Thirty years ago, on the solemnity of the Ascension in 1995, Pope St. John Paul II issued Ut Unum Sint (“That They May Be One”), his 12th encyclical. In it he confirmed that the commitment made by the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council “to following the path of the ecumenical venture” is irrevocable (No. 3). “Commitment to ecumenism,” the pontiff argued, is “a duty of the Christian conscience enlightened by faith and guided by love” (No. 8). It is a duty to be embraced in hope and with the recognition that, for Christian unity to be realized, conversion, both personal and communal, would be required of all who embark on this path (No. 14, citing the council’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, No. 4).

Pope St. John Paul II also gave thanks for the many fruits ecumenical engagement has produced in the decades since the council concluded, particularly the increased awareness that all of us who belong to Christ are not strangers or enemies to one another, but brothers and sisters (No. 42). He acknowledged with satisfaction that leaders of Christian communities were increasingly speaking with one voice on important issues such as “freedom, justice, peace and the future of the world” (No. 43). Relationships that have been forged between Catholics and other Christians, locally and internationally, both through formal theological dialogue and through cooperation in the social and political spheres, have “enabled us to discover what God is bringing about in the members of other Churches and Ecclesial Communities” (No. 48). In the courageous witness of Christian martyrs who have been members not only of the Catholic Church but of other Christian communions as well, the pope recognized “a joint witness to holiness (in) fidelity to the one Lord (that) has an ecumenical potential extraordinarily rich in grace” (No. 48).

The third and final chapter of the encyclical opens with a question: “Quanta est nobis via — how much further must we travel?” (No. 77). Pope John Paul drew attention to several areas “in need of further study before a true consensus of faith [could] be achieved,” including the relationship between sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition, the theology and practice of the Sacraments of Eucharist and Holy Orders, and the teaching authority in the Church (No. 79). He acknowledged that the role of the bishop of Rome constitutes a particular difficulty for non-Catholic Christians, “whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections” (No. 88). Like his saintly predecessor, Pope St. Paul VI, he asked forgiveness for ways that Catholics have contributed in the past to division within the Body of Christ.

In concluding, the pope did something very bold. He extended an invitation in the form of an open-ended question: “Could not the real but imperfect communion existing between us persuade Church leaders and their theologians to engage with me in a patient and fraternal dialogue on this subject (of the ministry of the bishop of Rome), a dialogue in which, leaving useless controversies behind, we could listen to one another, keeping before us only the will of Christ for his Church and allowing ourselves to be deeply moved by his plea ‘that they may all be one’ (Jn 17:21)?” (No. 96). The answer to the question that opened this final chapter depends in no small part on the response to Pope St. John Paul II’s invitation.

Advancing in Wisdom

Before I turn to the response, I’d like to reflect on the importance of the “question” itself to the learning process. Jesuit Father Bernard Lonergan dedicated his long and fruitful academic career to developing a helpful account of the way we as human beings achieve insight through asking and seeking answers to sincere, heartfelt questions. Rather than offer a lengthy summary of Lonergan’s ideas, I’ll use as an illustration St. Luke’s description of the encounter the child Jesus had with teachers of the Law when he remained behind in Jerusalem after the festival of Passover.

St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph found the boy “sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers” (Lk 2:46-47). Jesus is shown listening to the teachers and questioning them. The teachers, in turn, also listen to him and are surprised that someone so young should respond with such understanding. We glimpse Jesus and the teachers engaged in dialogue, asking questions and seeking answers together. It’s in this way, St. Luke suggests, that “Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man” (Lk 2:52).

Fully divine but also fully human, Jesus advanced in wisdom as all men and women do — through asking questions and seeking answers in a process of discernment requiring prayer, study and dialogue with others. Becoming more fully human, for Lonergan, requires continual intellectual and moral conversion as we are drawn — together with others — deeper into truth and toward the good. For Jesus in his human nature and for Mary, his mother, “conversion” would not have entailed repentance from sin, but an ever-deepening appropriation of truth and adherence to the good. For the rest of us, conversion must also involve a turning away from sin, both personal and social, toward the God who is truth and goodness.

In this journey toward full human life, we can help or hinder one another. Divisions between us that inhibit engagement in honest dialogue distort the learning process, leading to a hardening of the heart and a closing of the mind that Lonergan named skotosis, from the Greek word skotos, “darkness.” Such “darkening” of the heart and mind can afflict communities as well as individuals. Growth in wisdom, therefore, requires not only a readiness to share one’s own perspective but also a willingness to listen, to ask questions and to admit error or wrongdoing. For each of us, this is the work of a lifetime, an end that can be realized only in communion with others.

Essential Need for Dialogue

If Lonergan’s understanding of the learning process is correct, as I believe it is, there are implications not only for the ways reconciliation between churches might be achieved, but also for the ways important issues might be addressed within our own Church family and within the wider societies in which we live.

First, to grow in wisdom, or, in more explicitly Christological language, to mature into the full stature of Christ, dialogue is essential. The image of the child Jesus engaged in animated study of Torah with scholars of the Law in Jerusalem is an icon of the Church, analogous to the three who visit Abraham and Sarah (Gn 18:2) and are seen as an icon of the blessed Trinity. Reverential but, at the same time, dynamic encounter should be characteristic of the life of God’s people as it is of the God who draws them into his own divine life. This is why Pope John Paul saw renewed engagement between Christians of different confessions after centuries of hostility, and especially their common witness in the face of persecution, as an extraordinary grace.

Second, dialogue within the Christian community has historically taken place within synodal structures such as synods, chapters and councils. “Synodality” is the awkward term that has been coined in recent years to express this manner of gathering the Church to reflect and study together, to deliberate and even argue together, to attend to the movements of the Holy Spirit within each and among all, to discern the way forward together. But synodality has existed as long as human beings have.

Synodal assemblies, by whatever name they may be called, and whether they focus on local, regional or global concerns, reflect a basic human desire to share in responsibility for matters that affect the entire community. Synodality has been a leitmotif of Pope Francis’ papacy, but the important role synods play in the life of other Christian churches has been a focus of discussion ever since the Catholic Church entered into official dialogues with them after the Second Vatican Council.

A Thorny Issue

Last year, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity (DPCU) published a study document titled “The Bishop of Rome.” The document merits serious study, for it gathers the fruit of almost 60 years of ecumenical dialogue with other Christian churches on the issue of how primacy might be exercised today within the context of synodality, as well as the official responses to Ut Unum Sint from Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, Anabaptist and Quaker churches in North America and Europe.

In inviting fraternal dialogue on the ministry of the bishop of Rome, Pope John Paul understood that it’s best to lean into the hard questions, not to avoid them. In a similar way, the DPCU study document leans into the thorny issue of infallibility as defined by the First Vatican Council, drawing particular attention to the ways some of the ecumenical dialogues have examined and tried to contextualize the dogma historically. Such efforts at contextualization are sometimes taken as attempts to explain away a crux interpretum. But if context is essential for understanding texts of sacred Scripture, it is no less so for interpreting sacred Tradition.

“The Bishop of Rome” provides compelling witness that, by leaning into the difficult questions, Catholic participants and their companions in dialogue from other churches have been led through study and prayer, not to radical conclusions, but back to basic, fundamental theological positions: that “the exercise of authority accomplished in the Church, in the name of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, must be, in all its forms and at all levels, a service (diakonia) of love, as it was of Christ” (No. 41, quoting the Orthodox-Catholic international dialogue); and that “authority is therefore inextricably linked with the mystery of the cross and the kenosis of Christ” (No. 42), because “any use of power in the Church is meaningful only if exercised according to the model of the crucified Christ, as a service and not as a way of dominating over others” (No. 41, quoting the St. Irenaeus Joint Orthodox-Catholic Working Group).

Though we hear much more frequently of “the Catholic answer” to this theological issue or that moral problem, Pope John Paul had the courage in 1995, 30 years after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, to ask a Catholic question. Today, 30 years on from Ut Unum Sint, we see how the conversations he set in motion continue to bear fruit, perhaps most notably in the ways the bishop of Rome has come to be seen by Christians of quite different confessional backgrounds as a spokesman for issues they’re concerned about, including family life, justice and peace, and care for the environment. In helping to focus attention on the most urgent questions facing the Church and the world, the soft but very real power of the papacy is being revealed. 

FATHER RUSSELL K. McDOUGALL, CSC, is executive director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. From 2014 to 2020, he served as rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem. He received his B.A. and M.Div. from the University of Notre Dame, and S.S.L. from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.