Some would call it the world’s oldest unanswered prayer.  Jesus’ petition: “That they all may be one,” spoken to his twelve closest friends at the Last Supper, has become the fervent plea of the movement for church unity.
     This century Christians will mark 1,000 years since Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were two branches of the same vine and 500 since the Protestant Reformation. 
       The anniversaries, in 2054 and 2017 respectively, are occasions to look ahead and see if separations can be mended, as well as to look back at the sinfulness of a tragically divided Christendom.
       Many who gathered in Washington Jan. 29-Feb. 1, were doing just that.  The 380 attendees at the National Workshop on Christian Unity comprised Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, United Methodists, United Church of Christ, Orthodox and members of the historic Black Churches.  The vast majority are leaders of diocesan or denominational ecumenical commissions or councils of churches.
        Keynote speaker Brother Jeffery Gros called the ecumenical journey “a long, often idiosyncratic, pilgrimage in God’s good providence.”  Humans cannot “construct or organize the unity of the church.  It is a gift of God’s spirit,” he said, quoting Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.
       Gros, a Christian Brother and professor of church history at Memphis Theological Seminary in Kentucky, served more than 30 years as ecumenical officer for the Diocese of Memphis, headed the National Council of Churches’ (NCC) Commission on Faith and Order and was associate director for the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
       Despite the slow pace of the journey towards unity, Gros cited progress made since the national workshop met last year.  The World Methodist Council has joined itself with Lutherans and Catholics in affirming the historic 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, he noted.
Last March five faith families – mainline Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Pentecostal and Evangelical, and African American/ethnic – formed a joint initiative toward building dialogue, consultation and common witness among their members.  A new entity, called
Christian Churches Together USA, is the result of a meeting in 2001 at the invitation of Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore and the urging of a variety of church leaders who wanted a forum for a broader spectrum of Christian traditions to be at one table. Catholics and Evangelicals have not been a formal part of the NCC, unlike the other churches. 
       In recognition of the initiative, Keeler received the Fitzgerald award at the meeting.   The retired church leader was lauded for his efforts on behalf of Catholic and Jewish relations over many years and for keeping the goal of church unity at the center of U.S. ecumenical life when he was president of the USCCB from 1993-96.
      Neither Keeler nor Gros is naïve about obstacles making the path to unity more arduous.  Women’s ordination is certainly one, Gros acknowledged, noting that the Catholic Church was entirely unprepared to take up the issue with its ecumenical partners, the Episcopal Church in the USA and the worldwide Anglican Communion. 
      But as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who heads the Anglican Church, told Pope Benedict last fall, “some have expected too much too soon.”  Like Williams, Gros believes the bonds of affection and history must thicken between the two churches in preparation for the full communion for which both Catholics and Anglicans pray.
      Other potentially church-dividing issues like the blessing of homosexual unions highlight the need to intensify dialogue between the churches rather than to retreat from it, Gros said.  When ecumenical friends ask him if Catholics will call off dialogue with churches that differ with Rome on human sexuality or take a different public policy approach to life issues, Gros reminds them that “the ecumenical movement is about our common baptism – or as I say to my students, ‘It is Christ! Stupid!’ not the culture wars.”

       Participants at the national meeting gained first hand accounts of the progress of the dialogues between the churches from those involved in the theological meetings or acting   as consultants to the dialogues. Workshops offered close ups of the international Catholic
-Orthodox dialogue and the national (USA) and international dialogues between Catholics and Anglicans and Catholics and Lutherans.
       Dialogue can help create the conditions for unity and produce a meeting of minds, but it can’t create unity itself, said Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.  “Has the ecumenical movement run out of steam?” he asked.  “If the limits of dialogue had been kept in mind, there’d be less disillusionment,” he held.
       Farrell said the ground work for Christian unity – which Protestants had been advancing for decades before Vatican II – had taken place in the Catholic Church’s renewal of liturgy, patristics and biblical studies. He called Pope Benedict “a strong ecumenical partner,” who would be able to advance the cause of unity. 
       While much has been achieved in the dialogues, there has also been a mounting backlog of reception, “in other words, the ecclesial digestion of the results,” said Fr. Paul McPartlan, consultant to the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission.  It’s high time “to cash something in, high time for the bishops, the pastors of the two communions, to take charge instead of just the theologians,” he said.
       McPartlan, a British priest who teaches systematic theology and ecumenism at the Catholic University of America here, reckoned if the dialogues have reached a measure of agreement in a particular area, they should be making “a difference in our corporate relations.”  Despite ecclesial and ethical hurdles between Anglicans and Catholics that have made prospects for full unity appear poorer than at any time in the last 40 years, the progress “was substantial and too precious to be squandered,” he noted, and “what has been achieved must be deployed” to help in the current crisis.
       For people in the pews, the clearest sign that church unity had arrived would be the opportunity to receive the Eucharist in each other’s churches.   While Catholics see joint
communion as the attainment of the unity goal, Anglicans view it as food for the journey,
said Bishop Chris Epting, ecumenical officer for the Episcopal Church USA.
       He saw differences between the two communions not as hazards, but as steps on the road to visible unity.  The 2004 agreed statement on Mary has won praise in both houses and been the subject of much local dialogue between U.S. Catholics and Episcopalians.
Efforts towards a common Baptismal certificate, attendance at one another’s ordinations, strengthened relations between Catholic and Anglican religious orders were all ongoing, he said.  Work on a common understanding of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the ministry of infallibility remain issues for future dialogues.
      Epting pointed to ways in which the two communions could stand united in service and witness – areas addressed by the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury during their meeting in Rome in November.  They include the pursuit of peace, respect for life, the sanctity of marriage, outreach to the poor, oppressed and most vulnerable, care for creation, interreligious dialogue and addressing the negative effects of materialism.
       Lutherans and Catholics specialists have also been talking together for four decades. Theological exchanges are only one type of dialogue that is underway, noted Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba of Milwaukee.  Sklba has been Catholic co-chair of the Lutheran /Catholic dialogue since 1997.  The dialogue of life – of daily joys and concerns; the dialogue of action – of cooperation in projects of mutual interest; and the dialogue of religious experience – of sharing in prayer and meditation – are all ongoing, he said.
      Sklba, who heads the USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs,
specified four requirements for true religious dialogue:  “intellectual clarity, the  meekness of Christ himself, confidence in the good will of all participants and the prudence needed to make allowances for the circumstances of the hearers.”
      Dialogues explore issues of common belief, but they also carefully remove anything that might be perceived as church-dividing, he said. The very fact that the next round of the dialogue will deal with authority in the church, is proof of the value of the exchanges and of the commitment of participating church bodies to the work, the bishop added.
      Sklba disagreed with those who claim the ecumenical movement is waning.  “You can’t erase 500 years of anathemas and terrible sermons from too many pulpits in a few decades.”  The Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal has had its effect too. Some have said: “I’m not sure I want to be in dialogue with those folks. It’s a reality,” Sklba held.

     The task of ecumenical formation is imperative, Gros said, contrasting the “overload” of ecumenical agreements that need to be integrated into the mainstream of Christian piety and consciousness, with “the looming religious illiteracy in our churches.”
       So many young persons today do not contest what the church teaches, they simply do not know it, he said, quoting a recent article by Washington’s new Archbishop, Donald Wuerl.  Wuerl presided at a liturgy for workshop participants at Georgetown University. 
      If catechists need to educate youth, so too must ecumenists develop a catechesis that
supports Hispanics in the United States.  Over 70 percent of Hispanics claim Catholicism, while 77 percent of Hispanic non-Catholics are Protestant with the majority being evangelical or Pentecostal.  Studies show 70 percent of confirmed Hispanic Catholic youth don’t even know about Vatican II and “many have a preconciliar understanding of the role of Catholicism in worldwide Christianity,” Gros said. 
      He called for an ecumenical catechesis “so folks can deal with the pluralism of our culture, a catechesis that includes the 40 years of ecumenical progress” and prepares for the evangelism that is entailed in contemporary Christianity.
      For Thomas McGowan, ecumenical officer of the Diocese of Oakland, Calif., the movement toward church unity “could use a little affirmative action.”  McGowan, a deacon, who led the Oakland office from 1983 –1996, and was called out of retirement in 2000 to return to the job, does not know another black Catholic ecumenical director.
      Like almost every ecumenical officer in the land, he is concerned that the work done in the dialogues gets “filtered down” to the parishes and becomes part of the life of the church.  McGowan has visited all 87 parishes in his diocese and found 79 percent of them are involved in some sort of ecumenical effort.  He hopes more parishes will establish relations with other churches and other religions in their area.  “Let’s get to know one another and then talk about our theological agreements and disagreements,” he said.
        Catholics comprised a quarter of the participants at the national workshop – most of them members of the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (CADEIO).  The organization is grouped into 15 regions across the country.
       Ecumenical officers need to be “informational conduits” to their bishop, helping him make connections to other churches, said Garland Pohl, a former president of the group and a member of the ecumenical commission of the Galveston-Houston archdiocese.
      “Most bishops don’t have a major interest in ecumenism,” she said. “It’s not that they oppose it; it’s because they have a lot on their plate. They leave it to their ecumenical officer.”  The officer is expected to relate to other Christian bodies in the diocese and to other judicatory leaders and to be aware of where Christian unity efforts are going nationally and internationally,” Pohl said.  Likewise he or she should be in contact with Councils of Churches and the State Conference of Churches.
      Looking around the large plenary halls of the national workshop, it was evident that most ecumenical officers are clerics; more are elderly than youthful and more laymen than women serve in this capacity.  Laywomen appear to outnumber Catholic sisters as diocesan ecumenical leaders.
        “For years people were getting nervous about the graying of the movement, Pohl said.  “No one was having an ecumenical baby.”  However, several younger delegates – some of them seminarians – attended, bringing hope to senior ecumenists.
     Since 2001 many ecumenical officers have had to hold two portfolios due to the huge interest in Islam that emerged in the wake of the events of 9/11.  “This has put certain pressures on our relations with Jews,” Pohl said, noting that Catholic-Jewish relations have been progressing for more than two decades.  Across the nation, she has also seen diocesan commissions dealing with faiths from Buddhist to Zoroastrian, Shinto to Sikh. 
      Newcomers to ecumenical work can receive training at the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreliigous Institute, run by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement in Garrison, New York.  Professional ecumenists also offer an advanced institute for ecumenical leaders at      
Graymoor.  Those seeking guidance in Christian-Muslim relations can attend a summer program at Georgetown, sponsored by the university and the Hartford (Conn.) Seminary.
      The chief qualification for anyone in ecumenical work is spirituality and a strong prayer life, said Gros.  Many left toting a new book by Cardinal Kasper, titled: Spiritual Ecumenism.  In it he predicts that one day we shall rub our eyes in amazement to see what God has done.