A Communion of Martyrs

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2000 by Sven-Erik Brodd

   While for all Christian communities the martyrs are the proof of the power
   of grace, they are not the only ones to bear witness to that power. Albeit
   in an invisible way, the communion between our communities, even if still
   incomplete, is truly and solidly grounded in the full communion of the
   saints -- those who, at the end of a life faithful to grace, are in
   communion with Christ in glory. These saints come from all the churches and
   ecclesial communities which gave them entrance into the communion of
   salvation (para. 84).

The Apostles' Creed links the confession of the holy catholic church with the confession of the communion of saints. If there is an exchange of spiritual gifts between all who are redeemed -- Christian persons, in Christ, are not only persons together with each other but also for each other -- then there is a mutual service among the members of the entire body of Christ. According to this, the exchange of spiritual gifts among the redeemed transcends all limits and includes the church in its entirety, in heaven and on earth. This brings martyrdom into the centre of the catholicity of the church. Even if Ut Unum Sint does not deal with the third attribute of the church -- catholicity -- it is traditionally linked to the problem of the fullness of the church, its pleroma.

So far as I know, the Church of Sweden bishops' conference has presented the only official response to Ut Unum Sint among the Scandinavian churches.(12) This rather extensive document acknowledges the various forms of fellowship manifested between the Church of Sweden and the Roman Catholic Church, lists agreements and disagreements with the encyclical, then comments on what the bishops see as the claims of the Roman Catholic Church to be exclusively the church in its fullness. One remark refers to catholicity, which the encyclical seems to apply exclusively to the Roman Catholic Church. "However," the bishops write, "the Church of Sweden is also, in the apostolic sense, catholic, although as yet imperfect and still on the way to perfection."(13) Although the bishops refer throughout the document to issues of reconciliation, fullness, communion and occasionally conversion, they do not explicitly take up the idea of martyrdom.

In a lecture to an international study meeting on St Birgitta in Rome in October 1991 Cardinal Ratzinger said:

   We can qualify her as a saint particularly "Catholic" in the sense in which
   we understand the term "Catholic", that is, openness to the totality, to
   the abundance and to the depth of the faith, which is not selective and
   does not lose itself in particular devotions, but one that feeds on the
   essential, on that which is great, on that which is common to the entire
   church. In this sense therefore the terms "Catholic" and "ecumenical"
   coincide. St Bridget can be an "ecumenical" saint today, because she was so
   completely "Catholic", because she incarnates at the same time the fullness
   and purity of the faith.(14)