Lecture 36: Vatican II and Ecumenical Prospects
more deeply concerned with the nuances of the doctrines to which their
denominations are of¿ cially committed, progressives often lead the mainline
Protestant denominations far from their doctrinal roots. The result, recently,
has been a rash of Protestant ecumenical theologians becoming Catholic.
Recently, important dialogues have begun between evangelical Protestants
and Roman Catholics, a movement called “Evangelicals and Catholics
Together.” Pope John Paul II asked Eastern Orthodox Christians to help him
¿ nd ways of exercising papal authority that will not be divisive.Arguments about what Vatican II really means for the boundaries of the church
are to be expected if critical reasoning about the identity of a tradition is an
essential part of a healthy intellectual tradition. The endemic disagreements
between liberal-progressives and conservative-traditionalists are arguments
about how wide the boundaries of the tradition are. Since no rule can decide
in advance about all change or all boundaries, a healthy tradition (according
to “right wing postmodernism”) includes an
ongoing argument about where the boundaries
of the tradition are and whether they should
change. The name for this ongoing argument
in the Christian tradition is “theology.”The dif¿ culty of the question, when change is
necessary and when it goes too far, suggests
that Protestant and Catholic theology each
have something the other needs. Episcopalian
bishop John Spong advocates a “new
Christianity,” which, from any orthodox or
ecumenical perspective, is not Christianity at all. So it seems Protestants
need something like the Catholic “magisterium,” an authoritative teaching
of¿ ce that can discern when changing the faith means abandoning the
faith. Speaking for the progressive wing of the Catholic church, Garry
Wills describes “structures of deceit” that are consequences of the church’s
inability to admit it was wrong. So it seems the Catholic church could bene¿ t
from the Protestant insistence on the need for continual reformation of the
church (semper reformanda), which includes the necessity of admitting
when the church is wrong.The of¿ cial dialogues
between Catholic and
Protestant theologians
led to a distinctive
kind of ecumenical
theology among
mainline Protestants.