Humility and Ecumenism

 (Above:  The Crucifix for the forthcoming Georgia's room.  

Below:  The image of the pelican which pierces its own heart to feed its young.  

A fitting symbol of Christ's love and humility.)

I believe that the greatest danger to my spiritual life is the array of things that I am completely comfortable with on a day to day basis that go against the will of God.  I read sports articles on websites that advertise links to essentially pornographic "stories" as if this is simply the way things have to work (and whether I am personally tempted by the links or not).  I listen raptly as people share the latest office gossip with one another (here I need not discuss those times I join in myself).  I sit idly by while any number of worthy initiatives for the good of my fellow man languish for want of money or volunteers (of course I have things to do and bills to pay!).

These examples are not my problem.  At least, they are "not my problem" in the sense that I am personally responsible for their origination or continued existence.  I can not, however, absolve myself of responsibility completely.  There are things I could do about these problems even if I can not solve them all by myself.  Add to that the fact that if the world were filled with people otherwise similar to me who actually felt these things were worth fighting against, the world would be much more pleasing to the God I claim to serve.

A similar issue that is of inestimable importance today, but about which I have done essentially nothing, is the scandal of Christian disunity.  Perhaps this seems like a strange subject to bring up at a time and in a place of relative coexistence between the various "churches."  Pope Francis and his predecessors have broken new ground in many ways.  Yet there is still a very long way to go, to say the least.

For a long time I held the vague opinion--not stated in so many words, of course--that Protestants should just wise up and rejoin the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  This would, obviously, solve the problem in the best possible way.  In a sense, I still agree with this position:  I believe completely that the Church is the true Body of Christ on Earth and that other communities which claim the name of "Christian" are to greater and lesser extents sundered from that Body.  I might point out that Jesus had only one body and one set of disciples.  There seems to be no reason He would have chosen the current multiplicity of mutually exclusive paths. Have I convinced anyone yet?

Some people have been convinced by such arguments, but the problem of Christian disunity persists.  I recently heard a talk on ecumenism given by renowned Catholic convert, philosopher, and theologian Peter Kreeft (the audio for this talk is available here). Among many extremely important points he makes is that Protestants will not consider reunion with the Catholic Church until they are able to see Christ there.  He emphasizes that this is the only ground on which he (and likely God Himself) would wish to see Protestants come to the Church.  Any other motivation would really be a contradiction of the meaning of conversion.  If Protestantism is a movement by which Christians seek to be closer to Christ, Protestants should be moved to join the Catholic Church in order to be better Protestants.  Unfortunately, too often Catholics obscure the vision of Christ in the Church by how they speak and act in front of others to the point that it is no wonder so few believe Him to be there.

All of this makes me once again turn to myself and my own ideas and attitudes.  How often do I maintain a haughty attitude regarding the truth as I believe it to be?  The Gnostics believed that the truth was a secret, the knowing of which made one superior to others.  Christ Jesus intended His disciples to behave as if the opposite were true:  knowing Jesus should lead you to humble yourself to become the road on which others come to Him.
 
The answer is not to "soften" the truth as if hard truths were themselves the problem.  I do not concede anything about the Faith.  The answer is to allow the gift of humility to get me out of the way and allow others to see what I see, not to my credit but to the credit of the God who condescends to show it to me in the first place.