“Towards Ecumenical Unity: An Analysis and Preliminary Proposal,” (original) (raw)
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"TOWARD ECUMENICAL UNITY: AN ANALYSIS AND PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL," JES 47:3 (Summer 2012): 397-408
This essay examines the prospect of ecumenical unity in light of issues pertaining to ecclesial identity, mutual accountability, and hospitality. I offer a hypothesis that, apart from the trajectory of hospitality, the constructs of ecclesial identity and accountability as ecumenical categories pose more problems than they would assist in the separated churches1 process toward full and visible communion. After an analysis of the current taxonomy of ecumenical proposals, I hope to re-engage the ecumenical project by proposing a theological rethinking of “recognition״ in an interdisciplinary discourse.
Teología y Vida. Journal of the Theology Faculty of the Catholic Pontifical University of Chile, 2022
The article presents three of the most relevant models for dialogue and agreement during the so-called modern stage of the ecumenical movement, from the historic 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference to the beginning of the Ecumenical Winter. This article aims to accomplish the following: First, introduces the Minimalist model in relation to the Bonn Agreement between the Anglican Communion and the Old Catholic Church of the Union of Utrecht and its advantages and shortcomings. Second, assess the Comparative model as the main methodological framework of the first and second Faith and Order conferences in Lausanne (1927) and Edinburgh (1937) and explain its inability to transcend the descriptive level, its statistical nature, and its inability to promote negotiated points of encounter among Christian traditions. Third, analyze the Convergence model regarding the common structure and language of convergence documents and how it became a means to limit consensus, especially after the consolidation of global ecumenical fellowships.
Restating the Ecumenical Emphases
2007
CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by ELTE Digital Institutional Repository (EDIT) 2 There have been important surveys and analyses of the ecumenical condition globally, in Europe and in Central Europe; for example: Kolonits Veronika (ed.), Survey on the Current State of Ecumenism. Budapest, 2004.
Religions
The quest for Christian unity is entering a new phase amidst the movement’s many voices, perspectives and tensions. Christians are witnessing the advent of an emerging ecumenical paradigm, which, because it is not fully realized, is still realizing its full definition. The paradigm operates in a global context rather than a Eurocentric one, and even as it is more global, it is simultaneously more local. It cultivates shared praxis while being less concerned with the comparison of dogmas. Ecclesiology is also entering a new paradigm which shares many features with its ecumenical counterpart, particularly its global perspective and interest in shared praxis ahead of dogmatic questions. Even though ecumenism and ecclesiology share common trajectories, their journeys are unfolding in largely parallel rather than cooperative and mutually-enriching ways. This raises the question: What opportunities might arise from examining the shifts in ecumenism and ecclesiology together? This article ...
Common Understanding of Ecumenism: A Present Need
The Ecumenical Review, 1994
With understatement so refined as to evoke suspicions of difficult meetings, the Sixth Report of the Joint Working Group between the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church (JWG) remarks that "diverse understanding of the ecumenical goal and of the means of achieving visible unity may affect ecumenical progress. " l Common understanding of ecumenism among WCC members and between the WCC and the RCC cannot be taken for grantednor that the WCC and the RCC are on the same page in the ecumenical movement. Divergence on the goal and means of ecumenism weakens the premises foundational for WCC-RCC cooperation, which in turn can only erode the bases for bilateral and multilateral dialogues. Hence the challenge to seek common understanding of the ecumenical movement. So the remark by the JWG gives rise to a theological question. Can WCC and RCC understandings of the ecumenical movement, acknowledged as diverse, be deepened in the direction of an ecumenical theology of ecumenism? Movement to that goal has to pass through consideration of a crisis in ecumenism that has been puzzling ecumenists even as they persevere in the cause of unity. It may be described briefly as a relative immobility succeeding a halcyon period during which the RCC entered into the ecumenical movement (ca. 1962-1970) and the WCC assembled at Uppsala (1968). If we can attain a common view of this crisis, it would be part of an answer to the larger question suspended over RCC-WCC relations since 1972: How can the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, without forming one structural fellowship, intensify their joint activities and thereby strengthen the unity, the common witness and the renewal of the churches?z Convergence on a common understanding of the ecumenical movement, and more specifically its crisis, can contribute to answering this earlier question from the JWG.
The Ecumenical Review, 2011
Ta k i n g S t o c k o f E c u m e n i s m An increasing perception, writes Ellen Ueberschär in this issue of The Ecumenical Review, holds ''that the ecumenical movement has a glowing past and a gloomy future''. Debates about the theological issues that divide churches no longer seem important to many church members, notes Ueberschär, general secretary of the German Protestant Kirchentag. While the 20th century was the ''great ecumenical century'', in the 21st it is not the issue of ecumenical dialogue but that of inter-religious conflicts that is seen as the pressing concern.