An Ecumenical Journey

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• An Ecumenical Journey^*
• Thomas F. O’Meara O.P.

The winter semester of German universities lasted November to late February. Sixty years ago, in March, 1964, my first semester at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich was ending, and I decided to take a trip. I was studying for a doctorate in theology at a German university because it was a center for new movements in theology, including ecumenism, which meant Christian churches learning from each other. An ecumenical council in Rome was composing the first Roman Catholic document accepting ecumenism. I decided to take a theological journey around Europe to learn about Christians involved in this dialogue. It took me to theological centers in Switzerland, France, England, Belgium, and Denmark.

On a rainy, cold morning in March, I took an early train from the Hauptbahnhof to Switzerland, arriving that afternoon in Zurich, amidst fog and light snow. The two friars in the Dominican house explained that they had no guest rooms and had arranged for me to stay for two nights in a room for visitors at the large hospital where one of them served as chaplain. In the streets, the thrill of seeing ancient stones drew me from one building to another. A sign at the cathedral stated that Charlemagne had stayed nearby. Its interior was austere, its gothic windows empty of color—an unadorned space for the austere theology and worship of Zwingli. The University’s theology faculty, however, was now open to approaches from Luther, Calvin, and even Roman Catholicism, and the library had books by Yves Congar and Hans Kűng.

My next stop was Bossey, a small town near Geneva, the site of the research center of the World Council of Churches. A romantic villa with recent modern additions, it had a multilingual library that could provide resources for my dissertation on Paul Tillich. A year or so later, I returned for an ecumenical conference when the participants would spend the long [End Page 131] June evenings in theological discussions while eating strawberries and drinking local white wine in a restaurant’s rose garden. I wrote again in a journal begun earlier in Rome, which noted that I met Lutheran missionaries at work in Brazil who found Catholicism there quite pagan, and that I had listened to a Dutch Catholic bishop arguing for the presence of grace in the Protestant liturgies of the Lord’s Supper.

I took a train to France, where creative ideas and practical applications had in recent years led the church in new directions. In Lyons, the Centre Saint Irénée was directed by a pioneer of ecumenical contacts, Réné Beaupère, O.P., who organized groups of Protestants and Catholics to discuss the Bible or their ideas of church and faith. Ecumenism among the laity was a new idea for Americans. The friars welcomed me in their detached Gallic way, curious but satisfied that finally an American had arrived to learn from them about theology and the renewal of the church. I slept on a cot in the library surrounded by religious books and journals, some of which I had heard of and all of which I wanted to read. Lyons was rainy and cold during my days there. Placards in the churches described the history of the musty Romanesque naves into which blue light flowed down. In a church consecrated by Pope Pascal in 1107, carvings on old columns held bearded or young faces, a touching show of the individuality of people who had lived almost a millennium before.

I climbed the hill to the Roman ruins where there were two theaters where you could sit on the stones of the second century; nearby were some indications of a past stadium for horse racing. Irenaeus, bishop of this Gallic church and an early Christian systematic theologian, wrote that he had learned about Christianity from a disciple of John the Evangelist. He had confronted Pope Victor in Rome in 190 c.e.—apparently some popes rather early on became a little self-willed over different practices in the East and the West. I could see from the Roman ruins another hill nearby, Fourvière, named from...