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Ibid. ’Confessing the One Faith, Geneva, WCC, 1991, pp.2-3.

lo Signs of the Spirit, op. cit. , p. 173. ‘ I Gathered for Life, official report of WCC sixth assembly, Vancouver, Canada, ed. D. Gill, Geneva,

” A Documentary History of the Faith and Order Movement (1927-1963), ed. L. Vischer, St Louis, MI,

l 3 The Uppsala Report, official report of WCC fourth assembly, ed. N. Goodall, Geneva, WCC, 1968,

l4 Breaking Barriers: Nairobi 1975, official report of WCC fifth assembly, ed. D.M. Paton, Geneva, WCC,

”Joint Working Group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches: Sixth

16Signs of the Spirit, op. cit. , p.174. ”Church and World, Geneva, WCC, 1990, p.26. I’lbid., p.23. “The Uppsala Report, op. cit. , p.17.

Church and World, op. cit., p.25. ’’ The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement, ed. C.G. Patelos, Geneva, WCC, 1978, p.40. ’’ W.A. Visser ’t Hooft, “The WCC as Koinonia and as Institution”, Mid-Stream, vol. 23, 1984, p. 146. 23 Signs of the Spirit, op. cit. , p. 113. 24 “The Church, the Churches and the World Council of Churches” in A Documentary History of the Faith

25 Ibid., p. 174. 26N. Nissiotis, “The Types and Problems of Ecumenical Dialogue”, The Ecumenical Review, vol. XVIII,

”“Constitution and Rules of the WCC”, in Signs ofthe Spirit, op. cit. , p.358. ’’ W.A. Visser ’t Hooft, The Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, WCC,

1982, p.90. ”“Towards Koinonia in Faith, Life and Witness”, draft of a working document, WCC, Faith and Order,

1992, p.32. It was only after the completion of this report that I saw the recent “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion” by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is significant to note that this letter, which is to a large extent the reaffirmation of the teachings of Vatican 11, considers the concept of koinonia as “a key to ecclesiology” and “at the heart of the church’s self-understanding”. However, its definitions of local-universal church and the Petrine office remain unacceptable to non-Catholics. Cf. L’Osservatore Romano (English version), 17 June 1992, pp.7-10.

WCC, 1983, p.45.

Bethany Press, 1964, pp.144-150.

p.17.

1976, p.60.

Report, Geneva, WCC, 1990, p.30.

and Order Movement (1927-1963), op. cit., pp.168-169.

no. 1, 1966, p.48.

3’ Cardinal J. Willebrands, “The Future of Ecumenism”, One in Christ, vol. 11, 1975, p.323. 32 Signs of the Spirit, op. cit. , p. 174.

Report of the General Secretary: A Call to Conversion EMILIO CASTRO

A. 1 . The biblical testimony is a series of invitations by God - invitations to renewal, to a new life, to a new birth, to a turning around, to faith and repentance. Christian life is defined by the experience of conversion as a passage into a new relationship, a new sphere of influence; it is

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a new birth, a new life, a new beginning in God. The people of Israel in the Old Testament and the churches in the New Testament are called to a change of direction, a change of values. Whether presented as a return to Israel’s nomadic experience of God’s faithfulness or, in the New Testament, to the contemplation of Christ crucified, the reminder of God’s liberating actions in the past is always an invitation to enter here and now into the transforming dynamic of the kingdom of God. Heritage as such is no guarantee of belonging to the people of God (Matt. 3:9, Gal. 3:7). There is an intentionality in this belonging: it is a response to a call. Baptism, even the baptism of infants, implies this intentionality of belonging, this turning around, this search for a new birth and a new community, the church. The call to conversion is not an appeal for improvement, for a reformed life according to a higher standard of morality, but an invitation to transformation, to a new life, manifested positively by faith in Jesus Christ, faith made obedience, and by rejection of the captivities of the past. It is a question of repentance and restitution. The “yes” of God manifested in Jesus Christ is the fundamental element in the conversion experience. Acceptance of and faith in that “yes”, which calls for changes in relation to the past and a projection of concrete obedience in faith, are essential to the whole experience of conversion. It is forgiveness and liberation.

B.2. The experience of conversion is always relational. It lives out of its centre and object. God in Christ is the faithful one. Conversion does not mean that something objectively measurable has changed in a human person; rather, it means that this person lives in relation to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and cannot conceive of living apart from that relation and point of reference. We do not trust in our own faithfulness, but we trust in the faithfulness of God (Rom. 8:37-39). God takes the initiative in inviting, affirming, assuring the relation.

3. Conversion is a permanent coming back and going forward to the pristine experience of God’s love in Jesus Christ. It involves a continuous going back in epiklesis to claim that faithfulness of God. As Karl Barth wrote: “We cannot say ... that we see in the Bible converted [human beings]. What we can and must say is that we see [human beings] caught up in the movement of conversion. If conversion is not behind them, it is also not in the mists before them. They are at the very heart of the movement. They had moved away from God. And it is saying too much to claim that they have moved right back to God. But what we must say is that they can no longer proceed without God. On the contrary, they are compelled to rise up and come to Him, and are now in the process of doing so. This is the movement of conversion.”’

4. Conversion means to turn around the central focus of Jesus Christ to have a relationship to him, to belonging to the sphere of influence of the Holy Spirit and to be taken into the very life of God in the mystery of the Trinity.

5. Conversion is entering into the realm of spirituality (Col. 3:l-3), being submitted to the process of curing our soul which will lead to our transfiguration in Christ. M.M. Thomas, quoted by John Pobee, provides a useful working definition of spirituality: “The structure of ultimate meaning and sacredness within which [human beings] live and enter into a relationship with nature and with fellow [human beings] in politics, economics, society and culture.” And John Pobee goes on to say: “Spirituality properly understood is to live in the magnetic sphere of the Holy Spirit, to be introduced into the heavenly court to see and hear the goings on there, as the prophets of the eighth century saw and heard something from heaven, and at the same time to live the life of eternity on this temporal plane.” We are taken into these spheres of spirituality and into the permanent process of conversion, into revolving around the axis of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ (Col. 1:13). We are called, then, to turn (Acts 26:18), to be transformed (Rom. 12:1), to clothe ourselves with Christ (Gal. 3:27), to be baptized into Jesus’ death (Rom. 6:4, Col. 2:12). All these expressions speak of newness (Eph. 4:22-24), newness in function of the faithfulness of God, who makes all things new.

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C.6. Conversion is always a call to obedience within concrete circumstances. Faith in Christ and obedience to Christ belong together. There is no call in the Bible, whether to a person or to the whole people of God, which does not refer to specific actions to be carried out and decisions to be made. Karl Barth says: “This binding to Jesus must be thought of as a very particular matter - something which comes to each individual in a highly particular way in his own particular time and situation. To this [person]) He now gives - and this [person] now receives - this command as the concrete form of the call to discipleship now issued to him.”*

7. Abraham is invited to come out of Haran (Gen. 12:l). Isaiah is called after the death of King Uzziah to prophecy (Isa. 6). The tax collectors and soldiers are invited not to exploit the people (Luke 3:12-14). Zacchaeus is called to restore what he has taken (Luke 1923-9). The conversion experience is recruitment for a task. Binding oneself to Jesus Christ means entering the arena of the Spirit, but this all happens within the realm of creation and history. So conversion relates the absolute of God to the relativity of history or, if you like, the spiritual to the material. It identifies the material as belonging to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the realm in which we are called to obedience by the Holy Spirit. The prophets always try to discern the will of God in his particular judgment and promises in particular moments of the history of his people.

8. We could say it another way. Conversion as revolving of my life around the axis of God’s revelation in Christ is not intended in the first place for my own salvation, for my own benefit; rather, it is always an incorporation into the saving and liberating mission of God in the world. The call to Abraham is for the blessing of “all the families of the earth”; it is a call from self and tribe to God and the nations.

D.9. The modem ecumenical movement - and the World Council of Churches in particular - is a manifestation of the permanent search for conversion and renewal in our churches and in their life together. At the basis of the ecumenical movement is the call to a radical conversion of the churches to the one church in God so that, through their unity, the world may b e l i e ~ e . ~

10. One of the constitutional functions and purposes of the World Council is “to foster the renewal of the churches in unity, worship, mission and service”. The history of the World Council of Churches discloses different modes of expressing that obedience, but all are rooted in the experience of adoration and contemplation of the God who makes all things new. This continuous search for a renewal of our conversion experience, for living permanently in the sphere of the Spirit, explains why the World Council of Churches cannot conceive of organizing a meeting that does not give substantial time and attention to worship and Bible study, to a common search for the will of God.

1 1 . When the Central Committee asks each programme unit to provide the biblical and theological basis that undergirds its work, it is inviting the WCC to render full testimony to the obedience and faith implicit in its attempt to respond to the call of God in particular moments and circumstances and to analyze critically motivations and priorities.

12. The historical situation of the churches has changed; and obviously such changes alter the kind of obedience required of them and of the WCC as a whole. What remains constant is the reference to the focal point, to the axis, to the area of action of the Holy Spirit. We are a movement seeking in the faithfulness of God the renewal of our own faithfulness, a new life. We must offer God the best of our minds in interpreting and responding to the events of the world. But all the fruits of our study and research, all the scientific knowledge that we collect must be brought to the inner circle of the Spirit, to be worked out in relationship to the central point of reference, Jesus Christ, in order to learn from there the particular area in which our obedience and freedom should be exercised. At the end of all our efforts it is the Holy Spirit that continues the struggle. So let us be attentive to the promptings of the Spirit!

13. To summarize our understanding of conversion: It is the permanent experience of living in relation to the events of God in Jesus Christ and being called by those events to respond in

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faith and obedience. Conversion does not exist apart from this dimension of relation to the Triune God. It is God’s faithfulness which gives us assurance that he will be at the encounter tomorrow as we search afresh for his will. It is God’s faithfulness which encourages us in epiklesis, calling permanently on his presence, wisdom and direction towards concrete tasks. Our belonging to the area of sanctification implies our participation in transforming all reality in the direction of the kingdom that is coming. The ecumenical movement, fruit and manifestation of the reality of conversion in the daily life of the Christian churches, is a fresh call to look for the concrete manifestation of faith and obedience required in particular moments. So, as we face the end of a century and the end of a millennium, we are called to conversion, obedience, repentance and growth in sanctification. We are called to listen anew to the prompting and call of the Holy Spirit. The main focus of this report, therefore, will be an attempt to spell out some of the fundamental directions of obedience which, I think, are required of us today in the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches in particular.

The conversion call to the World Council of Churches in 1992 1.14. As our life is rooted in God through our personal conversion, as our churches are

centred in the grounding experience of God in Jesus Christ, as the ecumenical movement has been and is an attempt to respond in faith and obedience to God’s own initiative, so we are called today to proclaim God’s acts and to invite people to respond to God’s call. Those who have problems with the connotations of the word “conversion” might find another term, but what is central today is the need to invite people to look afresh at the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, to discover the newness of life in the Spirit, to risk life for the sake of the kingdom of God.

15. This evangelistic call has always been present in the history of the ecumenical movement. It is not only the International Missionary Council which brought that dimension to the World Council of Churches. From the very beginning, it was necessary to reflect together on evangelism. For those who would like to follow the historical debate, I recommend reading the preparatory documents for the Uppsala assembly and that assembly’s attempts to come to grips with a definition of mission in a context permeated by a growing sense of human responsibility for shaping the destiny of persons and nations. Reading the ecumenical literature of those years, we are impressed by the emphasis on combating any dichotomy between spiritual and material - vertical and horizontal - and on avoiding any escape into a notion of salvation conceived to be somewhere outside history.4

16. Perhaps the crowning attempt to bring together the spiritual and historical dimensions was that of the world mission conference in Bangkok (1973), whose provocative theme was “Salvation Today”. Justice was understood as a fundamental spiritual category, and incarnation became the prevailing model both for interpreting Christian action in history and understanding God’s very being. The danger we were trying to combat was a “spiritualization” which lacked sensitivity to the structures of social domination. It was necessary to destroy the false dichotomy between “changing individuals” and “changing society”. The response of faith centred in the notion of justice came to be seen as essential.

17. Today the spiritual climate is quite different. The secular human being is well in command of the economic, political and cultural expressions of humankind. The world has “come of age”, to use Bonhoeffer’s phrase, but in a way quite different from what he might have anticipated. It is closed in on itself, without space for values or meanings. The present globalization of a philosophy based on the survival of the fittest in the economic world may be the ultimate logical expression of an attitude of control or dominion over nature which has very little room for the affirmation of the values of the Spirit. Even religious fundamentalism has taken a political d imen~ion!~ The old danger of over-spiritualizing is a minor one today. The difficulty is to pronounce meaningfully words like “Spirit”, “spiritual”, even “love”. It is very interesting to see how easily we handle the word “justice” and how difficult it is for us to talk about love! The word “love” does not appear in any of the names of the programmes of the

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World Council of Churches! So in the present intellectual predicament it is essential for the Christian churches and the ecumenical movement to be inviting people to an act of faith, to an act of participation in the arena of the Spirit, that is, to a personalized experience and to a recruitment for obedience.

18. Evangelism, the invitation to faith, is a clear sign that we care for people at the deepest level of their person. Today the reference to spirituality obliges us to be in dialogue with the experience of the Pentecostal churches which we sometimes consider to be on the margins of historic Christianity, but which have demonstrated the ability to mediate a personalized experience of a conscious decision for God in Christ. At the same time, it demands of us a serious dialogue with the claims and offers of other religions at the level of our and their most profound commitments. It is not a general spirituality that will be able to respond to the challenge of the present human climate, but a spirituality which clearly points to its sources in God, revealed in the power of the Spirit in Jesus Christ. We praise the Creator, not the creature; but because the Creator cares for the creature, a dignity is given to that creature. It is because God cares for each one that each one is important.

19. In the early seventies, the World Council of Churches engaged in a study of the “humanum”, a search for a definition of humanity which could illuminate both the ideological debate about the shaping of person and society and the scientific debate about the manipulation of life. Perhaps this study was ended prematurely, without coming to final fruition. I think we are now in a position to reopen that conversation, starting with our affirmation of God’s faithfulness. Who is this human being to whose encounter God’s self has come? Who is this human being called to respond in freedom, in faith and in obedience? The care, the concern, the relationship, the faithfulness of the Creator give dignity and eternal value to every creature.

20. We need to underline how this affirmation of our faith contrasts with the horrifying realities we read about daily in the press: not only wars, but techniques of war which imply that the other is not so much the enemy as a factor to be removed from a geographical area or excluded from a political process. Or the terrible news about famine in many countries of the world. Of course, we are challenged to try to provide help, but what we need to convey through our prayers and our testimonies is that each one of those dying children is, in the eyes of faith, the object of God’s manifestation of love. We want to shout: “Your life is precious! Even in these circumstances God loves you!” It may sound like madness, but perhaps the foolishness of the cross is a counter-fire which must be lit in the world in order to maintain hope and to renew commitment.

21. Conversion takes us to the arena of the absolute in the midst of the relative. We affirm God’s faithfulness, and in this way we dare to talk of eternal life, not as something we deserve, but as something given in the permanent converting and renewing experience of God’s faithfulness.

22. In my report to the Canberra assembly, reflecting on the prayer theme “Come, Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation”, I spoke of the difficulties of communicating the notion of the Spirit in the world of today. But the reality of the Spirit can and will be communicated by a church which dares to live in love and speak of love, which dares to affirm life eternal because it cares for the eternal quality of the life of every human being. Churches fully involved in the ambiguities of history - even sharing in their own life the frailties and sins of that ambiguity - will be able to pronounce the invitation to conversion with power and authority (2 Cor. 45) .

23. Unity, evangelism, dialogue, gospel and culture, renewal, diakonia, education, racial justice, inclusive community - to mention only a few of the many aspects of our work - should not be considered merely as programmes of the WCC; they are attempts to invite people to an awareness of God’s participation in human life, breaking all barriers and inviting them to’join in the realm of the kingdom to come in the power of the Spirit at work in the world.

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11.24. As we have seen, conversion implies a vocation. It is always a calling to a task, an invitation to respond in faith and obedience. In the Bible, conversion, which always centres on the relation to God, also happens in reference to other people, to the neighbour. The WCC has always understood its vocation as being sent into the conflicts of the world with the word and deed of the gospel. Addressing of specific situations is considered to be a normal expression of the experience of conversion. It seems impossible in ecumenical experience to separate the sense of belonging to God’s covenant from the sense of obedience in the arenas of the world. Because of this task-oriented reality of conversion, the WCC has always been and will always be polemic .

25. Some friends suppose that there was a kind of “golden age” in the history of the World Council of Churches when its programmes were more “vertical” than “horizontal”, when the search for the doctrinal unity of the church was by far the dominant preoccupation. In fact, while the search for unity has always been and continues to be present in the life of the WCC, it has never been understood as something isolated from the daily historical conflicts. The very theme of the first assembly in Amsterdam - “Man’s Disorder and God’s Design” - demonstrates unequivocally that the founders of the WCC never intended to detach the unity of the church from history. In setting the search for the unity of the church in the context of obedience to the vision of the kingdom of God, they devised a World Council which is and remains fully present in the conflicts of the world. At the same time, there are other friends who will affirm the contrary, warning that the WCC has lost its cutting edge in the area of justice and become more concerned with liturgical matters and general discussions than with concrete solidarity with people under oppression. They say that our friendship with the centres of ecclesiastical authority has eroded our freedom to support people struggling for justice against governmental or even ecclesiastical authorities. I hope that this charge is mistaken, but if those who are suffering or have suffered injustices rebuke us, let us listen, learn and repent. In short, let us hear through them the call to conversion.

26. Still other critical friends will argue that even if the World Council is by its very nature polemic, the way in which we enter into polemics should be more “responsible” - or perhaps more “scientific” - than it is. They also point to an earlier day when that seems to have been the case. I raised this matter of how the World Council reaches consensus in my report to the Central Committee last September. We have also discussed this in the evaluation of the present status of the conciliar process for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Surely, that debate will continue, especially within our Programme Unit on Justice, Peace and Creation, both at the theoretical level - how do we arrive at socio- ethical conclusions? - and at the practical level - what challenges should we be addressing to the specific conflicts of today?

27. Meanwhile, we acknowledge our call to obedience within the present historical situation. As we look at the situation today, we discern areas where nothing less than a new awakening to God’s call is required in order to persevere and be faithful to our vocation and to the reality of our conversion.

28. The programme of this Central Committee raises three fundamental issues for our consideration - economic justice, racial justice and ecological responsibility. These are essential components of our vision of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. They call us to concrete conversion: from a theology of domination over the earth to an awareness of its sacramental character and the stewardship to which we are called;’ from a vision of economy based on the goal of unlimited growth to the building of a just and sustainable society in which economic resources are harnessed to protect the little ones; from the arrogance of racial superiority to the affirmation of a new humanity in Jesus Christ.

29. I do not enter into those three dimensions in this report because each has a special place in our programme and will be properly considered there. But a fourth covenant within the JPIC process which has important implications for our daily work comes to my mind with a sense of

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urgency. That is the search for peace and its full implementation in the ministry of reconcilia- tion. “Blessed are the peace-makers.” Resorting to violence seems to be the “normal” way to handle conflicts in our world. Our prayers go out for Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Somalia, Sudan, Haiti, Central America, Peru, Afghanistan, Armenia, former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland - and one could add to this list of wars going on or threatening to break out almost endlessly. Something dramatic needs to be done in order to convince global public opinion that there are other ways and means to confront conflicts than the irrational resort to violence against our neighbour. We are not equipped to follow all the conflicts in the world, though perhaps we have more resources than we imagine if we are able to use our contacts with local and national churches and ecumenical organizations to mobilize them in support of peaceful resolutions in many areas of the world.

30. Remember the “debate within the debate” on the Gulf war at the Canberra assembly. When the whole question of pacifism came to the surface, we acknowledged de fact0 in the assembly that the majority of the churches do not support a pacifist position based on a priori principles. Yet a valid and important question remains, a question that has to do with our conversion experience and the call to concrete obedience in concrete times and places: does the present world situation not demand of the Christian churches a clearer non-violent stand or advocacy for non-violence?

31, The arms traffic, which seems easily to have recycled itself in the service of limited wars once a world war no longer seemed imminent, is a demonstration of the human capacity to persevere in ways that can lead only to further tragedy. Yet if anything the diversity and magnitude of conflicts today indicate that violence is no solution. We are called to shout “stop!”, knowing quite well that the mere halting of an armed conflict is not yet the shalom of God, but recognizing that only within such a frail human expression of peace can the search for God’s peace have a real chance.

32. More and more the basic Christian concept of reconciliation appears as a fundamental theological and political challenge on the ecumenical agenda. I spoke earlier of our difficulty with using the word “love”: that we feel more at ease with the word “justice”. Something similar can be said of the term “reconciliation”. We hesitate to use it because it seems too cheap, too easy. How can we speak of reconciliation to Palestinians and Israelis, to Serbs and Croats and Bosnians, to blacks and whites in South Africa, to the military forces in Latin America and their victims, to the haves and have-nots in the big cities? How can we claim to be instruments of reconciliation without being reconciled among ourselves? How can we pronounce that word today without serving the cause of those who indulge in power? Quite rightly, we fear that if the word “reconciliation” comes before the real causes of a conflict are addressed, the powers-that- be will have every chance to ensure that they will enjoy their privileges forever. But there is no way around the word “reconciliation”. It is part of our very identity as Christians. God has in Christ reconciled the world to God’s self and has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:16-20). Obviously, we need to fill this word with meaning in order to know its concrete and practical significance in specific times and places. Obviously, we need to find out which and how many steps will be necessary on the road to reconciliation. But we must call everyone to start walking on that road, and the first step in the right direction is to stop murdering neighburs, brothers and sisters, who otherwise will not be able to participate in the golden solution we are dreaming of.

33. There is no solution if the hatred of yesterday continues to be passed on to the generations of tomorrow. This is a problem we face existentially in the reconstruction of society in Latin America after so many years of dictatorship in the sixties and seventies. It is the main challenge for whatever programme is developed for the post-apartheid period in South Africa. We want to help to achieve peace. Sometimes we will be obliged, out of solidarity, to take sides. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself paid the price of his identification with the poor and downtrodden of the earth and thus has the credentials to pronounce a word of peace and reconciliation (John

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20:20-21, Col. 1:20). We will need to call justice justice and injustice injustice, but let us make clear that even in our choosing sides, we do so for the sake of real reconciliation. And if the risk needs to be taken, let us take the risk of being premature in our call for peace and our call to reconciliation, rather than coming too late to the rescue of the neighbour in need.

34. Peace ministry has always been a part of the life of the World Council of Churches. I believe that a conversion to the roots of our being, listening to the voice of the Lord, obliges us to strengthen and multiply our solidarity with the churches in the ministry of peace and in the announcement that reconciliation is always possible because God in Christ has laid the eternal foundation for it.

111.35. Conversion is our being taken by God’s faithfulness into his eternal covenant. It means being introduced into the process of sanctification and growth in our belonging to God. It is precisely in the heart of the Triune God, according to John 17:21, that we find the real unity of the church, “that they all be one in us”. So our commitment to work towards the visible unity of the church is intrinsic to our experience of conversion and renewal, and only conversion to Christ and renewal in the one faith will lead us towards visible unity.

36. I must confess that I have always had difficulty with the use of the term “invisible church in contrast to the “visible church”, because while we all believe in the church as the body of Christ, the mystery of his being is sacramentally revealed, even through dark glasses, in the visible historical church. Discerning the marks of the church in the churches has stimulated our enthusiasm and commitment to overcome historical barriers and to exercise impatience in the search for the visible unity of the church. Today, old and new barriers confront us, and in order to endure, persevere, not give up, we need to convert afresh; to go to the sources of our vision of the one church in the very intention of God. We are sent back to our basic faith experience to rediscover baptism as the integration into the one body of Christ and sanctification as the process of growing together in unity under the influence of the Spirit. We need to be forced by the ontological reality of our unity to endure the present situation and to persevere in our endeavours towards the visible unity of the church.

37. For many years the work of Faith and Order and the bilateral dialogues have contributed to substantial progress in the reciprocal recognition of our belonging to the one faith tradition of the church. Was it not already in 1965 that Pope Paul VI and His Holiness Athenagoras lifted the reciprocal anathemas? Did not Metropolitan Nikodim die in the presence of the Pope? Did not Archbishop Runcie say that the Anglican community was ready to recognize the role of the Bishop of Rome? Did not the two Orthodox families, through their theologians, declare that they are one in a common confession of faith in the Son of God incarnate, true man and true God? Have not many churches entered into new relationships, including forms of eucharistic sharing? Have not many regional ecumenical organizations and national councils of churches come to life, many of them integrating all sectors of the family of churches? Have not Canberra, the Lutheran World Federation and other Christian world communions advanced a theology of the “church as communion” to describe our search for unity within a fundamentally given spiritual reality?

38. The moderator of the Central Committee and representatives of Faith and Order will lead our reflection on this aspect of koinonia during our Central Committee, and the world conference on faith and order next year will spell out the concepts of koinonia in relation to our faith, life and witness together. But I must say that two recent statements from our sister church, the Roman Catholic Church, have poured cold water on our ecumenical endeavours. The first was the practical rejection of the bilateral dialogue findings in ARCIC I (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission), with the arguments that the findings, while commendable, were not Roman Catholic enough to be recognized as a basis for unity. If this line of reasoning were to be followed as a model by all other families of churches, we would never make any breakthrough in the search for the una sancta.

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39. More recently, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, through its president, Cardinal Ratzinger, and with the approval of His Holiness John Paul 11, sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church a letter on “Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion”. The chapter devoted to ecumenism indicates that the maximum hope is that “in this ecumenical commitment, important priorities are prayer, penance, study, dialogue and collaboration, so that, through a new conversion to the Lord, all may be enabled to recognize the continuity of the primacy of Peter in his successors, the bishops of Rome, and to see the Petrine ministry fulfilled, in the manner intended by the Lord, as a worldwide apostolic service, which is present in all the churchesfrom within, and which, while preserving its substance as a divine institution, can find expression in various ways according to the different circumstances of time and place, as history has shown.” We are dismayed because this means that without this kind of “communion”, there is not a “healthy church! This is an interpretation of conversion as “return” to the Roman Church that does not appear to us even a correct understanding of the orientation of the Second Vatican Council.

40. We know that there are other voices in the Roman Catholic Church, and we hope that they will keep the thrust of the Second Vatican Council alive; otherwise the Council and fifty years of ecumenical work appear to have been set aside. We seem to be back at square one. (At the same time, one church has suspended its relationship with the World Council of Churches because it believes that we are inclined too heavily in favour of the Roman Catholic tradition!)

41. At the same time we are living through the tragedy of uniatism, which reveals how difficult it is, even in this ecumenical era, to heal the wounds of the past and to develop a new modus vivendi as churches. This issue has done tremendous damage not only to interconfes- sional relations, but also to the churches’ capacity to witness to the reconciling power of Jesus Christ in the new Europe (see the report of the recent consultation on uniatism). The temptation to retreat into confessional identity, or to be content with a minimalist ecumenical attitude, or to over-emphasize the local without due attention to catholicity is also perceptible in Protestant circles. (In the United States of America, another trend is noticeable. Congregations are becoming more important than the confessions. However, this is seldom a sign of growing ecumenical consciousness in those congregations; rather, it results from a more individualistic approach to religious practices: the congregation that responds to my need is my confession.)

42. Conversion is a call to centre ourselves anew on the will of God as manifested in Jesus Christ, Conversion is rediscovering the unity that is given in our belonging to God’s new covenant in Jesus Christ through the Spirit. So to give up the search for the visible unity of the church would mean to give up our very Christian identity.g We cannot give up dialogue at any level. We cannot accept historical tragedies or dogmatic affirmations as definitive, because conversion, God’s call, incorporates us into the mystery of the Triune God, in which unity is anchored and from which we cannot escape, even through our own unfaithfulness, because God remains faithful. We need to believe and to shout that the “yes” of God is and will be stronger than our confessional “no”.

43. Perhaps time will come to our rescue. Meanwhile, we need to persevere and be realistic about the actual possibilities of direct official dialogues, continuing them patiently but strengthening other levels of ecumenism, whether through study groups, exchange of professors, action groups, liturgical groups, mixed marriages, pastoral collaboration or conciliar structures for common witness. At the same time, we should not be idealistic about local ecumenism in contrast to a stalemate at world level. Uniatism, after all, began as a local problem. But it is obvious that the face-to-face relations which are possible in a local situation enable the freedom of love to manifest itself more clearly and the reciprocal inspiration and correction of the ecumenical movement become more direct and discern- ible,

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44. While we wait for the moment in which the international bilateral dialogues could again bear fruit - or even the miracle of a breakthrough! - we have much homework to do. The statement of the theologians of the two Orthodox families has not yet led to full communion. Many other churches as well carry on divisions of the past which have no substantial doctrinal support, but rest on personal, ethnic or jurisdictional problems which we have not been able to overcome. Reconciling sectors of our churches, crossing bridges of understanding between Orthodox and Protestants, encouraging common witness in conflict situations, overcoming proselytism, deepening eucharist theology, growing into inclusive communities, opening of our minds and hearts fully to the new manifestations of the Holy Spirit in churches in Africa, Latin America and Europe - all these claim our attention and give us more than enough to do in advancing the ecumenical ship through the difficult waters of today. Some reordering of our priorities will help us to continue our service to the ecumenical vision in the assurance that the goal of visible unity is a possibility because it belongs to God’s own will. Yes, the vision is there, the determination, too; let us recognize doors that open and doors that close, while we continue in the permanent epiklesis of the Spirit to come to renew the ecumenical pilgrimage.

Conclusion 45. In Romans 12: 1-2, Paul appeals for renewal through the transformation of our minds and

the rejection of the world’s standards of power. The vision is there. We are called to render testimony to God’s revelation in Christ. We are called to follow the vision of justice, peace and the integrity of creation, and to be fully engaged in the promotion of the unity of the church. To pursue this vision and this task, we have now a flexible structure, a modest but healthy financial situation and, soon, a new captain on board! Together we listen to Jesus: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28-30). In him there is rest and power for resilience and hope!

NOTES

‘ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics N: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, 2, place, pub. year, p.560.

’See Groupe des Dombes, Pour la conversion des Eglises, Paris, Centurion, 1991. 41n retrospect, we are thankful to the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and the World

Evangelical Fellowship for their contribution to this ecumenical debate with specific emphasis on evangelism and personal conversion. ’ Even if we recognize that we need to cope with the consequences of 500 years of evangelization which

served as ideological justification for conquest and colonization (“Surrender, you will be evangelized and you will go to heaven”), if our proclamation of justice does not include clear perceptions of the spiritual, transcendent dimension of life, it will not do justice to the deepest level of religious perception of oppressed people. It is in the name of Christ and with their perception of the Triune God that most of them criticize the colonial period and its results.

Ibid., p. 547,

‘See, for example, The Ecumenical Review, vol. 43, no. 3, July 1991. ’The recent United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro was a powerful

call to repentance and a manifestation of the resistance to that call. Nothing less than conversion is needed here.

‘‘There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion. For it is from newness of attitudes of mind, from self-denial and unstinted love, that desires of unity take their rise and develop in a mature way. We should therefore pray to the Holy Spirit for the grace to be genuinely self-denying, humble, gentle in the service of others and to have an attitude of brotherly generosity towards them” (Decree on Ecumenism, Documents of Vatican I t , ed. Walter Abbott, New York, Guild Press, 1966, para. 7).

‘See PCR Information, no. 30, “From Cottesloe to Cape Town”, Geneva, WCC, 1991.

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