Ut Unum Sint and Catholic Involvement in Ecumenism

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2000 by William Henn

For John Paul, the first millennium may serve "as a kind of model" (para. 55) in which local churches related to one another as sisters. Sister churches enjoy full unity in legitimate diversity (para. 57), a diversity which extends even to a certain variety in doctrinal formulation:

   It is hardly surprising if sometimes one tradition has come nearer than the
   other to an apt appreciation of certain aspects of the revealed mystery or
   has expressed them in a clearer manner. As a result, these various
   theological formulations are often to be considered as complementary rather
   than conflicting [Unitatis Redintegratio 17]. Communion is made fruitful by
   the exchange of gifts between the churches insofar as they complement each
   other (para. 57).

This recourse to the first millennium includes also the ministerial structures which characterized the church during that period.

   The church's journey began in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and its
   original expansion in the oikoumene of that time was centred around Peter
   and the Eleven (cf. Acts 2:14). The structures of the church in the East
   and in the West evolved in reference to that apostolic heritage. Her unity
   during the first millennium was maintained within those same structures
   through bishops, successors of the apostles, in communion with the bishop
   of Rome. If today at the end of the second millennium we are seeking to
   restore full communion, it is to that unity, thus structured, which we must
   look (para. 55).

This statement about the ministerial structures of the first millennium resonates with Leo XIII's earlier insistence on the episcopacy and papacy as elements of the visible unity of the church required by its apostolic origins. Ut Unum Sint, however, does not suppose that ministry in communities without these structures can in no way be said to be apostolic. Its earlier recognition that the Holy Spirit works for the salvation of believers precisely through the ministry of non-Catholic Christian communities, including those without bishops in the Catholic sense, is the primary framework within which the Catholic understanding of ministry in these other churches should be considered. In honesty, however, the pope repeats the statement of the Second Vatican Council that some Christian communities lack what Catholic belief understands as the sacrament of orders and therefore suffer the consequence which such a lack implies concerning what Catholics would understand as the "genuine and total reality of the eucharistic mystery" (para. 67).

This painful question of the apostolicity of ministry and its relation to the ministerial structures of the first millennium is obviously one of the most difficult issues still to be resolved in ecumenical dialogue. Here the pope seems simply to be pointing out that the unity which unites Orthodox and Catholics on the question of the threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter and deacon is based on a consensus in the faith and practice of the church during the first millennium.