One in Christ Contents Volume 42 Number 2
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ONE IN CHRIST CONTENTS VOLUME 42 NUMBER 2 ARTICLES Hospitality. Leslie Griffiths 229 New Paths for Dialogue: Chiara Lubich’s Ecumenical Legacy. Bernard Leahy 246 Paul Couturier and Maurice Villain: The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Frederick Bliss SM & Alois Greiler SM 270 War. John F. Deane 285 The Plight of Iraqi Christians. Suha Rassam 286 Healing the Distorted Face: Doctrinal Reinterpretation(s) and the Christian Response to the Other. Peter Admirand 302 Catholic and Mennonite: A Journey of Healing. Gerald W. Schlabach 318 Being One at Home: Interchurch Families as Domestic Church. Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi 341 Lambeth Indaba 2008 and its Ecumenical Implications. Gregory K. Cameron 360 ‘Growing Together in Unity and Mission’: an Agreed Statement of IARCCUM, 2007. Mary Tanner 371 ‘The Apostolicity of the Church.’ Study Document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity. David Carter 382 REPORTS & EVENTS Forty Years of Interchurch Families. Ruth Reardon 400 International Interconfessional Congress of Religious. Nicholas Stebbing CR 407 Fraternal Address to the Synod Bishops. Robert K. Welsh 411 Lourdes Ecumenical Conference. Rowan Williams and Walter Kasper 413 A Journey of Reconciliation at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute. (contd.) Rosemary Kidd 417 Words of the Unknown Soldier. John F. Deane 420 BOOK REVIEWS 421 228 ONE IN CHRIST VOL. 42 NO. 2 Editorial The risks inherent in any attempt neatly to summarise a complex conversation were addressed by the Indaba methodology of the Lambeth Conference (see Gregory Cameron’s article). With this in mind, we hope here simply to indicate the many individual voices to be heard in these pages – an inevitably unsatisfactory ‘listener’s guide’. Leslie Griffiths’s ‘Hospitality’ sets a scene in which the irreducible, individual Other takes centre stage. Profiles follow of the lives and work of two inspired, inspiring pioneers: the all-embracing charism of Chiara Lubich (Brendan Leahy) and the mission of Maurice Villain (Bliss and Greiler). Two pages of this issue present an unusual aspect, in the shape of poems by John F. Deane, which perhaps find words strong enough to stand by Suha Rassam’s ‘Plight of Iraqi Christians’. This catastrophe is mirrored only too clearly in a further reflection on the ‘Tantur Journey of Reconciliation’ (Rosemary Kidd) reported on in the previous issue. Likewise, a note on the International Interconfessional Congress of Religious (Nicholas Stebbing) responds to a previous article on the ecumenical contribution of such communities – an issue we hope to explore further. Both the lived reality of the interchurch family as ‘domestic church’ (Thomas Knieps, Ruth Reardon), and the unique, sometimes painful identity of the interchurch, Bridgefolk individual (Gerald Schlabach), voice an essential contribution to what ‘Church’ means. Peter Admirand reflects on the mutations of Tradition which both enable, and result from dialogue – and observes, as do others, the capacity of dialogue to surprise. David Carter examines the Lutheran-RC Commission’s ‘The Apostolicity of the Church’. And Mary Tanner refocuses the challenge to bishops and people of IARCCUM’s ‘Growing Together in Unity and Mission’. Other voices are heard, welcomed in unfamiliar places. In September last, Rowan Williams joined Walter Kasper at Lourdes – recalling Chiara Lubich’s love for ‘Mary, Mother of Unity’. And in October, non-Catholic ‘fraternal delegates’, including Robert Welsh addressed the world Synod of Bishops in Rome. 229 HOSPITALITY Leslie Griffiths∗ Hospitality is something more than what you do when an invited guest arrives for dinner. It is a way of seeing the world and of living your life. Such is the theme of this article which began life as an address to the 2008 Glenstal Ecumenical Conference. Hospitality is something that ensues from the way we see (and act towards) other people, even strangers. It is our way of embracing the Other and our capacity to do this provides an epistemological basis for constructing a theology, a philosophy, of hope. What is more, it offers a way of experiencing joy. But it will require a determined effort at self-understanding and the exercise of the will to make progress in an area of activity where we seem culturally conditioned to look after our own interests. A) The engendering of hope A conference on the theme of hospitality deserves to begin with a working definition. Where better to turn than the Oxford English Dictionary where we find the following: ‘The reception and entertainment of guests or strangers with liberality and good will.’ That’ll do for starters! I think I’m probably going to leave the entertainment of guests in favour of looking at the way we treat strangers. But the definition will definitely serve our purposes. The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Sir Jonathan Sacks, has repeatedly made the point that the Jewish scriptures are fairly minimalist in their instruction to love the neighbour whereas, dozens of times, they’re very firm and focused in telling people that they are to receive the stranger in their midst and show him/her hospitality. The true ∗ Leslie Griffiths is a Methodist minister serving at Wesley’s Chapel in London. He is also a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral and has presented a half-hour weekly radio programme ‘Taking the Tablet’ (a review of the important Roman Catholic weekly) for the last six years. He was President of the Methodist Conference in 1994-5, has written six books as well as numerous articles and chapters for other people’s books. He is a regular broadcaster. In 2004, he was made a Life Peer and sits on the government benches in the House of Lords. 230 ONE IN CHRIST VOL. 42 NO. 2 measure of anyone’s generosity of spirit is not to be found in the way they treat those they love or know or with whom they are familiar. It’s much more the product of their way of receiving strangers. Throughout what follows, the word ‘stranger’ will be interchangeable with the word ‘Other’. The way we treat and deal with the Other is at the heart of anything we might want to show about our understanding (and practice) of hospitality. But let me continue by taking you to an altogether more modest place. I want you to imagine the home I grew up in as a boy. I’m one of two children, we were the sons of a single parent who’d been thrown on the streets by an unforgiving father. Our accommodation was a single room in a builders’ yard – space within which we ate and slept, bathed and did our homework. My mother had worked in a factory and the heaviness of her labour broke her health so that she was obliged to live on benefits. We were among the first to enjoy the fruits of the Welfare State. We had nothing and yet we had everything. I enjoyed a curiously blissful childhood in spite of deprivation and poverty. Every Sunday afternoon, my mother invited an old woman who lived round the corner from us – a Mrs Reidy by name. She was a toothless old thing, a widow, Irish and a Roman Catholic. All those factors made her an oddity in the little homogeneous, parochial Welsh community of my youth. My mother would spread a table where the fare consisted of bread and butter and jam together with a wobbling jelly. Vast quantities of tea were quaffed. Since butter was rationed, this weekly tea party consumed our total allowance. We never saw a jelly at any other time. Within the limits of my mother’s purse, this amounted to a liberality almost beyond imagining. My mother was a very remarkable woman and will keep appearing in this narrative. She had nothing yet she gave everything. A short snatch of a poem by R. S. Thomas could well apply to my mother. She was … a girl from the tip Sheer coal dust The blue in her veins… The ‘blue’ of the poem was the product of a coal mining environment but it carries more than a hint of nobility. Indeed, a total stranger once remarked of my mother (after just an hour of her company) that she was possessed of ‘an aristocracy of the spirit’. GRIFFITHS Hospitality 231 As I’ve reflected on this, I recognise that I’m more interested in how this sense of hospitality and generosity played out on me and my younger brother. I don’t remember any resentment on our part that might have arisen from the fact that this widow woman, so gaunt of face (lantern-jawed) was eating our nice food. It all seemed utterly natural. Sundays meant Mrs Reidy. We waited expectantly for her arrival because that triggered a tea party. Whoopee! One of my friends had a very devout mother. There was always an extra place laid at their home at meal-time. It was a place where no- one sat. It was a reminder, as a sign hanging on the wall immediately above it made clear, that ‘Jesus is the unseen guest at this table’. Incidentally, I noticed in the Guest House at Glenstal the ‘One- Person-Only Room’. Guests are invited to sit in there in one of the two available chairs. The other is left empty for God. In our house, on Sundays, there was always an extra place too. It was occupied by Mrs Reidy. To us, she was Jesus, and we loved her. Now this is a homespun way of beginning what is intended to be a serious contribution to our understanding of hospitality. To us, Mrs Reidy had the characteristics of a neighbour but also of a stranger; she was undoubtedly our guest but there was always something of the ‘Other’ about her.