A publication about the activities of the Centro Pro Unione “UT OMNES UNUM SINT” Digital Edition C ENTRO P RO U NIONE Semi-Annual Bulletin Web https://bulletin.prounione.it E-mail bulletin@prounione.it In this issue Gili Diamant 11 Thomas F. Best The Week of Prayer. Faithful Witness – and Challenge – to the Ecumenical Movement `Centro Conferences 3 James F. Puglisi, SA `Letter from the Director 2 Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, Salvadoran Hero of the Holocaust and Righteous Among the Nations ` Centro Conferences 2532-4144 Digital Edition ISSN N. 91 - Spring 2017 E-book A Ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement Centro Pro Unione 16 `A Bibliography of Interchurch and Interconfessional Theological Dialogues Thirty-second Supplement (2017)2 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin DIRECTOR'S DESK Centro Pro Unione Bulletin A semi-annual publication about the activities of the Centro Pro Unione The Centro Pro Unione in Rome, founded and directed by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, - www.atonementfriars.org - is an ecumenical research and action center. Its purpose is to give space for dialogue, to be a place for study, research and formation in ecumenism: theological, pastoral, social and spiritual. The Bulletin has been pubblished since 1968 and is released in Spring and Fall. IN THIS ISSUE Letter from the Director EDITORIAL STAFF bulletin@prounione.it Contact Information Via Santa Maria dell'Anima, 30 I-00186 Rome (+39) 06 687 9552 pro@prounione.it Website, Social media www.prounione.it @EcumenUnity CENTRO PRO UNIONE A Ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement N. 91 - Spring 2017 Fr. James Puglisi, SA – Director Centro Pro Unione James F. Puglisi, SA Director Centro Pro Unione Spring 2017, n. 91 / Digital Edition (Web) ›Thomas F. Best ›Gili Diamant ›Bibliography of Interchurch and Interconfessional Theological Dialogues (Thirty-second Supplement / 2017) his year the Centro Pro Unione begins celebrating its 50 th anniversary. It is a year in which many events are being commemorated. Just to cite one, the 500th commemoration of the Reformation 1517-2017. This is why for us at the Centro we are proud to celebrate an ecumenical spirit of bringing together Christians who have been separated from one another for such a long time. In many ways we gladly seek opportunities to deepen the dialogue begun at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council through our programs of ecumenical formation, information and providing a space to research our common heritage as Christians. The Spring issue of the Bulletin will only offer a sampling of what we have been doing to celebrate our foundation. As is our custom, this issue also contains the bibliography of Interchurch and Interconfessional Theological Dialogues now in its thirty-second edition. The bibliography collects the important elements produced on the dialogues for the year 2016. In fact our librarian up-dates the listing and items daily in real time which can be found by consulting the library on-line at www.prounione.it/en/library/ online-research/ The 50th anniversary celebration began with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity celebration hosted jointly by the Centro Pro Unione and the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas, The former director of Faith and Order and actual president of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, Dr. Thomas Best, spoke about the importance of the Week of Prayer for the ecumenical movement today. In his lecture he traced some very important moments of the development of the Week of Prayer from its inception by Fr. Paul Wattson, sa, Founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, through its transformation by Abbé Paul Courturier and ending with the present day joint collaboration between the WCC and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. The Minister General of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, V. Rev. Brian F. Terry, sa, preached during the ecumenical prayer vigil. Another occasion to celebrate the Centro’s diverse activities presented itself when we were approached by the Ambassadors to the Holy See of Israel and El Salvador to participate in “Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, Salvadoran hero of the Holocaust and Righteous Among the Nations”. An event that honored El Salvador’s consul general in Geneva from 1942 to 1945. This heroic person together with his deputy and friend George Mandel- Mantello saved thousands of Hungarian, Polish, French, German and Czech Jewish families not by issuing false passports which were being scrutinized but by issuing official certificates of Salvadorian citizenship. On the occasion of Colonel Castellanos’ recognition as Righteous Among the Nations this celebration took place at the Centro Pro Unione. We gladly present the text of Dr. Gili Diamant from Yad Vashem who explains the process of recognition and speaks about the qualities of this courageous Colonel. Other important lectures were given during the jubilee year which include “Receiving Reform and the Humbling of the Church. Potential Catholic Learning from the Reformation Traditions” given by Dr. Paul Murray from Durham University, UK, Director of the Centre for Catholic Studies. He speaks about applying “receptive ecumenism” to the Lutheran/Catholic dialogue on justification. In addition our colleague and friend Rabbi Jack Bemporad presented a fascinating lecture on “Monotheism and All that It Implies”. Both of these lectures will be printed in the Fall issue of the Bulletin. Speaking of on going events for our celebration we look forward to hosting and sharing in the 50 th anniversary of the Methodist/Catholic international dialogues in October when members of the World Methodist Conference will be present in Rome for a planning meeting. Closing the year in December with the nineteenth annual conference honoring our founders, Fr. Paul Wattson and Mother Lurana White will be the lecture given by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleis. He will speak on “Catholic-Orthodox Relations following the Holy and Great Council in Crete (2016)”. Save the date 14 December, 2017. Lastly we gladly announce our Annual Summer course in ecumenism and interreligious dialogue from 25 June to 13 July 2018. You can book the course on line. Remember to continue to look at our new website (www.prounione.it) for news and activities of the Centro Pro Unione. This Bulletin is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 250 S. Wacker Drive, 16th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606 (www.atla.com). T3 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 The Week of Prayer Faithful Witness – and Challenge – to the Ecumenical Movement Thomas F. Best - President, North American Academy of Ecumenists Former Director of Faith and Order, Geneva Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of Ecumenists Introduction and Thanks I would like to begin with heartfelt congratulations to the Centro Pro Unione on its 50th anniversary, and thanks to Fr. Puglisi for his invitation to speak on this occasion. I may say that my links to the Society of the Atonement, and to the Centro, run deep. After going to Faith and Order in Geneva in 1984, my first official visit was to Rome, where I was welcomed by the (then) Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and especially by the irascible Fr. Charles Angell, then Director of the Centro. I have been privileged to preach here during the Week of Prayer, and to speak on several other occasions. With the Week of Prayer, my links are at least as close: in almost 25 years working in Faith and Order, the Week of Prayer international preparatory meeting was the one meeting which I never once missed; it was a meeting which - in a unique way - nourished and sustained my work through the rest of the year, not least by contact with Roman Catholic ecumenists in addition to Fr. Angel, such as the legendary Pere Michalon of Lyon, the formidable Msgr. Eleuterio Fortino, and, more recently, Archbishop Don Bolen of Canada, not to mention Fr. Puglisi himself. These few names must stand for many, many others, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, over the years. And nothing could be more appropriate than speaking of the Week of Prayer during this anniversary of the Centro Pro Unione, since the inspiration for the week came from Fr. Paul Wattson, founder of the Society of the Atonement. Some of you will remember how in January 2008, in this very room, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Week of Prayer, you bestowed the Society’s Christian Unity Award upon the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, in recognition of our common work on this program - and our common commitment to prayer for unity. “We Live from These Texts” But I want to begin with a true story, not about the Week of Prayer specifically but very relevant to what I will say later on. It is a story about ecumenical texts and the work which they can do. Not so long ago I met bishop Munib Younan, President of the Lutheran World Federation, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and a Palestinian by birth. A distinguished churchman, he is renowned for his work for social justice and diakonia, for promoting development and education, and for his efforts to encourage Christians to remain in the Middle East. If you are familiar with the false “dichotomy” between Faith and Order and Life and Work you would put him on the side of Life and Work, a responsible Christian activist through and through. When we met, Bishop Younan said to me: “You are in Faith and Order. Do you have the latest texts on ecclesiology, and on baptism? Can you give me copies of them?” As it happens, I did have copies and gave them to him. And he said to me: “We live from these texts, and for two reasons: first, they give us the theological basis for what we do, they tell us that we are not the Red Cross or Oxfam, that our work for justice and development is an expression of our Christian faith, a witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; and second, they remind us that we are not alone, that there is a world-wide ecumenical fellowship of Christians and churches supporting and sustaining us. Keep making these texts, and keep sending them to us”. In almost twenty-five years of Faith and Order work, this is one of the most affirming things I ever heard: “We live from these texts, keep making them and sending them to us, for they tell us who, and Whose, we are”. Now texts for worship have, to my mind, a special status among ecumenical texts. In worship the Christian community enacts its deepest beliefs, and because worship is also performance - we say the creed together, we stand and sit, we sing, we pray - worship touches and moves us in a way which reading and debating theological texts cannot. Therefore I think worship in ecumenical contexts is the fundamental ecumenical act. We experience there the unity we (Conference given at the Centro Pro Unione, Thursday, 19 January 2017) `Thomas F. Best, Conference speaker4 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 share through our common baptism. Among Protestants we rejoice in taking communion together at the Lord’s Table. But in the wider context, within Christ’s church as a whole, it is at worship that we experience most sharply the divisions within the Body of Christ. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all share the pain of not being able to share the Eucharist together. As a pastor of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I feel this keenly, since the weekly celebration of the Eucharist is at the heart of my church’s identity - it is what makes us who we are. But this devotion to the Eucharist is the basis for my church’s international bilateral dialogue with the Catholic church, and the progress we have made gives me great hope. The Week of Prayer: Anglican and Catholic Origins Keeping these thoughts in mind, let us now look at the ecumenical worship text par excellence: the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Its story in the broadest terms, is a remarkable testimony to the growing relationship between Catholics and Protestants, and to a lesser extent the Orthodox. Begun by an Anglican in 1908, who brought it with him into the Roman Catholic church, it flourished also in Protestant churches and then continued in two parallel streams which flowed together unofficially in the late 1950s, and officially since 1968, also including Orthodox involvement. Since 2004 it has been not only prepared jointly, but also produced and published jointly in the same format. In one form or another, it is Faith and Order’s, and the World Council of Churches’, longest-standing program, and of course an equally long-standing and fundamental expression of the Roman Catholic church’s commitment to ecumenism. As for the local context: it remains for many Christians their main, if not their only, ecumenical experience each year. Allow me to suggest another perspective on the significance of the Week of Prayer. We are accustomed to thinking of ecumenical texts as individual documents, for example Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. Such texts represent reflective ecumenism, reflecting decades of technical theological and ecclesiological work. But there is also spiritual ecumenism, which undergirds and inspires our theological work. So let us look at the Week of Prayer texts, especially those produced ecumenically, beginning already in the late 1950s, as a whole, as a single body of ecumenical work, as in fact the prime example of spiritual ecumenism. As such, the Week of Prayer, taken as a whole over its long history, has been at least as important for the ecumenical movement as the famous particular theological texts such as Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. I need not repeat the history of the Week of Prayer in detail, nor describe its spiritual, liturgical and theological basis; that story has been admirably told in materials and articles from the Society of the Atonement and Faith and Order 1 and in histories and dictionaries 2 , not to mention the recent lectures by Cardinal Kasper in 2008, Msgr. Brian Farrell in 2007, and 1 Week of Prayer Booklets for the current and previous years are available at: (Vatican Website) 2 https://goo.gl/pCrkG9 and (World Council of Churches Website) 2 https://goo.gl/bgxWPg. See also “Graymoor Today: Week of Prayer 2008 Special [100th Anniversary] Edition”, Franciscan Friars & Sisters of the Atonement- Graymoor, Garrison, NY, USA. 2 T. F. BEST, “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity”, in N. LOSSKY, et. al, Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, 2 nd Edition (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2002) 1203; H.-M. STECKEL, “Gebetswoche für die Einheit der Christen”, in H. KRÜGER, W. LÖSER und W. MÜLLER-RÖMHELD (eds), Ökumene Lexikon: Kirchen, Religionen, Bewegungen (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Otto Lembeck/ Verlag Josef Knecht, 1987 2 ) 428-429; R. ROUSE and S. Ch. NEILL (eds), A History of the Ecumenical Movement: 1517-1948, Vol. I, 3 rd edition (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1986) 348-349, 689, 693; and H.E. FEY (ed), A History of the Ecumenical Movement: 1948- 1968, Vol. II, The Ecumenical Advance, 3 rd edition with updated bibliography (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993 ) 169, 302, 321-322, 347, 350. Note especially C.V. LaFONTAINE, S.A., “Prayer for Unity: An American Beginning”, in C.V. LaFONTAINE, S.A., Essays in S.A. History (Graymoor/Garrison, New York, U.S.A.: Franciscan Friars of the Atonement Heritage Commission, 1984). `Fr. Brian Terry — Minister General of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, preacher at the Ecumenical celebration of the Word for the Week of Prayer for Christian Uniy 2017, and Revd. David Moxton — Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of Ecumenists5 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 Msgr. Eleuterio Fortino in 2006 3 . Rather I would like to offer personal comments on crucial moments in the long and eventful history of the Week of Prayer, and personal remarks from my experience as a member of the international preparatory group for almost 25 years. I hope to show how, at many moments in its history, the Week of Prayer has reflected the challenges faced by the ecumenical movement as a whole, and sometimes shown the whole ecumenical movement a way forward. In short: to “take the pulse” of the ecumenical movement at any given time, one may look at the Week of Prayer and its observance around the world. But let us begin at the beginning: It is well known that Fr. Paul Wattson, a member of the Episcopalian Church in the United States and founder of the Society of the Atonement within the Episcopalian Church, was a “High Anglican”, and understood Christian unity as the process of churches which had separated from Rome now returning to full communion under the authority of the Holy See: in short, Christian unity as a “Return to Rome”. His colleague Mother Lurana White, founder of the women’s order within the Society of the Atonement, held similar views. Both were seen as controversial and contentious within their own church. In 1907 the Episcopalian Church passed the notorious “Open Pulpit Canon”; it allowed, under strict ecclesial supervision, non-Episcopal ministers to preach in Episcopalian Churches. Quelle horreur! Today we would see this as a notable ecumenical move; but those were different times indeed, and it seemed to Fr. Wattson to threaten the excusiveness of the ministerial orders of the true Church. I think it no accident that in 1908 came the first observance of Fr. Wattson’s Church Unity Octave, with its orientation towards reestablishing communion with Rome, and in 1909 the acceptance of the Society of the Atonement. as a distinct and continuing monastic order, into the Roman Catholic Church. 4 Fr. Wattson brought his Church Unity Octave with him into the Roman Catholic Church and, with its approval by Pope Pius X and subsequent Popes, it has flourished there. The other side of this story is the survival of a prayer for unity program within the Episcopal Church, quickly spreading to other Protestants (including incidentally my own church, the Disciples of Christ). In human terms one might have expected the Episcopal Church, in reaction to Fr. Wattson’s departure to Rome, to have “conveniently forgotten” his idea of a prayer octave for unity, saying: “if this is the kind of unity we are praying for, we are not ready for it!” But other forces, animated by the Holy 3 W. KASPER, “The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: Origin and Continuing inspiration of the Ecumenical Movement”, Centro Pro Unione, semi-annual Bulletin, N. 73 - Spring 2008, 15-20; W. KASPER, “Charting the Road of the Ecumenical Movement: Reflection on 100 Years of Prayer for Christian Unity”, L’Osservatore Romano, English ed. 41, 5/2029 (2008), 8; B. FARRELL, “To Love the Church is to Yearn for Unity: Reflection by H.E. Msgr. Brian Farrell”, L’Osservatore Romano, English ed. 40, 5/1979 (2007) 8-10; and E. F. FORTINO, “La preghiera per l’unità da P. Paul Wattson al Concilio Vaticano II e alla collaborazione con il Consiglio Ecumenico delle Chiese”, Centro Pro Unione, semi-annual Bulletin, N. 70 - Fall 2006, 3-10. 4 Notably this was the first such acceptance since the Reformation. Spirit, were at work. This was a period of ecumenical ferment among Protestants, characterized not only by the Edinburgh Missions Conference of 1910 but also by lay movements such as the Sunday School Movement, which promoted ecumenical curriculum materials to be used across many denominations in the United States; and ecumenical youth movements such as those leading to the YWCA and YMCA. In particular these years saw the gestation of the Faith and Order movement, recorded in minutes of the Episcopalian Church from as early as 1910-1913. That church established a Commission work to toward a World Conference on Faith and Order, and in 1915 this Commission produced A Manual of Prayer for Christian Unity. Thus from its beginning, Faith and Order understood prayer as the heart of the search for Christian unity. Strikingly, as work toward a World Conference on Faith and Order broadened to include a wide range of churches, Faith and Order adopted the structure of prayer for unity inherited from the Episcopal Church, which had received it from Fr. Wattson. Then in 1926 “the Faith and Order movement begins publishing “Suggestions for an Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity”, to be `Resident students of The Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas, attending the Conference and members of the choir at the Ecumenical Celebration Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of Ecumenists6 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 held during the eight days ending with Pentecost. 5 Note that Fr. Wattson’s structure for prayer for unity was adopted but not, of course, his understanding of the form which unity would take. Among Protestants at this time there were various, indeed divergent, understandings of the eventual form of Christian unity; they agreed only that unity would not be a simple “Return to Rome”. Thus through the 1920s two separate streams of prayer for unity were flowing, a Roman Catholic and a Protestant, each with different and indeed contradictory understandings of the unity for which they were praying. And yet they continued to pray separately, in faithfulness to Christ’s call to unity, until the time should come when we could pray for unity together, with one voice. That faithfulness in the face of our divisions was the work of the Holy Spirit, and my point today is that the survival, and then flourishing, of the Week of Prayer, for more than 100 years now, is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit. The Week of Prayer: Moves Toward Unity And through the Spirit, steps were taken to bring our diverse streams of prayer for unity together. On the Roman Catholic side the 1930s saw Abbé Couturier’s statement broadening the understanding of prayer for unity: that unity should come “in the way, and by the means”, which Christ wills - the most famous statement in the history of the Week of Prayer. At one stroke it enabled churches to pray together for unity, without having to commit themselves to another church’s understanding of what unity will look like. It was a most visionary move, in an era when we did not have the ecumenical tools and experience even to talk to each other about our differing understandings of unity. Yet it took time for Abbé Couturier’s to bear full fruit, as we shall see in a moment. On the Protestant side, I’m happy to say there was a response: In 1941 the Commission on Faith and Order moved the dates of its prayer celebration from around Pentecost to January in order, as we in Faith and Order said explicitly, “to coincide with the Catholic initiative so that both streams would invite Christians to pray [for unity] at the same time”. Preparation and celebration of the Week of Prayer continued faithfully within the two separate streams, Protestant and Roman Catholic, through the 1940s and into the 1950s. 5Resources for The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and throughout the year, jointly prepared and published by The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and The Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches, Geneva and Rome: 2016, p. 36. The principal actors were Unité Chrétienne in Lyon, bearing the mantle of Abbé Couturier, and Faith and Order, since 1948 within the World Council of Churches. While I cannot speak for Unité Chrétienne and the Catholic side, I know from Faith and Order Archives that among Protestants, and for some Orthodox, the 1950s was a period of intense activity, with affirmation of the Week of Prayer but also serious concerns, as shown in extensive correspondence between the Faith and Order Secretariat in Geneva and organizers of local Week of Prayer celebrations around the world. 6 Let me share from the Protestant side a few of these local concerns. One was the fact that there were multiple prayer initiatives and celebrations among the churches, promoting a variety of causes. For example there was the Women’s World Day of Prayer, later the World Day of Prayer; there was World Communion Sunday; there were annual prayer celebrations among Evangelicals. This illustrates a broader ecumenical question: local organizers were concerned about this multiplication of initiatives, leading to a dissipation of resources. There were calls, in the name of ecclesial efficiency (not efficacy!), for the Week of Prayer to combine with one or more of these other initiatives. We resisted all these calls for the simple reason that the Week of Prayer focuses in a unique way upon Christ’s call to the Unity of the Church, and we were convinced that it plays an irreplaceable role within the ecumenical movement as a whole. A second concern from the 1950s, again speaking from the Protestant side, was that participation seemed to be flagging, that the annual celebration was becoming routine, that people were saying, “We have been praying for unity for 40 years now, but Protestants and Catholics are still divided”. (Does this sound familiar?). I think in the context of the 1950s, this reflected a growing sense among Protestants - and I am sure this existed among Catholics too - that it was simply no longer adequate for us to pray for unity separately, in our two divided Protestant and Catholic streams. Surely common prayer for unity was called for. Thus that very frustration was a sign of the Spirit at work! Third, the most poignant correspondence from local Protestant organizers of the Week of Prayer reported local Christians asking: how can we pray for unity, when we do not know what form it will take, and what it means for our 6 The following draws on material from Faith and Order Commission and Week of Prayer Archives, held at the World Council of Churches Library of the Ecumenical Center, Geneva, Switzerland. I wish to express my thanks to WCC Archivists Hans von Rütte and Anne-Emmanuelle Tankam for their help in accessing these resources. `The chorus animating the celebration at the Centro Pro Unione Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of Ecumenists7 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 relationship with the Roman Catholic Church? The Protestant fear of a simple “return to Rome” was still very much alive in the 1950s. There are also some records in the Faith and Order Archives from Roman Catholic parishes, and these reflect, quite naturally, this understanding of unity as” Return to Rome”. Abbé Couturier’s vision had the power to move us beyond old mentalities and language. But in the 1950s it had not yet been “received” by either Protestants or Catholics, and could not have been received, again because we lacked the ecumenical structures and relationships to enable us to find together new understandings of the unity we seek. Thus in the Week of Prayer we experienced already in the 1950s the problem of Reception, still a central issue for the ecumenical movement today. Yet again the Week of Prayer held fast as a witness to our commitment to Christ’s call to the unity of church, even when the form and shape of that unity was still unclear. It would be interesting to know what issues about prayer for unity were voiced in Roman Catholic parishes at this time. I suspect that some of the same concerns were being raised. In any case, none of this stopped the Week of Prayer from moving forward, and in a dramatic way. In 1958 - years before the Second Vatican Council - Unité Chrétienne and Faith and Order began “co-operative preparation” of the materials. There are poignant letters in the Archives referring to this step as a “victory” for both sides, but a victory which could not be made public, as the process was not yet officially recognized and had to be pursued with extreme discretion. Celebrations of the Week of Prayer were, of course, still held separately. But “secrets will out”, and “old-timers” tell stories of Catholics happening to see a Protestant Week of Prayer booklet and complaining to their priest that “the Protestants have stolen our material” - which had in fact been prepared jointly! Doubtless there were Protestants who complained in the same way about the Catholic materials. Let call this stage of discrete collaboration a period of “unofficial ecumenical anticipation”. The Week of Prayer: The Challenge of Unity - Within Diversity In a sense the Week of Prayer led directly to the Second Vatican Council, for it was on the last day of the Week of Prayer celebration at the end of the 1950s, that Pope John XXIII called for the Council to be held. This brings us to the 1960s and the next stage of our story. For it was finally through Vatican II, with its radical declaration of ecumenical engagement by the Roman Catholic Church, that Abbé Couturier’s vision of prayer for unity “in the way and by the means which Christ wills” could be received among both Catholics and Protestants. And this led in 1966 to the first official joint preparation by the Roman Catholic Church’s [then] Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission, and its first official use in 1968. The two streams of prayer for unity had finally begun to flow as one. Joint celebrations of the Week of Prayer, using materials produced in common, became the norm, though Catholics and Protestants still made their own final production and publication of the text. The Second Vatican Council, and the World Council of Churches Assembly at Uppsala in 1968, both led to a greater interest in local, contextual expressions of the Christian faith. In response, 1975 saw the momentous decision to base the Week of Prayer preparatory text each year upon a draft prepared by a local ecumenical group, typically organized by a national council of churches or other recognized ecumenical body. The aim was to ensure that Christians at the local level had a greater role in creating the Week of Prayer material, thus enabling it to reflect, and speak to, the hunger for unity felt locally around the world. Almost without exception the local group has testified that the process of preparing the draft text has itself energized their local ecumenical context. Over the years draft texts have been prepared locally from all over the world: from South Africa to Malaysia, from Brazil, from Canada to the United States, from the Caribbean, and, most poignantly today, from Aleppo in Syria. Again, these few examples must stand for many more. On this basis we move into the 1980s and, since I can now speak from personal experience, allow me to take you into our workshop: the annual international preparatory meeting. Duties were shared, with the Catholic side organizing the meeting one year, and Faith and Order the other the next. The preparatory group reflected the bodies which had been formative in the development and on-going life of the Week of Prayer: on the Catholic side the Society of the Atonement; Unité Chrétienne of Lyon; the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; and the Catholic Church in France. On the Protestant side: Faith and Order and other staff from the World Council of Churches; the Council of Churches in Great Britain and Ireland, and the Ökumenische Zentrale in Germany. These were all based in Europe, but staff and others from Rome and Geneva usually included persons from other parts of the world. It fell to Faith and Order to provide an Orthodox voice at the table, and - truth be told, for many years at least - to bring women to the table. Always present was a representative invited from the local ecumenical group which had prepared the original draft text, and that provided further diversity. For historical - and not least financial - reasons, we usually met in Europe, with notable exceptions such as the preparatory meeting for the 100th anniversary text, held at `From the left: Fr. Tony Currer — Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Fr. James Puglisi, SA — Director Centro Pro Unione, Dr. Thomas Best — North American Academy of Ecumenists, Fr. Brian Terry, SA — Minister General Franciscan Friars of the Atonement Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of Ecumenists8 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 Graymoor in the United States. In recent years the meetings have been held more widely afield, for example for the 2015, when the international preparatory group met in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We worked in two languages, English and French, with translation provided, thus empowering the full participation of as many of the group as possible. Following a presentation of the local draft text by their representative, we revised the local text for international distribution: included were materials for an ecumenical service of the Word, biblical reflections on the theme, suggestions for local use of the materials, an appeal for prayer for unity throughout the year, a description of our process, and historical information about the Week of Prayer. However much its original text was adjusted, the local preparatory group always the chance to write, on its own authority, an account of the ecumenical situation in their country, and a description of their process in preparing the text. It goes without saying that our work was sustained by regular worship. This pattern for our work, and for the international text itself, has remained basically the same until today, with an important exception I will mention later on. Now let us explore some of the issues involved in preparing the international text, to gain a sense of the Week of Prayer text as a dynamic, living ecumenical text. First was an issue of relevance - not in the sense of conforming to the world, but in showing how the Gospel responds to the immediate challenges of a particular place and time. Bear in mind we were working 15 months ahead, preparing in September of each year a text that would be used not in the following January, but in January of the year after that (that is, in September 2000 we were preparing the text which would be used in January 2002). Prayer is nothing if not relevant, but how do you make your text relevant, when working 15 months in advance? Sometimes the theme itself enabled this, for example the group working in 2015 was preparing materials for 2017, marking the ecumenical observance of the Protestant Reformation. Being the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the local and international groups did not focus on the division of the churches, but rather on the theme of reconciliation among the divided branches of Christendom. In other years, the local draft text reflected issues specific to one particular situation, often marked by cultural, political, and religious problems. Then we confronted the fundamental ecclesiological question of the local and the universal: We were committed to working from a local draft, but had to produce a text which could be sent to Roman Catholic Bishops’ conferences, to WCC member churches, to councils of churches, and to ecumenical groups all around the world. Often there was a tension between the local draft text on the one hand, coming from a concrete situation aching to tell its story in all its intensity and complexity (and embodied at our meeting by a living representative) and, on the other hand, the need to produce an international text which could speak to a global audience. Beyond these, deep questions of liturgy arose: in the Service of the Word, how do you maintain the freshness of local language, while preparing worship texts which may be used universally? (This is, of course, a problem faced by not only the Week of Prayer, but by individual churches themselves…) And then there is the question of liturgical standards: What do you do, for example, when confronted with local language which tells God how bad the world is, and tells God exactly how to correct it, language which denounces the world, rather than announces God’s work in the world? Then there is the Bible. Each year’s material includes an exposition of the biblical text on which the material is based; in addition are the “Eight Days”, offering commentary and meditations on aspects of the biblical text, for use by churches and religious communities which celebrate the Week of Prayer on each day of the Octave. Typically the international preparatory group spent as much time on these biblical commentaries as on the worship service - although the latter is far more widely used around the world. This signified our commitment to the biblical basis of our faith, but the process was not always easy, and I remember intense encounters with Pere Michalon of Lyon on the most minute details of biblical exegesis. Apart from this was the fact that different styles of biblical interpretation are practiced around the world, and some local preparatory groups challenged our dependence upon Western, academic biblical criticism. In any case I know of no other ecumenical process in which biblical study, and worship, have been so intimately linked. In all these questions, whether liturgical or biblical, the international group was grappling with the fundamental liturgical and theological problems of inculturation and contextualization: how do we remain true to the Gospel, while expressing it in the forms and shapes of each unique local context? In the end we had to make choices, but when we found it necessary to reshape the local material so that it would be more widely usable, we still tried to keep something of the cutting edge, or grittiness, of the original, local context. We might have differed on how to do this, but our common commitment was to the unity of Christ’s church, and we all sought to produce a text which would serve the universal, while honoring the local context. It was our common commitment to unity that made our work possible. Once the international text was finished, it was sent to bishops conferences, churches, councils of churches, and ecumenical bodies around the world, with strong encouragement for local adaptation whenever helpful. Above all was a plea for translation into the local language, so that the Week of Prayer might be celebrated as widely as possible in the local context. Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of Ecumenists9 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES N. 91 - Spring 2017 The degree of adaptation varied greatly: from just being photocopied and used as was; to being adjusted in view of local sensitivities, to prayers being added to reflect local concerns, to artwork being used to make the materials more accessible locally. In this sense the Week of Prayer is seed scattered upon the earth, seed which grows in local soil, according to local conditions and needs. Thus both the local group bringing the initial draft from Sao Paulo, or Toronto, or Kuala Lumpur, and then the international preparatory group revising that text, had to learn the lesson of letting go, of trusting the process which would lead eventually to Christians in La Paz, and Freibourg im Breisgau, and Ougadogou, and Boston, and Toronto, and Geneva, and Rome, and Havana, and Melbourne, and Auckland all praying together for the unity of Christ’s church. Over the years it was especially pleasing to see the Week of Prayer materials used more broadly, for example in 1988 at the opening of the Christian Federation of Malaysia. This reflected a significant expansion of conciliar ecumenism in that country, bringing together the national council of churches of Malaysia, the Roman Catholic church, and evangelical and Pentecostal groups. Here the Week of Prayer was helpful precisely because, while calling for unity, it does not promote a particular understanding of the nature of the unity we seek. The international preparatory group also broadened its scope, for example in 1996, when it included representatives of the YWCA and YMCA. Their presence reminded us of the heady diversity of the earliest days of the modern ecumenical movement, in the first decades of the 20th century. Moving to this century, 2004 saw a significant development in our collaborative work on the text. You will recall that up to this time, the texts had been written jointly, but published separately and in different formats. This year marked the agreement that the texts should be “jointly produced and published in the same format by Faith and Order (WCC) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (Catholic Church)”. It was a practical step with symbolic power. It signified an even closer cooperation between the parties preparing the materials each year. And it said something about the nature of the text. If memory serves, it was an initiative of our Administrative Assistant Carolyn McComish, a staunch Presbyterian, who thought that united presentation and publication of the materials would better signify the Week of Prayer’s call to unity among all Christians. One of the great milestones was, of course, the Week of Prayer celebration in 2008, marking its 100th anniversary. The preparatory meeting, held in 2006 at Graymoor, seat of the Society of the Atonement, was truly a return to our roots in this unique movement of prayer for the unity of the church. This meeting in particular we experienced as a sign of the Sprit at work in our midst. Since 2007 I have to leave the story to Fr. Puglisi, who is a member of the international preparatory group. I do want to mention one loss: the decision, for practical and financial reasons, for the international preparatory group to work only in English. The discipline of having both English and French brought special insights to our work. The ecumenical movement generally is the poorer for moving inexorably towards English as its lingua franca, and I regret that the Week of Prayer had to become part of that process. But that is my only regret; and on the other hand, it is most inspiring to see the international text being translated into many languages and being used increasingly, not to mention the diversity of contexts which produce the local draft: the local draft text for 2018 originated in Jamaica, and that for 2019 will come from Indonesia. The Week of Prayer: Today - and Tomorrow And I am happy to testify to the current vitality of the Week of Prayer celebration in my own context, in Boston. The Week of Prayer has been picked up by an ecumenical coalition, headed by a very capable woman of evangelical background, and the Week is being celebrated, even as we speak, in a wide range of churches - Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox - in a different church each night during the week. And all with official church support, and the blessing of the local Council of Churches. Despite all talk of an “ecumenical winter” there remains a hunger for Christian unity, and for the Week of Prayer as a way to work towards that goal. 7 Dedicated and creative leadership can work wonders! Looking now to the future, I want to mention four things which the Week of Prayer might stress in coming years; taken together I think they will strengthen our Week of Prayer observance and our search for unity overall. First, and fundamental, is the fact that in prayer for unity we already experience a foretaste of the unity we seek. In the Week of Prayer we experience the unity we already share, as well as that foretaste of the full unity to come: if you feel that unity is slow in coming, pray together and experience a foretaste of it. Second, let us include a strong sense of celebration for the ecumenical progress we have made. We still have serious divisions, notably in our understanding of ministry and the conditions for our partaking together at the Table of the Lord. But whereas we were once divided churches speaking separately about unity, we have become trusted partners in a common search for unity. And we now have institutions and relationships to carry our search for unity forward. This new situation has developed not least due to the Week of Prayer, and we should celebrate that. This suggestion leads to a third proposal as its counterpoint. We need to be reminded not to take our ecumenical 7 See the event website at (UniteBoston Website) 2 https://goo.gl/UxukKb . Thomas F. Best – President, North American Academy of EcumenistsNext >