Whitby & Kleve - consecration of new altar in church in Kleve, Germany - The Ecumenical Task: 1993

Commonweal, Jan 15, 1993 by Anthea Dove

When I was very young I attended a Church of England primary school. It was during the Second World War. and whenever the siren wailed, warning of an impending air raid, our teacher would calmly lead us in orderly procession across the country lane that divided the school from the church.

I do not remember being at all frightened, only delighted at the break in lessons, the change in routine. Once inside the church we filed down into the crypt and there we took our places, sitting on the stone floor. There were about a hundred of us squashed together round the ancient boiler. This contraption heated the church above only in theory, but we were safe enough unless the enemy scored a direct hit on the church. something that never happened. We spent those hours in the crypt singing. Our teacher was the most fervent of patriots, and all our songs extolled our country, with God sometimes thrown in for good measure.

I emerged from my primary school a true-blue English girl. I was proud of my king and queen, of Winston Churchill and the Union Jack. I had a map of the world on my wall which showed a considerable proportion of the countries colored in bright red. All of these were our empire, the places that we had conquered, the people that belonged to us. I had no doubt then, that Britain was best.

These very personal reflections must seem to have nothing whatever to do with ecumenism. But it seems to me that if I am to make any headway in the understanding of how people can come to share in the truth, then I have to start by trying to work it out for myself, by tracing the influences which have led me to where I am now. Like peace, ecumenism has to begin with me and I see a clear parallel between my nationalism and my religious development.

The doubts about Britain came, gradually, almost unnoticed. They were a part of natural maturing, of rationalization, and especially of a growing, deepening Christian faith.

After the war, like any true Brit, I hated the Germans. In all our games, they were the enemy. It has been a long process that has brought me to where I am now, seeing the Germans -like the Russians, Jews, Zulus, and every other race - as my brothers and sisters, equal in the sight of God though far from equal in terms of human suffering. And I am able to acknowledge that the British have played no small part in the oppression and victimization of the world's people. I see that my country now cuts an insignificant figure on the stage of the world.

And yet, although I have come to think of myself as a citizen of the world, a creature of the planet Earth, and may seem to some to be a paragon of tolerance, to others an absolute renegade, yet there is still some gladness and pride in me that I come from this particular race, that I was born in this once-emerald isle.

I know this because, on those rare occasions when England wins a gold medal at the Olympics, I jump up and hug whoever happens to be next to me. It makes no difference that I am not really interested in sport, or that the superpowers in politics are also superpowers in athletic prowess: there is just a moment of spontaneous pride and delight which on reflection seems to be no bad thing.

And this brings me, at last, to the crux of this essay, to the point I am trying to make. There are moments when I feel spontaneous pride and delight in being a member of the Roman Catholic church.

This happened when I saw what Oscar Romero did, and did because he was a Roman Catholic. It happens when I see what Mother Teresa does, and does because she is a Roman Catholic. It happens to me when I come away from the Sacrament of Reconciliation and feel the incomparable joy that comes from the forgiving embrace of God. I am grateful and happy to be a Catholic, at a deeper and more serious level perhaps, but in much the same way as I am grateful to be English.

But such gratitude and happiness are as nothing compared to the commitment I now feel toward God and toward all those everywhere in our world, whatever their particular creed or discipline, who seek to worship and to serve him. It is not so much a case of standing together and being a light to the world, as of sharing the truth and proclaiming the kingdom of truth, justice, and love for which all people long.

It is terrible to think of what we have done to one another in the past in the name of religion. And even more terrible for us, because we see it happening before our eyes on television, are the barbarities committed by those who maim and kill one another in the name of nationalism. If hatred is the fruit of religious or national ardor, then such ardor has become evil and must be resisted and condemned.

For the ordinary concerned Christian the sense of powerlessness in the face of bigotry and fanaticism is overwhelming. We look round our world and see the apparently irreconcilable: blacks and whites in South Africa, Protestants and Catholics in Ulster, Hindus and Muslims in India. In what was Yugoslavia we see Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians - Orthodox, Catholics, and Muslims - fighting with the ferocity of caged animals. Within our Christian world we see any variety of groups entrenched within the limits of their own structures, unable, through what seems like loyalty but may be fear, to cross the barriers that divide us. Can we realistically hope for reconciliation?