With passion and patience

“We need a ‘common vision’ because we shall grow further apart if we do not aim towards a common goal. If we have conflicting views of this goal, we shall, if we are consistent, move in opposite directions”. With these clear words, the Lutheran/Roman Catholic Joint Commission in its 1980 Document, “Ways to Community”, underscored the particular difficulties we meet within the ecumenical movement in the absence of consensus on its objective. If the various ecumenical representatives do not have a common goal, but understand and put into action what distinguishes Christian unity, in a very different way, they run a strong risk of proceeding in different directions and of discovering, in the end, that they are even more distant from one another. The Controversial interpretation of the ecumenical goal Even after more than 40 years of ...