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Ecumenism post Vatican II

During Lent 2001, a series of sermons on ecumenism were delivered to the congregation of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow at the neighbouring Lansdowne Parish Church.

In the last of the series The Very Reverend Monsignor Henry Docherty, General Secretary of the Scottish Bishops' Conference in the Roman Catholic Church, reflected on decades of personal involvement in Scottish ecumenism.

My dear friends in Jesus Christ,

I have chosen as my topic this evening “Ecumenism post Vatican II”. Post Vatican II rather than after Vatican II, to emphasise the continuing causal connection rather than detached events in time.

Vatican II is, of course, the accepted abbreviation for the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church which convened on 11 October 1962 (almost 40 years ago) and ended on 8 December 1965.

It was the brain-child, as it were, of the late Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli of peasant stock) who succeeded the aristocratic Pius XII in 1958 as, it was thought, “a care-taker Pope” being already advanced in years. But he surprised everyone, not least some senior Cardinals of the Roman Curia, i.e. the Vatican Whitehall, by first announcing the Second Vatican Council on 25 January 1959.

Many of you will appreciate the significance of that date (with due respects to our National Bard): the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. And it was during the concluding Liturgy in the major basilica of St Paul’s outside the walls of Rome that John XXIII announced Vatican II, saying that two of its main objectives would be the updating or aggiornamento of the Church and the eventual restoration of full Christian Unity ... in God’s own time.

So he was really putting into effect what he had exclaimed prophetically during his first days in the papal apartments: “It’s time we opened the windows here, and let in some fresh air.”

On hearing of the projected Ecumenical Council, it is said that Cardinal Ottaviani, the influential Secretary of the Supreme Congregation of the “Holy Office” as it was then, expressed a strong desire to die before the Council was convened - so that he might be buried in the Roman Catholic Church!

“Good Pope John”, as he came to be called, officially convoked the Council on 25 December - Christmas Day - 1961 (my 31st Birthday). In the relevant Apostolic Constitution “Humanae Salutis” (of Human Salvation) he stated: “This will be a demonstration of the Church, always living and always young, which feels the rhythm of the times and which in every century beautifies herself with new splendour, radiates new light [note that reference of his to light], achieves new conquests, while remaining identical in herself, faithful to the divine image impressed on her countenance by her Spouse, who loves her and protects her, Christ Jesus”.

One of the central documents of the Council, with its 2,500 or so participating Bishops from throughout the world, was the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, entitled “Lumen Gentium”, in the Roman pronunciation or “Gentium” in the Oxford usage, meaning the “Light of Nations”.

Together with the four Constitutions promulgated by the Council there were also nine Decrees and three Declarations. Among the Decrees was the Decree on Ecumenism, appropriately entitled “Unitatis Redintegratio”, “the Restoration of Unity”.

For Roman Catholics, this was the Charter which gave for the first time not only general permission but positive encouragement for full involvement in what was known as the Ecumenical Movement, which traditionally dated from the year 1910, when the International Missionary Conference took place in Edinburgh.

Before Vatican II, various aspects of the Ecumenical Movement like Faith and Order, Life and Work, the Malines Conversations of the late twenties, and the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948 were officially “no go” areas.

The Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican II changed all that. Indeed, Pope John had already set up in 1960 a new Department or Dicastery of the Roman Curia, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, under the German Cardinal Augustine Bea, a renowned Jesuit academic.

It was this Secretariat which was charged with rewriting and drawing together three previous draft texts on Ecumenism, for eventual approval and promulgation by the Fathers of the Council on 21 November 1964.

This was primarily a pastoral document, based on and implementing the doctrinal teaching and ecclesiology of “Lumen Gentium” - on the Church. It was concerned with Ecumenism as a Movement in which Catholics ought to take part, since it was -and is - “fostered by the grace of the Holy Spirit”.

This is a principle that none of us must lose sight of, especially those of us who have been engaged over the years in ecumenical dialogue. For, in practice, meeting after meeting can often sap our energies and even enthusiasm when precious time can be taken up with organisational and very secondary minutiae.

It has been my privilege to have served in the front line of Roman Catholic involvement in Ecumenism at several levels since the Second Vatican Council and I would like to share with you my recollection of this journey which, I hope, would provide an authentic mirror of Ecumenism in Scotland, especially post Vatican II.

During my studies in Philosophy and Theology at the Pontifical Scots College and Gregorian University in Rome from 1949 to 1956, one of the optional courses I took was on Anglican Theology, given by Father Joseph Gill, a Jesuit scholar who seemed to spend much of his summer vacation in Anglican theological colleges in England.

Among my classmates then was one Hans Kung, a Swiss student at the German College, and Cormac Murphy O’Connor of the English College, now Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

Ordained in Rome on 10 July 1955 in the basilica of the Holy Apostles, the parish church of the exiled Stuarts in the Muti Palace nearby, I returned to Scotland and the Diocese of Motherwell in 1956, serving as Curate in Coatbridge and then Wishaw during the exciting and stimulating period of Vatican II and its immediate aftermath.

An early ecumenical initiative in Scotland, taking up the challenge and lead from Rome, was a series of informal talks with prominent Church of Scotland and other ministers, sponsored during the sixties by the late Abbot Mulcahey of Nunraw. In some quarters at that time these talks were looked on with great suspicion as being suspect, secret, and even Romanising.

At that stage I was not yet involved, but I was appointed soon afterwards to take part in further dialogue with Church of Scotland theologians on our common beliefs regarding the Sacrament of Baptism.

In May 1967 the Vatican Secretariat for Unity published the first part of its Ecumenical Directory which outlined inter alia practical guidelines for setting up Diocesan and National Ecumenical Commissions. The Scottish Catholic Hierarchy of the time was one of the first in the world to set up such a Commission, of which I was appointed a member, and later Secretary. The late Bishop Francis Thomson of Motherwell also charged me with establishing a Diocesan Commission there.

A welcome fruit of such a Commission was the increasing involvement of priests in the local Clergy Fraternals and the laity in ecumenical meetings and services, especially during the annual Week of Prayer for Unity from 18 to 25 January, not to mention Via Dolorosa processions during Passiontide, as in Coatbridge.

In Motherwell Diocese I was also responsible for arranging the first Joint Services and County Parades for the Scouts and Guides, also as Diocesan and Clydesdale Area Chaplain for the former, being privileged to receive the Silver Acorn Award in 1977.

I remember on one occasion driving from Wishaw to Hamilton to officiate with a local minister at a Joint Service we had arranged for the Army Cadets which were carrying on the tradition of the Cameronians (The Scottish Rifles), the Lanarkshire Regiment which had “stood down” on Douglas Moor not long before.

Having only a vague idea of how to reach Hamilton Old Parish Church in the one-way system, I turned in to ask directions of a man standing at a bus-stop. As I approached I realised that he was really holding on to the bus-stop for support, having obviously been “in his cups”. “Are you a Catholic priest ?“ he replied, and when I said “Yes” he retorted: “Well, ye’ve nae right tae be goin tae Hamilton Old Parish Church”. Like Pharaoh in this evening’s Reading from Exodus, his ecumenical heart was hardened.

The national ecumenical body in that period was the Scottish Churches Council, chaired by the Earl of Wemyss and March, who invited the Catholic Hierarchy to send at least one Observer to their meetings mainly at Scottish Churches House, Dunblane, but also at St Augustine’s Church in Edinburgh, near the National Library. of Scotland. Myself and Mr John Cairns, a teacher from Dunkeld Diocese, were so appointed.

For me, that was a treasured experience and at no time did I feel marginalised as Observer. Indeed, whereas full members from, say, the Church of Scotland or the Scottish Episcopal Church changed every three years or so, the Catholic Observers seemed, like the brook, “to go on for ever”.

One of the first projects undertaken by our National Ecumenical Commission was a Joint Study Group with the Scottish Episcopal Church which published in November 1969 a Common Statement on “The Nature of Baptism and its Place in the Life of the Church”, a document which received wide acclaim even beyond Scotland. Two of our Episcopal colleagues were Provost McIntosh (of St Mary’s Cathedral here, if I am not mistaken) and Provost Alastair Haggart, later Primus.

In subsequent phases of the Joint Study Group, right up until the late nineties, other subjects we dealt with were: Priesthood and Ministry, the Eucharist, Authority, and Catholicity.

Informal approaches to the Catholic Church were made in early 1973 to consider full membership of the Scottish Churches Council (SCC for short) and the British Council of Churches (BCC) on which I also served as alternate Consultant Observer with Father James Quinn S.J., a veteran ecumenist. But our Hierarchy declined both invitations in May 1973 - for quite different reasons - emphasising that the priority for Catholics in Scotland was appropriate education in ecumenism.

With the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales we could not be associated with some of the decisions or statements emanating from the various Departments of BCC, for doctrinal or moral reasons.

We did not have that problem with SCC but realised that if we became full members the Baptist Union of Scotland would withdraw from the Scottish Churches Council, their declared policy when we became Observers there. A similar objection to our Observer status was gladly overturned at the same meeting of the Union, in Inverness if I am not mistaken.

Notwithstanding this delicate matter, I became good friends with Rev Dr Andrew MacRae, the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Scotland who was their representative on SCC. We eventually co-chaired a small and very low-key Joint Study Group, meeting alternately at Baptist House and a former Convent also in Pollokshields, Glasgow.

When Andrew and I met at a Garden Party in Holyrood during a General Assembly of the Church of Scotland he told me that he had just been accosted by one Pastor Glass and his supporters, deriding him for the “secret talks he was having with the Catholics”. When Andrew asked him how he had come to know about these (purposely low-key) talks, Pastor Glass replied that he had read about them in the Catholic Observer!

From 1969 to 1978 I served as Lecturer in the Department of Religious Education at Notre Dame (later St Andrew’s and now Glasgow University) College of Education, Bearsden and Dowanhill, Glasgow. There I had a wonderful opportunity to provide future Catholic teachers, and indirectly their countless pupils, with the ecumenical education that our Bishops had prioritised in May 1973.

The documents of Vatican II were central to all my courses and the Decree on Ecumenism received special attention both in the Third Year Diploma Specialist course and the new B Ed degree course. When the second part of the Vatican’s Ecumenical Directory regarding Higher Education was published on 16 April 1970 it was most reassuring to find it endorsing the courses I had already introduced. An obvious advantage was being able to give information at first hand regarding ecumenical developments in Scotland and beyond.

Such a development was the setting-up of the Joint Commission on Doctrine with the Church of Scotland in 1978, of which I was Joint Convener. I recall that when our Executive agreed to discuss the topic “The Nature and Mission of the Church”, recognised as the “great ecumenical question”, I observed that we had just tabled our Agenda for the next twenty-five years at least. Our Presbyterian colleagues reported to the General Assembly of 1979 while we reported back to the Bishops’ Conference.

Not long after leaving Notre Dame College and awaiting appointment (finally) as parish priest in the Diocese of Motherwell, I received a “bolt from the blue” in the form of an invitation through the Scottish Hierarchy to accept a Vatican post as an Official in the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the post-Vatican II title of the former Holy Office - and before that “The Inquisition”. Certainly not the Spanish Inquisition, but the Roman Inquisition with which the former was often in dispute.

When I flew to Rome for interview in January 1979 I went via Lambeth Palace, London (talk about killing two birds with one stone?), where, together with Rev Dr Andrew MacRae and Rev Dr Ian Doyle of the Church of Scotland, we presented the Scottish Churches Council paper on the “National Initiative in Evangelism”. At British level it became known as the “Nationwide Initiative in Evangelism”.

To return to Rome, as it were, the privileged and unique experience as the first Scot and Briton in 400 years to serve in the Holy Office would provide a long topic on its own, but I shall focus on the ecumenical aspects of my duties there, firstly under Cardinal Seper, now buried in his former Archdiocese of Zagreb in Croatia, and his successor Cardinal Josef Ratzinger from Bavaria.

The draft documents of any Vatican Congregation or Council, or those which it deals with, must be checked by the Congregation for Doctrine if they contain any elements of a doctrinal nature. Such were the Agreed Statements of ARCIC, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.

When the first and preliminary response of the Congregation to ARCIC was received by the Catholic Co-Chairman, Bishop Alan Clark of East Anglia, he detected that the letter must have been written by a native English-speaker and from some of its termin­ology he suspected “a certain Scotsman in the Holy Office”. Such correspondence was, of course, substantially collegiate in nature, a very collaborative effort.

Regular and sometimes sensitive contact was maintained with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the former Secretariat. There was also a Co-ordinating Committee of the Roman Curia on Ecumenical Relations, on which I represented the Doctrine Congregation.

When Pope John Paul II was due to visit Great Britain in 1982 the late Cardinal Gordon Gray of Edinburgh asked me to be Adviser to the Papal Secretariat of State regarding the visit to Scotland. This involved the Pontiff’s addresses on education at St Andrew’s College and the Mass at Bellahouston Park, as well as his visit to the precincts of the General Assembly and meeting with senior clergy of other churches.

Another area of collaboration was the historic visit of the Pope to Canterbury and his cordial meeting with the Archbishop there, not to mention the reciprocal invitation to Rome, including the Holy Office, of senior clergy and theologians from Britain. These included the Primus, Bishop Alastair Haggart, Bishops Thomson of Motherwell and Murphy O’Connor of Arundel and Brighton, and Mrs Elizabeth Templeton of the Church of Scotland whose stimulating exchange with Cardinal Ratzinger was sadly curtailed through lack of time.

Of special memory also was my responsibility for the dossiers of former Anglican and other married clergy who sought ordination to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. It was my duty to scrutinise these and prepare them, with personal comment, for the weekly Staff meeting on Fridays with Cardinal Ratzinger.

From there they would be sent by the Head of Protocol or Vice-Chancellor (at least) of the Congregation to our Consultors, in large manila envelopes, and after their meeting on Mondays to the Cardinal members in white envelopes, with a copies to the Pope himself. The Cardinal members met on Wednesdays, the famous Feria Quarta in Latin, the Fourth Day, while the Cardinal Prefect had a regular meeting on Friday afternoons with Pope John Paul.

Around 1984 I was appointed Head of Protocol and used to await Cardinal Ratzinger’s return from his Friday Audience with Rescripts to be signed if the Pope had given his assent to the requests. Then they would be sent in the diplomatic pouch to the Apostolic Nuncios in Washington and London for transmission to the respective bishops involved. I dealt with some thirty married-priest applications from the United States and the first three for England and Wales, including the former Vicar of St Mary’s, Oxford.

When I was having the Rescripts signed my colleagues would say that, if ever the obligation of celibacy for Latin-rite priests went in the Roman Catholic Church, they would know who to blame!

I returned to Scotland in 1987 when I was asked to be the first General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, and also Secretary of our Commission for Christian Doctrine and Unity.

In both capacities I was involved with Bishop Conti of Aberdeen in the Inter-Church Process which led to the foundation in the Autumn of 1990 of ACTS (Action of Churches Together in Scotland) which succeeded the former Scottish Churches Council, and CCBI (the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland) in place of the former BCC (British Council of Churches). CCBI was renamed CTBI (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland) about two years ago. It was the General Synod Office in Edinburgh which hosted our conversations leading to ACTS, under the excellent Chairmanship of Rev Colin Barbour, later Moderator of the General Assembly.

No doubt Dr Kevin Franz, the present General Secretary of ACTS will have spoken to you about the current review of ACTS, where, after ten years, we are re-focussing on the foundational principles of “ownership by and accountability to the churches”, and the Agendas and accountability of the three Commissions and five Committees of ACTS.

I think it is generally known that not all churches in Scotland are members of ACTS, for reasons that we fully respect. However, there is a Committee which was set up about the same time as ACTS to monitor legislation affecting the churches, the Scottish Churches Committee, acting in parallel with the Westminster-based Churches Main Committee.

This is ably served by the Legal Department of the Church of Scotland, which also provides the Chairperson for appointment by the Committee, in recognition of the statutory position of the Church “by law established”; and the Kirk is most willing for the other churches to benefit from that also.

Apart from those of us in ACTS, the other members of the Committee represent: the Free Church of Scotland, the Baptists, the Free Presbyterian Church and the Associated Presbyterian Church which broke off from the latter over its excommunication of Lord McKay when Lord Chancellor, for attending the Requiems of Catholic judge professional colleagues. I take it as an (ecumenical) compliment that all of them have re-elected me to the Vice-Chairmanship of the Committee, although others might be of the opinion that no-one wanted the job anyway.

A notable example of how the Roman Catholic Church views the ecumenical climate today is our joy at the participation of the Moderator of the General Assembly, the First Minister of the Scottish Parliament, the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Dr John Reid, himself a Catholic like his successor Helen Liddell, the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, senior Baillies from Dundee and Aberdeen, and Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Holy See, in the celebrations marking the 4th Centenary of the foundation by Pope Clement VIII of the Pontifical Scots College, Rome, on 5 December in the year 1600, not long after the Catholic Church had been outlawed in Scotland by the Scottish Parliament in 1560, a significant point made by Cardinal Winning in his homily during the 4th Centenary Mass in the College Chapel on 5 December last.

When in Rome, I always receive a warm welcome from former colleagues in the Congregation for Doctrine, but this time I also registered my strong reservations like many others in the Church, from Cardinal Martini of Milan down, to one or two insensitive phrases in an othewise rich CDF Christo logical document of last year Dominus Iesus - The Lord Jesus.

This would not be the only issue we have to face together on our pilgrimage towards that fullness of unity for which Christ himself prayed so earnestly. I think most of us are familiar with the others. No doubt the workshops of the first Scottish Ecumenical Assembly next September in Edinburgh University will address these and other matters of common interest under the general theme “Breaking New Ground”.

Finally, on 17 February last the Moderator, the Right Rev Dr Andrew McLellan and Mrs McLellan were received by Pope John Paul II in Private Audience with their small party.

I would like to quote now the Pontiff’s brief address to them as, I would hope, a fitting and updated conclusion to a Roman Catholic view of Ecumenism post Vatican II, in Scotland, of course:

“Dear Friends in Christ,

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome today a delegation from the Church of Scotland. You have come to Rome in that spirit of fraternity and dialogue which for many years now has marked the relationship between us as we seek to walk the path of unity willed by Christ.

“As we explore together the ways in which Christians can advance in mutual understanding, I thank you for the interest which you have taken in my Encyclical Letter Ut unum sint. That Letter includes a solemn reaffirmation of the Catholic Church’s commitment to the ecumenical movement. Moved by a true desire for reconciliation, we must all continue on the journey towrds visible unity. We still have far to go, but with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit we shall continue to make progress. The Lord himself will bless our efforts and those of Christians everywhere as we strive to respond to his prayer at the Last Supper that "they may all be one" (Jn 17:21).

“With gratitude for your visit, I cordially invoke upon you and the members of the Church of Scotland the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”