ABSTRACT

Ten years on, Ut Unum Sint remains a deeply impressive reiteration of ecumenical commitment and expectation. Much of it continues to move: its hopefulness; its pervasive sense of the majesty, goodness and humaneness of the gospel; its confidence that in the church of Jesus Christ human fellowship can be restored and can flourish; its sense that the churches are faced at one and the same time by a divine imperative towards unity which must be met, and by a divine promise that reconciliation of Christians is possible: ‘every factor of division can be transcended and overcome in the total gift of self for the sake of the Gospel’ (§1). And there is much more: its deployment of the rich theology of the church as communion which has proved such an immense ecumenical resource over the last half century; its spiritual-theological description of ecumenical practice as much more than mere institutional horse trading or striking of doctrinal bargains – as examination of conscience, repentance and the exercise of fraternal love; its firm sense that Christian reconciliation and Christian mission are inseparable. There is a humility and serene joy in the encyclical, as well as spiritual and theological cogency; and it seeks both to teach and to learn. ‘What is needed’, we read, ‘ is a calm, clear-sighted and truthful vision of things, enlivened by divine mercy and capable of freeing people’s minds and of inspiring in everyone a renewed willingness, precisely with a view to proclaiming the Gospel to the men and women of every age and nation’ (§2). Like much else in the encyclical, that is a characteristic John Paul II statement: full of a sense of the capacity of objective theological truth to sway the heart and the will, deeply invested in the gospel as divine grace and moral and missionary command, convinced that the truth of the gospel can and must be known, loved and enacted. I’m surely not the only Anglican who would be overjoyed to receive primatial encouragement and instruction of such scope, substance and godliness.