Catholic Participation to Be Increased
The Joint Working Group (JWG) between the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches (WCC) has been the main instrument of collaboration between the two partners since 1965. Over the past year, the JWG had limited activities, given the fact that a new team of members of the JWG had to be appointed by each side. This article focuses on four points: a) ongoing collaboration; b) the meeting of the JWG Executive; c) the WCC Central Committee; and d) prospects for the future.
Ongoing collaboration
Over the years, the two partners have established a pattern of ongoing collaboration that is reviewed from time to time by the JWG. Such collaboration takes place on various levels. On the level of missiological study a Catholic sister (from a mission-sending institute) has been appointed (since 1985) by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity to work full time at the WCC office on mission and evangelization. Currently, Sr Elizabeth Moran (Missionary Sister of St Columban, Scotland) occupies this post. On the level of bilateral relations, the same Pontifical Council has recently appointed a Catholic priest (Fr Gosbert Bya-mungu, Tanzania), as Catholic professor at the WCC Ecumenical Institute of Bossey. Another example of collaboration on this level is the presence of a WCC fraternal delegate on the Central Committee of the Great Jubilee. In this context the WCC sent a delegation of three persons to the celebration for the opening of the Holy Door at St Paul's-Outside-the-Walls on 18 January.
The Executive of the JWG
The first meeting of the JWG Executive took place in Geneva from 31 May to 1 June 1999. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and outline the future agenda of the JWG in view of its new mandate for the years 1999 to 2005, approved by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the WCC Eighth Assembly in Harare 1998.
Besides the ongoing collaboration within the framework of the WCC programmes, the JWG Executive proposed the following joint studies that will need further clarification and elaboration by the plenary of the JWG in May 2000:
a) the implications of common Baptism in the life of the Churches;
b) inter-church marriages and the implications for ecumenical relations;
c) the role of Councils of Churches in the ecumenical movement:
d) future collaboration on social questions;
e) the nature and purpose of dialogue; and
f) a common Christian human anthropology.
A second meeting of the JWG Executive took place in Rome from 15 to 17 January 2000 with a view to further elaboration of the above topics in preparation for the JWG plenary of May 2000.
WCC Central Committee
The 150-member WCC Central Committee met in Geneva from 26 August to 3 September 1999. Two staff persons represented the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as delegated observers.
The main agenda of this meeting was threefold:
a) to introduce the WCC and its new structure to the new members of the Central Committee;
b) to elaborate and clarify the proposed future programmes of the WCC; and
c) to take decisions on the programmatic orientation of the WCC for the next period till the Ninth Assembly in 2005.
The 40-member WCC Programme Committee presented a fourfold thematic approach to the future agenda of the WCC:
a) being Church, a theme that will focus on ecclesiology — the search for the unity of the Church and the quest for visible unity;
b) caring for life with a view to focusing on "service" (diakonia), including a study on a theology of life in its various aspects;
c) ministry of reconciliation as an expression of a proposal by the Eighth Assembly to hold a Decade to Overcome Violence (2001-2010), with a view to promoting a culture of non-violence;
d) common witness and service amid globalization: an approach from the perspective of mission and evangelization.
Prospects for the future
With the establishment of a new structure and more coherent programmes, the WCC has also changed the by-laws of its Constitution in order to make it possible for non-member Churches to participate in its programmes . That means that the Catholic Church, through the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, may now appoint (on request by the WCC) representatives on WCC commissions, boards and advisory groups. Thus in addition to the Catholic members of the Faith and Order Standing Commission (since 1968), there will be five Catholic members on the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, two on the new Commission on Education and Ecumenical Formation, two on the Board of the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, and one on the Advisory Group on Women.
During 2000 the main event will be the first meeting of the JWG plenary that is planned to take place in Beirut, Lebanon, from 26 to 31 May 2000. This meeting will finalize the future agenda already outlined by its Executive. On this occasion, a bilateral meeting between the officers of the Pontifical Council and of the WCC is foreseen. The purpose of that brief meeting would be to assess together the current situation of the relationship and to reflect together on the future.
One item for careful study during 2000 will be a proposal by the WCC to examine the possibility of establishing "a forum of Christian Churches and ecumenical organizations". A representative of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has been present at two previous meetings for the purpose of studying the need, the scope and nature of such a forum. Further meetings are foreseen for further clarification on the proposal.
This item 2848 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
