Charismatic Catholics carry a particular responsibility for progress towards Christian unity. In the providence of the Lord, we Catholics who have been blessed to become part of the Renewal have been given a special opportunity to serve the cause of unity. In this article I want to explain why this is, and how we can contribute ecumenically.

Vatican II and the New Pentecost

This particular opportunity flows from the link between the Renewal and the Second Vatican Council. From the beginnings of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in 1967, participants recognized that this outpouring of the Spirit was in some way an answer to the prayer of John XXIII for a “new Pentecost”. For most Catholics baptized in the Spirit in the early years, their new-found fellowship with other Christians baptized in the Spirit was understood in the context of the conciliar opening of the Catholic Church to the ecumenical movement. And with this, we sensed the huge ecumenical potential of the Renewal.

This pattern was different from those that developed within the Protestant churches, where there was nothing corresponding to the Vatican II Council. Many charismatic Protestants tended to interpret the exciting experience of charismatic fellowship with other Christians in a way more characteristic of Evangelical thinking. That is to say, they often interpreted their new-found spiritual unity within the Renewal in contrast to the patterns of unity in the ecumenical movement. So Pentecostals and charismatic Evangelicals have tended to see this unity in the Holy Spirit as God’s pattern for unity in opposition to the ecumenical movement, too easily dismissed as a merely human effort to restore the unity of the divided Churches.

Peter Hocken

While some Catholics were tempted to think in this way, the connection between the Council and the Renewal made such an approach unthinkable for informed Catholics. A key consequence was that, from the start, the Catholic leaders understood that the Charismatic Renewal was for the renewal of the whole Church. In this ecclesial renewal, the charismatic renewal is understood as a gift of the Lord to serve the ecumenical work of the Church, itself understood by the Council as an essential component of Church renewal.

Ecumenical grace of the Renewal

This ecumenical and ecclesial understanding of the Renewal by charismatic Catholics can also be a help to charismatic Christians in the Protestant Churches to aid them to understand the ecumenical component and grace of the Renewal in an ecumenical way rather than in a sectarian setting-us-apart manner.In fact in the 1970s, the vision of the Catholics for a Renewal to impact their Church encouraged Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists and other Christians to form denominational renewal agencies, particularly in the United States.

Ecumenical Movement and Charismatic Renewal developed independently

Although the Pentecostal – charismatic current, and the ecumenical movement are two of the most striking features of 20th-century Christianity, the two have rarely interacted in a constructive fashion. For the first forty years of the ecumenical movement, the Churches involved were barely aware of the Pentecostals, and the Pentecostals had no desire to relate to the historic churches which they regarded as dead or moribund. It was part of the unique ministry of David du Plessis to break through this wall of ignorance and disdain. One might have expected the arrival of the charismatic renewal to change this situation. But in fact, the two movements continued to develop independently, even though there were bridges being built here and there. On the Catholic side, neither the bishops nor the ecumenists tended to see the Renewal as an ecumenical asset. For the Vatican and the bishops, ecumenism was something new, and there was a strong concern to keep a close eye on the developing ecumenical contacts. From this angle the ecumenical dimensions of the Renewal were easily seen as unsupervised and liable to lead to confusion. The French coined the term “oecum?nisme sauvage” meaning an ecumenism that was out of control and without order. For the ecumenists, the heart of ecumenism was theological dialogue, and progress in overcoming the doctrinal divisions of the past. They tended to see the Renewal as too emotional, and charismatics as not interested in serious theology.

Today far greater openness to the ecumenical significance of the Charismatic Renewal

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, the climate has been changing. Today there is a far greater openness to the ecumenical significance of the Charismatic Renewal. Why is this? I see many contributory factors. First, there has been theological progress on the charismatic side. The inclusion of a theological track at the Brighton Conference of 1991 organized by ICCOWE (International Charismatic Consultation on World Evangelisation).

On the Pentecostal side, there are an increasing number of Pentecostal scholars able to contribute constructively to theological dialogue. An outstanding example is Frank Macchia with his study Baptized in the Spirit (2006). Second, the ecumenical movement has long left the euphoria of the 1960s behind. There is widespread frustration over the slow progress being made towards Christian unity. Even with the major achievement of the Catholic – Lutheran declaration on Justification by Faith, there is disappointment that this theological break-through doesn’t seem to have changed the basic relationships between the Catholic and Lutheran Churches. There is an increasing recognition that the impasse or near impasse in the ecumenical movement is connected with a neglect of what Vatican Two called “spiritual ecumenism”, presented as “the soul of the ecumenical movement” (UR, 6). This return to a strongly spiritual emphasis was given a major boost by John Paul II’s encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint (1995). Even though the encyclical did not mention the charismatic movement, the Pope emphasized features prominent in the Renewal: prayer, the experience of common worship, the role of the Holy Spirit, the place of repentance.The emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s place in the renewal of the Church was accentuated by the gathering of the new ecclesial movements and new communities in Rome at Pentecost 1998. Here the Pope encouraged the new movements to work together. The three movements to take the Pope’s call most seriously have been the Focolare, the Community of Sant’ Egidio and the Renewal. It is probably no coincidence that these are the three movements with the strongest commitment to unity and to reconciliation. These movements were, along with the Lutheran Renewal in Germany and the YMCA, the driving force behind the significant ecumenical congresses held in Stuttgart in May 2004 and May 2007.

Special contribution of the Charismatic Renewal to Ecumenism

Though the Vatican II Council had underlined the essential link between ecumenism and renewal, much of the ecumenism of the last forty years has not been marked by a strong concern for the renewal of the Church. Much effort has been expended by ecumenical specialists to eliminate misunderstanding and to seek theological convergence, but not in a framework of strong commitment to the transformation required for renewal.

- Renewal of Churches. So the first charismatic contribution to ecumenism is to inject a stronger commitment to the renewal of the Churches. Since authentic renewal is impossible without the Holy Spirit, the work for unity requires a dependence on the Holy Spirit, which is at the heart of what the Renewal is about.

- Centrality of worship and prayer. A second contribution concerns the centrality of worship and prayer. The life and faith of a Church is expressed most profoundly in its worship. A contribution of charismatics to ecumenism can be the giving of more time to worship and prayer together. In particular we can encourage the seeking of the Spirit’s leading in prayer. We can help to ensure that prayer is not a perfunctory nod to the Almighty before you get down to the real business.

- Importance of the Word of God. A third contribution concerns the importance of the Word of God. Authentic renewal cannot happen without a deeper rooting in the Scriptures. The same is true for ecumenism. Part of our charismatic witness is that the Holy Spirit has brought the Scriptures alive for us, and in this way has given us a deeper love for the Lord Jesus. Only as all participants in the ecumenical process experience this renewal through the Scriptures will the conditions for deep ecumenical progress be created. A deeper rooting in the Scriptures will accentuate the eschatological dimension of our faith, the orientation to the second coming of the Lord, and it will also pay much greater attention to the ongoing significance of the Jewish people.

- Repentance for sin. Lastly, charismatic Christians know that real change requires repentance for sin. We should be among the first to take up Pope John Paul II’s call for a Catholic confession of the sins of the past. Probably the major reason for the slowness of ecumenical progress has been the failure to integrate a confession for the sins of the past in the dialogical process. So, for example, there needs to be a widespread Catholic confession of our failure over many centuries to root our theology and our formation in the Sacred Scriptures, and to regard an enthusiasm for Scripture as something Protestant. (See Noticeboard)