7 - From the church to Mary: towards a critical ecumenism

Summary

Prelude

The ecumenical gathering in the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity hears the epistle: ‘For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another’; then comes the Gospel, Jesus praying to the Father, ‘that they may all be one’.

The Eastern Orthodox bishop, sitting next to the Western Protestant pastor at a Faith and Light international gathering, comments, ‘We've been apart for 1,000 years; it'll take another 1,000 years to get us back together.’

The representative from the united Church of North India shares two disappointments: the lengthy and on-going legal battles, particularly over property, and the loss experienced in no longer belonging to global denominational networks. The Orthodox protest against the ordained woman doing critical Bible studies in the context of daily prayers.

The organist berates the preacher for omitting to announce the anthem, while the music group complains about the old-fashioned music. The simple faithful, the doubter and the devout, the anxious and the anguished, the bigoted and the bored, the self-righteous and the sinner, the radical and the conservative, the traditionalist and the campaigner, the fundamentalist and the theological enquirer – how could they ever agree?