The unity Jesus prayed for in John 17:21, “that they may all be one,” has become a long-term project involving lots of dialogue. But the next round of dialogue with Catholics starts in June.
For the United Church of Christ, which sees that prayer as its founding motto, the next round of those talks will start June 5-7.
That’s when representatives of U.S. Reformed churches will kick off the next in a series of dialogues with their Catholic counterparts. This round will include a topic familiar to many members of the “just world for all” UCC: justice.
The four Reformed participants share roots in a particular branch of the 16th-century Reformation. The UCC, the Christian Reformed Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the Reformed Church in America. Each will send three representatives. Their dialogue partners will be six representatives appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
How dialogue works
“This is the ninth round of dialogue since Vatican II,” said the Rev. Mark Pettis, the UCC’s ecumenical and interfaith relations manager. Vatican II — the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council — revised that church’s official practices in many areas. One result was a new openness to dialogue with other denominations.
In the case of U.S. Catholic-Reformed dialogue, each round typically takes five to seven years, Pettis said. This involves a series of in-person meetings to discuss the chosen topic. Between sessions, the dialogue partners break into cross-denominational teams to delve into emerging issues. They discuss and write about those issues and bring them back to the entire group. Eventually, a final, formal, expected report results.
At each gathering, conversations take place in the plenary. But there is also time for Catholic and Reformed participants to caucus separately. There are even breakouts for each of the four Reformed denominations, which have similarities and differences. For the UCC delegation, Pettis said, “part of our responsibility is to bring forward our interpretation of how the UCC lives out Reformed theology.”
The coming round was to have started by 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed it until now. The parties will meet in person at the Chicago offices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (The ELCA is, by the way, a full-communion partner of the UCC but is not part of this dialogue. It participates in a separate Lutheran-Catholic conference.)
Pettis will be one of three UCC representatives at the talks. Joining him will be the Revs. Stephen Ray Jr., retired president of Chicago Theological Seminary, and Barbara Blodgett, associate dean of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. They are successors to the last round’s UCC delegation: the Revs. Karen Georgia Thompson, Sidney Fowler, and Randi Walker.
What they’ll talk about
The dialogues do not shy away from topics that have, over centuries, been points of tension among various branches of Christianity.
Recent past rounds have touched on such themes as:
• Baptism. A 142-page report in 2007 included a “common agreement” on that sacrament. It encouraged all partners to recognize each other’s baptisms and described practices that would make that possible.
• Eucharist / the Lord’s Supper. A 63-page report in 2010 said the dialogue had increased understanding between Catholics and Reformed. But it admitted, with “pain,” that “because visible unity does not exist, we are not yet at the point where we can participate fully in this sacrament together.” It also prayed that the two would grow in “deeper communion” with Christ “and therefore in deeper communion with each other until that day when we can share in full communion around your table.”
by: Hans Holznagel