Summer 2005

The Ecumenical Legacy of Pope John Paul II

By William H. Lazareth

Bishop Emeritus Lazareth is the Jerald C. Brauer Distinguished Professor of Lutheran Studies at Carthage College in Kenosha. As director of the Faith and Order Secretariat of the World Council of Churches, he also served as its ecumenical liaison officer at the Vatican.

Among the major accomplishments of Pope John Paul II, none will likely have more transformative effects on the church universal than his bold leadership in the cause of Christian ecumenism. In this global movement of Christian churches to manifest their essential unity under Christ, Pope John Paul's contribution was incalculable. He taught powerfully by word and deed that the church which he had been called to lead was "fully and irrevocably committed" to promote the goal of Christian unity.

It wasn't always easy. Eastern Orthodox and Protestant leaders had already begun to meet regularly in the opening decades of the 20th century. But not with Rome. A stinging encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI in 1928 curtly forbade all Roman Catholic participation in any interchurch reunion movements.

Why? Pius contended that the only way to foster Christian unity was to promote "the return to the one true church of Christ of those who are separated from it."

At the end of the century John Paul's encyclical "Commitment to Ecumenism" (1995) displayed a radically different spirit. He decreed that "ecumenism is not 'an appendix' added to traditional church activity." It is rather "an organic part of her life and work that consequently must pervade all that she is and does."

Nor is the task of ecumenism mandated by a pope alone. "Christ calls his disciples into unity," John Paul wrote, making ecumenism an "irrevocable essential" for being a Roman Catholic Christian at the beginning of the 21st century.

This radical shift be explained and defended only by the unprecedented renewal of Vatican Council II (1962-65). Here the doctrinal foundations were laid for the belated entry of Roman Catholics into the mainstream of common action for manifesting Christian unity. Here Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Krakow and the future Bishop of Rome, helped to champion the Council's "Decree on Ecumenism" (1964).

To be sure, this Council's "Constitution on the Church" solemnly professed that "the church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him." However the Council's publicly debated decision to replace the originally-proposed "is" with the more ecumenical "subsists in" is anything but minor and its significance is still debated by theologians. In any case it meant the Council decided to no longer assert an exclusive identity between the church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church. The ecumenical door had been opened.

Moreover, the Council's bishops also consistently acknowledged that "many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found outside (Rome's) visible structure." It followed that "these separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, have by no means been deprived of significance and value in the mystery of salvation." Indeed, there can be found outside the Roman Church "a life of grace that can rightly be described as capable of providing access to the community of salvation."

Hence, the Roman Catholic Church now advocates strongly the goal of all common ecumenical endeavors to be the restoration of full visible unity in faith, ministry and sacramental life. Under Pope John Paul's subsequent stalwart leadership the common search for Christian unity became an evangelical priority for the Roman Catholic Church.

In his 1995 implementation document, "Commitment to Ecumenism," Pope John Paul went on helpfully to specify the formidable doctrinal obstacles still in need of fuller study and resolution before a true consensus in faith can be realized:

• The relationship between Scripture and Tradition.
• The Eucharist as the sacrament of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ.
• Ordination, as a sacrament, to the threefold ministry of the episcopate, presbyterate and deaconate.
• The magisterium of the church entrusted to the pope and bishops in communion with him.
• The Virgin Mary as mother of God and icon of the church, who intercedes for Christ's disciples and for all humanity.

In this regard, the encyclical was generous in its praise of the principal theological research of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, in which Roman Catholic scholars continue to participate fully with Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Pentecostal and Free Church colleagues to try to reconcile perennial interchurch differences and divisions.

John Paul specifically cited the 1982 text on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry," which has enjoyed worldwide recognition through successive printings totaling more than 550,000 copies as translated in more than 40 languages. This statement probably ranks as the most important multilateral theological accomplishment of the 20th century. It elicited more than 200 official church responses, and became the first ecumenical document ever to receive an official extended review by the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of its Prefect, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger.

Pope John Paul also encouraged and structured numerous bilateral dialogues on the international level between Rome and its ecumenical partners. The most fruitful have proven to be those between the original theological adversaries of the Reformation, Catholics and Lutherans. Superlative biblical, patristic and liturgical research was authorized and coordinated over several decades through the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation, a global communion of 138 Lutheran churches in 77 countries representing 66 million Christians. With John Paul's strong blessing, they concentrated on the Reformation's original primary concerns over the doctrine of Justification, articulating how sinners are declared and made righteous by a gracious God.

It was amply documented in charitable hindsight that both sides rightly condemned doctrinal errors that neither side officially and publicly taught (whatever the shortcomings of individual polemicists). While the Vatican's formulations are rarely identical with those of the LWF, they have proved to be more complementary than contradictory. Together they now represent the "reconciled diversity" of doctrinal differences in a "differentiated consensus."

Thus, while differences remain, they are no longer considered church-divisive. The 16th century mutual condemnations of the Council of Trent and the Lutheran Confessions are no longer applicable to the signatories of the resulting ecumenical document entitled the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" (1999).

Its central affirmation was, "Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works."

Its grateful conclusion: "We thank God that the decades of dialogues have reached this result. We are confident that it represents a good basis for the continued rapprochement of the ecumenical partners and that it will also be of value within the wider ecumenical movement."

Never before had the Roman Catholic Church approved the results of an ecumenical dialogue officially and in a manner binding to the doctrine of the church. This Roman Catholic-Lutheran joint agreement marked a major breakthrough in Christian ecumenism. The Joint Declaration is grounded in Christ's final prayer to God the Father "that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you" (John 17). It fulfills part of the biblical vision that empowers the living legacy of Pope John Paul II.