Why 500 years after Martin Luther’s 95 theses, the dream of Christian unity is further away than ever
One of the most memorable lines from the sitcom Father Ted is surely: “That would be an ecumenical matter.” Cast your mind back. It’s where a high-powered delegation from the Vatican is expected at Craggy Island parochial house to upgrade the Holy Stone of Clonrichert.
Fr Ted — ever-fearful that the pugnacious Fr Jack will cause a row that will get them all banished to Siberia — teaches Jack the phrase as the elderly cleric’s stock answer to all queries from the Roman visitors.
“That would be an ecumenical matter,” Jack dutifully replies — whatever the question.
It’s comedy gold. But the best comedy always says something about real life and, in this case, the writers capture the fact that ecumenism — the relations between the various Christian traditions — is such a dull subject that the mention of it is often met with little more than a polite smile before the conversation moves swiftly on.
That’s because, when Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians get together, they spend the time exchanging pleasantries, rather than confronting the major barriers to unity. It all leads to such tedious humdrum.
I’ve witnessed my fair share of polite smiles over tea and buns in the past year as the various Christian traditions have been commemorating — much more neutral than the loaded word ‘celebrating’ — the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
Usually, ecumenical tea and buns only happens once a year, during the awkward period in January known as Christian Unity Week, when we visit one another’s churches and depart with that knowing ‘see you next year’ glance. But, the fifth centenary of the Reformation has given us a year of it.
It culminates on Tuesday, with the anniversary of the now-infamous moment when the enraged monk Luther nailed his ‘95 Theses’, denouncing what he saw as corruption in the Church, to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral.
Of course, he never actually nailed the document to the door, but his early biographers were not ones to let facts like that get in the way of a good story.
The Reformation marked the decisive split between Christians in Europe and led to wars which caused the deaths of millions of people, including onethird of Germany’s population at the time.
Five hundred years on, most Christians now accept that the causes of the Reformation — fuelled by pig-headedness and misunderstanding on both sides — have long since been healed. Not so the divisions within Christianity that have emerged since — divisions that most people in the Church prefer not to talk about.
At one level, it seems that everyone has just agreed to disagree on issues like the ordination of women and the blessing of gay unions.
That would be fine, but for the fact that Church leaders on all sides never tire of speaking in vague terms about the dream of a reunified Church, without acknowledging that the drift apart that has taken place in teaching and practise over the last 500 years is seismic.
Pope John Paul II, who led the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005, was not the biggest fan of ecumenism. Critics often remarked that his approach to Protestantism was more of a ‘come out with your hands up’, surrender mentality.
But it was at least honest: he knew that, from a Catholic point of view, the Protestant denominations — particularly the liberal ones — had moved far beyond the traditional understanding of Christianity and, certainly, to adopting positions that the Catholic Church will never countenance.
For the Catholic Church, there are red lines. It will never approve of abortion, or euthanasia, in any circumstances, women will never be ordained Catholic priests and gay weddings will never take place in their churches.
On these points, the Church is at one with Orthodoxy, which counts some 300 million people among its adherents.
To a greater or lesser extent, many Protestant denominations have adopted policies diametrically opposed by the rest of Christianity. Currently, the Anglican Communion — of which the Church of Ireland is a member — is tearing itself apart over the issue of the blessing of gay unions.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has even been forced to postpone indefinitely a key meeting of the world’s Anglican bishops, because he fears it will only formalise what is effectively an undeclared schism within his denomination on the issue.
He can take some comfort from the fact that his cricket team last week beat the Pope’s XI by 39 runs. And while the atmosphere was jovial, off the cricket field Christian unity is as far away as ever.
While good relationships between Christian leaders are now taken for granted, there is in reality no movement happening on the key issues that still divide.
That’s not to say that good relations don’t matter: they do. God knows, Ireland has seen enough sectarianism and violence caused by hatred and mistrust among people who claim to worship the same God.
If we’re honest though, we’ll acknowledge that maybe friendship is the best we can hope for.
And it’s true, ecumenism proves at least one thing: Protestants do make better traybakes than Catholics.