Catholic Church and ecumenism

The Catholic Church has been irrevocably committed to the modern ecumenical movement since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), but has always held the unity of the Church as one of its necessary characteristics.

Ecumenism, from the Greek word “oikoumene,” meaning “the whole inhabited world,” (cf. Acts 17.6; Mt 24.14; Heb 2.5), is the promotion of cooperation and unity among Christians.

The Catholic Church's commitment to ecumenism is based on the conviction that a divided Christianity "openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching to Gospel to every creature."

"The search for Christian Unity was one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council." This was attested to even from the moment the Council was announced, by Pope John XIII, during the vespers closing the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, on 25 January 1959, at the Basilica of Saint Paul's Outside the Walls.

"The Catholic Church is committed to working for the reunion of all Christians, but the exuberant spirit following Vatican II has been tempered. Sober minds realize that the road to full unity will be long and arduous. One of the principal ecclesiological tasks is to discern the relationship between the Churches..." Underlying the Catholic Church’s pursuit of ecumenism is its recognition that elements of sanctification and truth are found in other churches, that these are real Christians and real Churches or ecclesial communities, and that our common baptism itself impels us toward greater unity.

It can be said that the "ecumenicity" of the Church is another way of expressing her "radical catholicity and/or universality (See Guidelines for Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue 1967).

The Catholic Church saw itself as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, founded by Christ himself. Its teachings, especially in the decades preceding the Second Vatican Council, equated the one Church of Christ with the Catholic Church, and sometimes as narrowly as the Latin Church alone.

Ecumenism takes as it starting point that Christ founded just one Church, not many churches; hence the Catholic Church has as its ultimate hope and objective – that through prayer, study, and dialogue, the historically separated bodies may come again to be reunited with it.

Unity was always a principal aim of the Catholic Church. Before the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church defined ecumenism as a relations with other Christian groups in order to persuade these to return to a unity that they themselves had broken. Some traditionalist Catholics reject the Second Vatican Council reforms and maintain the pre-reform sense of ecumenism.

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