Towards Ecumenical Understanding

Extract

Christian unity is the concern of all these three books, and they are all of some importance; the first two for an understanding of the place of the Catholic Church in the ecumenical scene, and the third for the explanatory light it throws, from the Anglican side, upon the complex and debatable question of the Church of South India.

Mr J. M. Todd sets out to explain the relationship of Catholicism to the Ecumenical Movement. His book, the first of its kind in English and one which supplies a great need, includes a synopsis of the history and scope of this almost universal emergence, in the non-Catholic world during the past fifty years, of thought and action for Christian unity. It is written with a wide knowledge of the whole subject and with a deep conviction of the urgent importance of the ecumenical spirit as an essential element in the apostolate of the Catholic Church in the modern world. The essence of ecumenism is understanding; to seek out what is true in the beliefs, practices and values of those who differ from us and to make that the starting point of work for unity. We do not attempt, nowadays at least, whatever we may have done in the past, to convert the Chinese or the Hindu without the closest and most sympathetic study of what they already believe, and of the ethics and culture from which their beliefs issue and in which they are held and practised. We proclaim the Christian gospel as the true fulfilment of the aspirations which arise from these beliefs, and we take care to present it, as far as possible, in the atmosphere, idiom of thought and the clothing characteristic of the existing culture of those to whom we preach.