A Bumpy Catholic Ride into Ecumenism

Now that we’re well into Italy and the far-off goal of Rome is not quite so far-off any­more, it’s a good time to reflect a bit on the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil (1962–1965). Pope John XXIII con­vened it under the rubric of aggior­na­mento, Ital­ian for “bring­ing up to date.” It was only the sec­ond ecu­meni­cal coun­cil of the Catholic Church since the Coun­cil of Trent (1545–1563), itself a response to the reform­ing move­ments of Luther and oth­ers. And one of the most sig­nif­i­cant things Vat­i­can II did was bring the Catholic Church into the ecu­meni­cal movement.

This was really a big deal, because just a few decades before the Catholic Church regarded ecu­menism with the utmost hos­til­ity. The 1928 encycli­cal Mor­tal­ium Ani­mos issued by Pope Pius XI—not coin­ci­den­tally just a year after the found­ing of the Faith and Order movement—made it very clear that Catholics could not be a part of such ecu­meni­cal ventures:

“[I]t is clear why this Apos­tolic See has never allowed its sub­jects to take part in the assem­blies of non-Catholics: for the union of Chris­tians can only be pro­moted by pro­mot­ing the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are sep­a­rated from it, for in the past they have unhap­pily left it.” (§10)

In other words, the unity of the church could be eas­ily achieved but only in one way—by uni­ver­sal con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church. Until then, peo­ple who called them­selves “Chris­tians” but were not Catholics were only deceiv­ing themselves:

“For since the mys­ti­cal body of Christ, in the same man­ner as His phys­i­cal body, is one, com­pacted and fitly joined together, it were fool­ish and out of place to say that the mys­ti­cal body is made up of mem­bers which are dis­united and scat­tered abroad: whoso­ever there­fore is not united with the body is no mem­ber of it, nei­ther is he in com­mu­nion with Christ its head.” (§10)

As harsh as this may sound, Mor­tal­ium Ani­mos is well worth the read, because it has seri­ous con­cerns that should be taken seri­ously. The cen­tral con­cern is that a move­ment ori­ented toward peace or rec­on­cil­i­a­tion could not afford to dis­pense with ques­tions of truth. Real unity can­not and will not ulti­mately be achieved by mere tol­er­ance or good will. At stake is the ques­tion of who God really is and what the Chris­t­ian faith really means.

These con­cerns weren’t given up by Vat­i­can II—instead, a new way was found to address them across the old bound­ary lines. More tomorrow!