust, and dismissal. This will not change overnight. With this in mind, Pope John Paul II began his encyclical on ecumenism by stating that

. . . the commitment to ecumenism must be based upon the conversion of hearts and upon prayer, which will also lead to the necessary purification of past memories. With the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord’s disciples, inspired by love, by the power of the truth and by a sincere desire for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, are called to re-examine together their painful past and the hurt which that past regrettably continues to provoke even today. All together, they are invited by the ever fresh power of the Gospel to acknowledge with sincere and total objectivity the mistakes made and the contingent factors at work at the origins of their deplorable divisions.¹

Reexamining the past in this way requires that we look at old controversies from the viewpoint of the other person. We must find a way to get inside a different tradition, to feel (and thus to understand) why they stake so much on issues that are meaningless to us. One way for this to happen is by telling stories. We can listen to a person of another faith tell the story of their conversion experience (if they can pinpoint one), and how their faith answered their deepest questions. Another way to do this, suggested by church historian Roger T. Handy, is by reading biographies of famous Christians, especially those, like Isaac Hecker, who are significant "bridge" figures between traditions.² One of my mission partners once criticized me for telling stories about Martin Luther and John Wesley (as if that somehow made me "less Catholic"). We need to reach the place where the stories of great people of faith are not "mine" or "yours," but are "ours."³ It was through just such story-swapping that a group of independent desert tribes coalesced to form the people of Israel, as stories which once separated the tribes came to be part of a common story.⁴

Reexamining the past also requires looking critically at our own most treasured beliefs and traditions. Not only do we need to get inside someone else’s framework, we need to try and step outside of our own, mentally, to hear again our own stories and traditions "as if we were aliens and strangers" to them.⁵ Can we understand why someone regards our customs as strange? Can we listen to critics of our tradition-- perhaps onetime friends who have angrily left out of a sense of bitter betrayal-- and acknowledge the truth (and the hurt) in what they say? Can we admit our mistakes . . . and our sins? This form of vulnerable encounter is not as easy as it sounds. It requires patience, self-restraint, and the ability to accept criticism.⁶ It also requires a sense of humor, so that we can find the reason to laugh at some of the things we do.⁷ Critical appraisal of our customs and traditions has the added benefit of helping us to understand our own faith, in the words of Mary C. Boys, "more clearly" as well as "differently."⁸

Raimundo Panikkar has been a pathfinder in this approach to dialogue in an interfaith context. Religious dialogue must not simply be dialogue, he said, it must also be religious. It is a "mystical adventure," in which partners come together on an experiential level, seeking to see truth from within the mindset of another. Abandoning preconceived goals, the partners engage in a true give-and-take aimed at the fullest possible understanding-- and accompanied by constant renewal and conversion.⁹ Ewert H. Cousins discusses Panikkar’s approach at length in his book, Christ of the 21st Century, noting especially the way Panikkar deals with Trinitarian dogma in dialogue with Buddhists and Hindus. Panikkar’s experience-based approach does not naively assume that all religious experience is the same; as explained by Cousins, when we encounter an experience in another tradition that resonates with an experience we have had, we may discover aspects of our own tradition that we have overlooked or neglected. The inter-religious encounter then becomes a mirror against which we may come to appreciate aspects of our tradition that had never before made sense to us.¹⁰⁰

John Dunne compared inter-religious dialogue to the hero’s mythic journey, "passing over" into another tradition, learning from within its framework (while recognizing one’s outsider status), and then "coming home," enriched.¹¹ This image has been picked up by both Mary C. Boys¹² and by Cousins. Cousins cites Huston Smith as an example of someone who has done this. Smith introduced a book on world religions by expressing his desire "to carry the intelligent layman into the heart of the world’s great living faiths to the point where he might see and even feel why and how they guide and motivate the lives of those who live them."¹³ This is what Cousins sees Panikkar as having accomplished. "Grounding himself in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, he passes over into the Buddhist experience of silence and the Hindu experience of undifferentiated unity. He comes back to a much deeper level of the mystery of the Trinity than Christians usually discern."¹⁴⁴

In ecumenical witness on the individual level for the non-specialist, this need not be as complicated as it sounds. For example, many Evangelical Protestants would agree with John MacArthur’s denunciation of Catholic worship as "darkness and idolatry." But how many of these have attended a Catholic (or Episcopalian or Lutheran) liturgy? I recall my own initial experience as a Seventh-day Adventist attending Midnight Mass one Christmas Eve at a "high church" Episcopal parish in New Haven, CT. Accustomed to a non-liturgical worship format centered on Scripture, I was surprised by the extensive Scripture readings, and the innumerable Scriptural allusions and citations in the liturgical texts. I was also able to see that the service to which I was accustomed was not as "non-liturgical" as I had imagined. We, too, recited the words of Christ to bless the communion bread and wine. We included prayers of thanksgiving. We took care how we disposed of the remaining elements. This sort of "eye-opening" is what we want to achieve through an ecumenical witness which is open, vulnerable, and carried out in a spirit of prayer.

A praxis-based approach

A helpful theoretical model for dialogue of this nature can be found in the pedagogical methodology of Paulo Freire. It was developed to provide a liberating education for illiterate peasants in Latin America, to give them hope and to enable them to change situations of oppression. In a context such as this, traditional approaches to education simply reinforce the status quo. He calls this the "banking" concept of education, in which the teacher (the expert, and person of power) deposits facts in submissive students who are assumed to be ignorant. Freire, in contrast, envisions the relationship between teacher and students as one of dialogue,¹⁵⁵ characterized by trust, mutual respect, love, humility, and faith in others.¹⁶ The teacher does not stand above students in a paternalistic fashion, but enters into their situation in "solidarity" with them.¹⁷

Freire underscores the uniqueness of each specific relationship, rooted in a concrete historical reality. He sees no principles of liberation that can simply be plugged into existing educational structures. Rather, he gives outlines of a process that must be adapted anew to each and every context. Freire’s understanding of reality itself is crucial, however. He does not accept the status quo as permanent; it is, rather, in constant process, subject to criticism and thus open to change.¹⁸ And this is his aim of his pedagogy-- not a mere accumulation of facts, which merely explains why things are this way, but transformation.

Freire adapted the Marxist term "praxis" to describe his approach.¹⁹ The teacher guides the students in a mutual reflection on reality, opening up new insights into the nature of the situation. Freire gave this eye-opening the name "conscientization" [in Freire’s Portuguese: conscientização], which he defines as "the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence," or, "a constant unveiling of reality." It not only reveals the nature of the situation, but also the ability of the participants to engage the situation and bring about change.²⁰ "The starting point," says Freire, "must be the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the people." Taking "certain basic contraditions, we must pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem which challenges them and requires a response-- not just at the intellectual level, but at the level of action."²¹

Freire begins by sending investigators and volunteers into a defined area to observe the community’s situation. They speak to the residents; they watch the ways they interact at work, at home, in church; they listen to their patterns of speech. Each investigator reports to the others, giving his feelings and perceptions, listening to the questions raised by what has been observed in other areas. This process of analysis and "decoding" uncovers what Freire calls "generative themes," which provide the basis for reflection and dialogue. These themes, in essence, summaries and recodification of key issues in the lives of the community. The teacher presents these back to the students using a variety of media (e.g., sketches or photographs, perhaps a simple phrase, or a magazine article, newspaper or chapter from a book). The teacher thus is bringing back to the community an "organized, systematized, and developed ‘re-presentation’" of themes derived from the community itself.²² The teacher is not simply explaining their experience to them, but is instead dialoging with them about it, seeking the meaning together with the students.²³ Freire noted that the oppressed are intimidated by the oppressor’s knowledge, and they will never get past this until they come to realize that they, too, know things, if not through instruction then through experience.²⁴

The students are thus empowered to change the historical reality that had formerly kept them oppressed. In this phase, too, the teacher (and the new student-leaders) must trust the people and be able to work together with them toward a solution of the problem at hand. This requires on the part of all concerned constant conversion and self-examination.²⁵ Freire recognizes that this can be a frightening prospect. One of the very things binding the oppressed is the "fear of freedom." This too often leads the oppressed to simply take over the role of oppresser rather than create a new reality (and how many historical examples might one give of this?).²⁶ Thus the change Freire seeks becomes itself a reality in process, to be continually critiqued through praxis. Or, in Hegelian terms, the synthesis becomes a new thesis.

In Freire’s terminology, an ecumenical parish mission may be a vehicle for ecumenical conscientização. I wish to put the ecumenical problem before a mixed-group of Christians for reflection that leads to action. The process of the Isaiah 43 parish mission lends itself to this easily. Assuming a situation in which an ecumenical mission will be sponsored by at least two churches of different denominations, the preparatory team of 10-12 people would be composed of members of each of the sponsoring churches. The pre-mission formation period for the team is a time for their conscientização. As a small group, they are guided by the leader in a dialogue reflecting on key "generative themes." They take part, then, in the mission itself, and afterwards they lead small groups which continue the dialogue begun by the mission.

DeSiano’s method (discussed in the previous chapter) would provide a means for investigating the situation and developing the "generative themes." But, as already noted, the themes that DeSiano consistently uncovers (faith, conversion, community, healing, forgiveness, unity, the future) are the same themes traditionally addressed by parish missions. The traditional success of the mission format (or its Protestant revival counterpart) can be attributed to the fact that it addresses issues that are of universal significance. This is one reason I have gone the route of adaptation, rather than creatio ex nihilo--the themes of love, forgiveness, healing, and empowering are key themes in human life, Christian experience, and in ecumenical relationships.

In the Isaiah 43 Parish Mission process, these themes are "re-presented" through symbol, ritual, and story telling. The story telling aspect captures the emphasis in the previous section on dialogue through witness or biography. This takes place throughout the Isaiah 43 process, beginning with the formation of the team. As noted in the last chapter, during the weeks immediately before the mission, the team meets weekly, using Sue Blum’s book Renew Your Faith. This book tells Sue’s story, in the process opening up themes for reflection. In the mission itself, these themes are further explored as the preachers tell their own stories, and as members of the local parish give witness talks. In the rituals and symbols of the mission, the themes are presented in a sensory fashion. Informal reflection takes place during the hospitality sessions; formal reflection continues in the post-mission follow-up seminars.

In an ecumenical setting, the themes of Isaiah 43 can provide a basis for reflection on the issues which unite (and divide) Christians. This is what I try to provide in my manuscript, "That All May Be One: Reflections on Christian Unity." In autobiographical fashion, I tell throughout the book portions of my story. I make clear that my intent in this is not apologetics or proselytism; rather, I hope to prompt reflection by the participants upon their own story, and how they have experienced the themes of love, forgiveness, healing, and empowerment. I try to honestly integrate what has been true and good in each phase of my journey, and to find common threads that can serve as bridges between our worlds. Each chapter includes a summary and reflection questions. The members of the team will read and reflect on this before their session, and then bring their own reflections to the group for group discussion.

The composition of the team is critical. I’m assuming that the ecumenical mission will be preached in a community that already has some ecumenical history, and that the people thus have some common experience to reflect upon. I’m also assuming that the team will be composed of members of different churches, and that these will be active members of their churches who have had basic formation in their tradition. This preparation process will be a time for them to look in a new way at their own faith, and at the faith of others. It will be an opportunity to make themselves vulnerable to criticism, and to ask forgiveness--and to forgive.

Prayer in ecumenism

If this form of ecumenical encounter remains in the context of a study hall or a living room, simply as a sharing of ideas and challenges, it will not succeed, however. Here is where the mission format is key. It puts this encounter in the context of prayer. Thirty years ago, when the Second Vatican Council embarked on the ecumenical adventure, it encouraged public prayer between "separated brethren" for the first time. Such "spiritual ecumenism," it said, is "the soul of the whole ecumenical movement."²⁷ Nevertheless, it saw joint prayer as a risky proposition, and subjected it to many cautions and restrictions. The council fathers were torn between two principles: "The expression of unity very generally forbids common worship. Grace to be obtained sometimes commends it." They made their way forward carefully and deliberately: "The concrete course to be adopted, when all the circumstances of time, place and persons have been duly considered, is left to the prudent decision of the local episcopal authority, unless the bishops’ conference according to its own statues, or the Holy See, has determined otherwise."²⁸

Today, however, we too often take joint prayer for granted, no longer seeing it as the powerful and dangerous encounter that it was felt to be in 1964. Yet this is an area upon which the present pope places a great deal of emphasis, as he sees the potential power in it. "When Christians pray together," he has said, "the goal of unity seems closer. The long history of Christians marked by many divisions seems to converge once more because it tends toward that Source of its unity which is Jesus Christ." Consequently, "If Christians, despite their divisions, can grow ever more united in common prayer around Christ, they will grow in the awareness of how little divides them in comparison to what unites them."²⁹ Moreover, John Paul II sees prayer as having a democratizing effect:

. . . through prayer the quest for unity, far from being limited to a group of specialists, comes to be shared by all the baptized. Everyone, regardless of their role in the Church or level of education, can make a valuable contribution, in a hidden and profound way.³⁰

It is no accident that some of his most important ecumenical and interfaith actions have been in the form of joint prayer; in a synagogue, in Assisi, in a joint celebration with Lutherans of the anniversary of St. Bridget.

John Paul’s thought and practice rests on a profound understanding of prayer, such as that we find in Catechism of the Catholic Church.³¹ Prayer is not mere holy talk, but is "a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God" (2558). This relationship is initiated by God himself, who begins to call to us before we are even aware of him. The Catechism follows St. Augustine’s interpretation of John 4: "Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him" (2561). It quotes St. Thérèse of Lisieux: "For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy" (2558).³²

In Catholic understanding, prayer can never be a merely individual act, but is essentially communal. Through prayer we participate in the inner life of the Holy Trinity, praying to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. "This communion is always possible because, through Baptism, we have already been united with Christ." And by being so united, we are united to all other Christians. "Prayer is Christian insofar as it is communion with Christ and extends throughout the Chuch, which is his Body" (2565). Thus whenever we pray, whether we are conscious of the fact or not, we are united with all Christians. Prayer is thus the most basic ecumenical act, and the foundation of all dialogue.

What has been said about prayer as relational and unitive is especially true of that particular form of prayer known as "contemplation." Contemplative prayer is brutally honest in its immediate confrontation with Christ. It is single-minded in its focus.

We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and tranformed. . . . It is a giftt, a grace; it can be accepted only in humility and poverty. . . . Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. . . . This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men (2711-2715).

This shows why prayer can be such a powerful ecumenical tool.

The problem with many ecumenical prayer services is perhaps our tendency to focus more on the business of ecumenism itself, and the duty of prayer, and the inclusion of all viewpoints within prayer services, all of which distracts from this "gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus." Some comments by Thomas Merton on spirituality could also apply to ecumenism and prayer.

For me too this matter of spirituality tries, superficially, to be a problem. Yet I know it can never really be a problem because after all what I love is not spirituality but God. . . . It may sound like heresy, but personally I feel that if I become too meticulously Cistercian (according to some ideal category in the spiritual books), I will only be for my pains less of a Cistercian. . . . When I find God then I am a Cistercian, because then I reach the end for which He brought me to the monastery. The rest is a waste of time.³³

Likewise, when we fix our gaze on God, and thus find ourselves thus in communion with other Christians, then are we truly ecumenical. What we should love is not "ecumenism," but Christ, and his body.

For this reason, I do not wish to take up time in the mission talking about ecumenism per se. Nor in my manuscript, "That All May Be One," do I get deeply into ecumenical questions and problems. The focus in both the preparatory sessions and in the mission itself is on spiritual growth, probing questions of personal identity, relationship with God, experience of the gospel promise of forgiveness and healing-- just as in the Isaiah 43 parish missions preached in Catholic churches. What makes it ecumenical is not the content so much as the context. Given what I have already said about subjectivism, I do not have in mind a contentless ecumenism based on feeling. I would encourage more technical discussions in follow-up seminars to the mission. Some divisive issues may even be touched upon in the sermons preached (just as I touch on some in my manuscript), but these are for purposes of illustration and reflection, not debate or resolution. For example, the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation may be mentioned to illustrate a Catholic’s affirmation of forgiveness; Baptist immersion may be compared to the RCIA’s call for immersion. The divisive issues can, in this way, serve as windows to illuminate our common concerns. But the sermons of the mission are not mere lectures; they are meant to lead us to prayer--and to action.

¹John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint 2.

²Robert T. Handy, "Father Hecker, A Bridge between Catholic and Protestant Thought," Catholic World 202 (Dec. 1965):158.

³Over the last thirty years many works have appeared reassessing Luther with just such a concern, with the greatest number coming at the time of the celebration of the quincentenniel of his birth. The contemporary discussion aims at seeing Luther as neither hero nor heretic, but as a reformer within the Catholic tradition. See Eric W. Gritsch’s discussion of the history of Luther interpretation in Martin—God’s Court Jester: Luther in Retrospect (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), pp. 203-213. See also John M. Todd, Martin Luther: A Biographical Study (London: Burns & Oates, 1964); James Atkinson, Martin Luther: Prophet to the Church Catholic (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983); Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, eds., Luther’s Ecumenical Significance: An Interconfessional Consultation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; New York: Paulist Press, 1984); Georege Yule, ed., Luther: Theologian for Catholics and Protestants (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1985); Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., The Catholicity of the Reformation (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1996). Similar works have appeared on St. Francis, e.g., Gail Ramshaw Schmidt, Francis: A Saint We Share: A Discussion Guide for Lutherans and Roman Catholics (New York: Paulist Press, 1982).

⁴Thomas Ryan, A Survival Guide for Ecumenically Minded Christians, p. 77. Two excellent sources describing this process of unification of Israel’s traditions are: Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962); and Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Simon & Schuster, Summit Books, 1987).

⁵Replacing an apologetic theology with an "alienated theology." Darrell J. Fasching, The Coming of the Millennium (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1996), p. 37, cited by Mary C. Boys, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: One Woman’s Experience (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), p. 51.

⁶Nicholas Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993), p. 10, cited by Boys, Jewish-Christian Dialogue, p. 88.

⁷I’m reminded of a story I once heard. A man was watching his wife make a roast one day, and he noticed that before she put the roast in the pan, she cut off the end. This had puzzled him before, but now he asked her for the first time, "Why do you do that?" She didn’t really know. "That’s the way my mother did it." She was also intrigued now, and asked her mother. "I don’t know," said the mother, "That’s how my mother did it." She asked her grandmother who said, "I did it because it didn’t fit in the pan if I didn’t."

⁸Boys, Jewish-Christian Dialogue, p. 86.

⁹Raimundo Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1978).

¹⁰Ewert H. Cousins, Christ of the 21st Century (Rockport, MA: Element, Inc., 1992), pp. 84, 96.

¹¹John Dunne, The Way of All the Earth: Experiments in Truth and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. ix.

¹²Boys, Jewish-Christian Dialogue, pp. 50-51.

¹³Huston Smith, The Religions of Man (New York: Perennial Library, Harper and Row, 1965), p. ix, cited by Cousins, Christ of the 21st Century, p. 107.

¹⁴Cousins, Christ of the 21st Century, p. 114.

¹⁵Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressedd, rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1996), pp. 52-53.

¹⁶Ibid., pp. 70-71.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 31.

¹⁸Ibid., p. 64.

¹⁹Ibid., p. 33.

²⁰Ibid., pp. 90, 62.

²¹Ibid., pp. 76-77.

²²Ibid., pp. 74, 90ff.

²³Ibid., p. 35.

²⁴Ibid., p. 45.

²⁵Ibid., pp. 42-43.

²⁶Ibid., p. 28.

²⁷UR 8.

²⁸Ibid.

²⁹John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint 22.

³⁰Ibid., p. 70.

³¹Catechism of the Catholic Church (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994); hereafter, CCC. Citations in text by paragraph number.

³²St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Manuscrits autobiographiques, C 25r.

³³Thomas Merton, The School of Charity: Letters on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1990), p. 33