Ecumenical Instructions for Catholics (Protestants, Please Eavesdrop)

While much vis­i­ble ecu­meni­cal work takes place at an offi­cial level—like in the national and inter­na­tional dia­logues—Uni­tatis Red­in­te­gra­tio expects all Catholics to get involved in some way or another. The decree lays down the march­ing orders for this new Catholic calling.

“Catholics, in their ecu­meni­cal work, must assuredly be con­cerned for their sep­a­rated brethren, pray­ing for them, keep­ing them informed about the Church, mak­ing the first approaches toward them.” (§4)

So far so good! But ecu­menism is never only out­wardly directed. It always requires a hard look at what’s going on at home.

“But their pri­mary duty is to make a care­ful and hon­est appraisal of what­ever needs to be done or renewed in the Catholic house­hold itself, in order that its life may bear wit­ness more clearly and faith­fully to the teach­ings and insti­tu­tions which have come to it from Christ through the Apostles.

“For although the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all means of grace, yet its mem­bers fail to live by them with all the fer­vor that they should, so that the radi­ance of the Church’s image is less clear in the eyes of our sep­a­rated brethren and of the world at large, and the growth of God’s king­dom is delayed.” (§4)

Ecu­menism in fact is another kind of ref­or­ma­tion: and the fact that other Chris­tians, and the whole world, are watch­ing adds extra urgency to it.

“Christ sum­mons the Church to con­tin­ual ref­or­ma­tion as she sojourns here on earth. The Church is always in need of this, in so far as she is an insti­tu­tion of men here on earth. Thus if, in var­i­ous times and cir­cum­stances, there have been defi­cien­cies in moral con­duct or in church dis­ci­pline, or even in the way that church teach­ing has been formulated—to be care­fully dis­tin­guished from the deposit of faith itself—these can and should be set right at the oppor­tune moment.” (§6)

Inter­est­ingly, this ref­or­ma­tion also means freedom:

“All in the Church must pre­serve unity in essen­tials. But let all, accord­ing to the gifts they have received enjoy a proper free­dom, in their var­i­ous forms of spir­i­tual life and dis­ci­pline, in their dif­fer­ent litur­gi­cal rites, and even in their the­o­log­i­cal elab­o­ra­tions of revealed truth. In all things let char­ity pre­vail. If they are true to this course of action, they will be giv­ing ever bet­ter expres­sion to the authen­tic catholic­ity and apos­tolic­ity of the Church.” (§4)

Protes­tants would do well to adopt these march­ing orders as their own!