On Ecumenism

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient  Church of the West) 

There is a good kind of ecumenism and a bad kind of ecumenism. The good kind is found in the hard process of submitting to the Apostolic Gospel, the witness of the Undivided Church, full orthodoxy or doctrine and catholicity of faith, found through forgiveness, mutual submission, and godly love. The bad kind tries to minimize differences, protect our pride, and smooth over problems by adherence to the least common denominator, sacrificing truth for a political compromise and outward solidarity. 

The Carolinian Divines, the Non-Jurors and the Oxford Fathers had a vision for the first kind of ecumenical truth in a restored and catholic Church of England. These noble intentions were derailed by Anglicanism’s tolerance for compromise, rooted in our political history and in the unresolved theological contradictions of the Reformation. 

The second kind of ecumenism has been incredibly hurtful and damning to us and to other churches, focusing on outward unity at the expense of the inner cohesion of doctrine and theological practice. It is a theology of “it doesn’t really matter” and attempts to minimize, rather than harmonize, deny rather than full flesh-out, differing views and experiences within Christian communities. In human relationships we would call this trait “dysfunctional” - because it tries to repair past conflicts by avoiding every mention of them. It is fearful on one side, and disbelieving on the other - because it doesn’t believe that the initial conflicts were valuable or revealed anything of value about us or God, but rather, merely holds history in contempt and downplays its relevance today. 

While we want the first kind of ecumenicism in our Church, centered around the Vincentian Canon and the shared life in all Apostolic Churches, we must always be on guard for the second kind of unity. They often appear similar, but their inner motivations are completely different. The first type desires submission to Christ as the “way, truth and life” and seeks His glory above all, realizing that man must humble himself before God and others in the process; the second kind desires that we merely “get along for mutual benefit” and does not require submission or repentance - but the “preservation of human dignity.” 

One is about Christ. The other is about our selves.