RESPONSE TO KINNAMON, BOUTENEFF, AND DANIELS

I am happy for the chance to respond to the thoughts of Michael Kinnamon, Peter Bouteneff, and David Daniels. (1) 1. Michael Kinnamon's dazzling list of elements in an emerging ecumenical ecclesiology reminded me of the idea of a kaleidoscope: All of the parts are in the picture, but each turn of the kaleidoscope puts the parts in a different relationship with one another. We could say that our churches each turn the kaleidoscope differently, each emphasizing certain points. Also, we may notice that some of the pieces are missing, or barely visible, in the other's arrangement of the elements. A first step in ecumenical dialogue is to agree on getting all of the pieces into the picture, as Kinnamon has done. A second ecumenical step is to configure the pieces rightly. Lutherans argue that Martin Luther wanted to configure all of the elements of the church properly around the Word of God, not eliminate any of them. In The Apostolicity of the Church, the 2006 study document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic International Commission on Unity, Lutheran members used this insight about Luther to show convergence with Roman Catholics on the components necessary to the church. (2) Luther, they argued, wanted to keep all of these necessary components but to reconfigure them rightly. We often differ on such configurations. To cite from Kinnamon's list: Some churches emphasize more that the church is an eschatological reality; others, a historical reality. (3) Some emphasize that ministry serves the community, while others insist that the ministry is part of the community. (4) Our late colleague George Tavard sketched what he called "an ecumenical ecctesiology" in his 1992 book, The Church, Community of Salvation: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology, (5) wherein he tried to identify all of the pieces and to see how they might be reconfigured. 2. I am sympathetic to Peter Bouteneff's presentation of how the Orthodox Church sees talk about unity of the church. (6) Like him, I come from a church communion that cannot accept denominationalism as an adequate description of itself. Like him, I also endure the suspicions of some of my Roman Catholic colleagues for my work in ecumenism, despite the official commitment of my church communion to the dialogue. But, I am not sure that I agree with Bouteneff that a common or neutral language to describe our task is an immediate goal or even a possibility. If we thought of this task in the same way, we would be further toward achievement of our goal than we are. Hence, part of the task is to listen to the different ways of even describing the nature of the church and to see why these different descriptions reveal obstacles toward achieving what Bouteneff calls "Christian unity." (Vatican II speaks of "the restoration of unity among all Christians" in the Decree on Ecumenism.) The place most important for shared language is in the words of confession and of prayer, to which David Daniels has drawn our attention. I am much more uncomfortable when I am asked in a worship service to describe the church in a way that seems wrong than when I hear those from another church use the same words to describe their self-understanding. Agreed statements stand somewhere between the language of worship and the language of theological colleagues, and here Bouteneff's exhortation for more neutral language can be a salutary warning. (7) However, I do think that ecumenical dialogue also includes the possibility of learning new languages--and even of dreaming in a new language, as one does when one learns it really well. The new language does not become our mother tongue, but in Canada we emphasize the importance of bilingual and even multilingual communication; therefore, I think we should be ready to consider what new frameworks are made possible by another language. 3. Since I am Roman Catholic, I must say something about the word "subsistit," which I had hoped to avoid but must address since it was used. …