A Realistic Alliance
A Response to Richard John Neuhaus
by S. M. Hutchens
I will not respond to Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s presentation point by point, but rather to his larger topic in the context of my own, since my outline was written before I received his. (That is often how conference papers work, I fear.) We will, however, cross paths, and swords, more than once in this one, since our topic and concern are the same. I have been a grateful and reasonably attentive reader of Neuhaus for many years, regarding him as one of my principal teachers on religion and public affairs. While I can’t read his mind, I can to some degree anticipate his trajectories, or, as he might say, “the gravamen of the matter,” when I have his subject in hand.
There is a detail of his presentation, however, to which I wish to respond by way of resistance while it is fresh in my memory, namely, the distinction drawn between ecclesial and un-ecclesial Christians. While a Christian may, for reasons good or ill, have an anti-ecclesiastical bent, non-ecclesial Christians do not, by definition, exist, for to be Christian is to be ecclesial, that is, a member of the Church. I was raised among the Baptists, among whom, when one believed, one entered the invisible Church, and when one was baptized, professed Christ in and before the visible. Their typically “Protestant” understanding of the nature and identity of the Church is different from the Roman Catholic one, but I would not call them un-ecclesial for that reason, and do not think this, but rather the manner in which they are ecclesial, is the real subject of dispute between Catholic and Protestant.
Each of the identities through which I respond to Fr. Neuhaus—of a Protestant responding to a Catholic correspondent and as a senior editor of Touchstone—is full of tension, but it is tension the organizers of this conference think it profitable, indeed necessary, to bear with. Thus the title we have given it: “Christian Unity and the Divisions We Must Sustain.” In this paper, which is meant as an exercise in definition and clarification, I hope to illustrate with some force the divisions between us that conscience persists in sustaining, and then something about the nature and necessity of our alliance. In doing this, I shall take the hand of Pope John Paul II, with particular reference to his encyclical Ut Unum Sint.
We at Touchstone have frequently been told, usually in a kindly or indirect way, as though we were well-meaning but rather feeble-minded, that we are on a fool’s errand—that even if “ecumenical orthodoxy” or “mere Christianity” existed, which is doubtful, those who attempt to do what we are doing will only have the weak-minded or the fool for companions. The weak-minded, because the force of Reason drives the better and more composed minds out of Protestantism firmly into the more unitary churches with strong senses of identity, which define as themselves anything that can be called mere Christianity (recall what Newman said a man deep in history cannot be)—the fool, because ecumenism as it has been practiced in the twentieth century is a hopeless enterprise whenever its object has been to bring spiritually devout and intellectually serious believers to the same Table, for, whatever progress may be made in amity or clarification, the essential and irreducible differences—and enmities—remain.
Enduring Disagreements
With respect to the enduring disagreements between Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, let me make it plain that we are perfectly aware of them, and experience these painful and not infrequently enraging divisions among ourselves almost daily. We neither ignore them, nor rationalize them away, but do what we can to work within them as brothers and allies. How this is done shall be discussed presently, but I note at the outset that it is often not easy, and that we do not expect the conditions under which we work at present to last indefinitely. What we call “mere Christianity” contains, as our critics have noted, and we know well enough, unresolved elements that cannot remain as such forever. This does not, however, mean that what we are doing must be regarded as invalid by those who confess the wholeness and unity of the Church.
The five heads under which our differences may be summarized are given in Pope John Paul II’s Ut Unum Sint, which I have seen cited in the literature more than any other part of the encyclical. Fr. Neuhaus has already enumerated them, I here extract them from an article by Edward Cardinal Cassidy. They are, as they flow from and into one another:
First, “The relationship between Sacred Scripture, as the highest authority in matters of faith, and Sacred Tradition, as indispensable to the interpretation of the Word of God.”
Second, “The Eucharist, as the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, an offering of praise to the Father, the sacrificial memorial and Real Presence of Christ and the sanctifying outpouring of the Holy Spirit.”
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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