The fine print

The "home to Rome" approach to unity has something wrong with it, and it is that commonality of confession and worship did not produce true unity when we had them.



In working toward Christian unity, we should frequently examine what the goal is. Here is what Christ prayed for us (John ch. 17):

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Some see in this the need for unity in the official understanding of all main points of doctrine, in the celebration of sacraments and in the form of worship, but I think that view of unity can at least be questioned. There was a time, before the Great Schism of 1054, when nearly all of Christendom was united in those ways.

For some people today, unity of the church world requires a return to something like the situation that existed a thousand years ago: Almost everyone confessed the same faith and practiced, with regional variations, approximately the same rites and ceremonies. But looking back to the old days misses an important part of the whole picture. For in the long era when the church had this outward unity, the outward and visible signs of unity did not correspond to the inward and spiritual grace of unity. Problems arose all along that at last culminated in the East-West Orthodox schism and later the North-South Protestant schism. So returning to the past is not a complete solution to Christ's challenge to us. The spiritual unity has to be there or we are wasting our time with the outward trappings.

A question arises quite naturally out of all this. If we were to posses the unity between one Christian and another that Christ calls for, like that between Christ and the father, unity in the Holy Spirit, would the world take note of that when they saw it? I think the world would indeed, because it would be so unlike what they are used to in relating to one another. That, more than any show of outward institutional unity, is what we need to strive toward.

The world is little prepared to understand either our differences or our similarities in theoretical religious matters, because it is unable really to appreciate or even comprehend the grounds of our arguments. Spiritual matters are spiritually discerned. But it would impress the world, indeed flabbergast it, to see all of us supernaturally on the same page in loving one another. Note that loving others is not always the same thing as agreeing on everything; see any normal family.

In other words, the "home to Rome" approach to unity has something wrong with it, and it is that commonality of confession and worship did not produce true unity when we had them. Something deeper has to happen. If that 'something deeper' happens, I rather think organizational and ceremonial and symbolic differences will take care of themselves. We will see them as secondary, thus things on which it is easy to compromise. When we really are all one, we will be happy to be forbearing with one another. If some need the full panoply of high mass to feel they have worshiped properly, and others feel content with simple chapel worship, perhaps we could do both.