What is ecumenism?
It has different meanings for different people. Traditionally, it has meant the movement by which the churches have come to accept each other as fellow Christians, find ways of working together, and explored pathways to greater visible unity. Some have complained that that puts too much emphasis on the organised church, and that ecumenism should be seen more broadly as a popular movement by which Christian people express and discover their unity outside the confines of the institutional church. Others again have begun to use the term to talk about an inter faith dialogue – an ecumenism which embraces Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and the rest, as well as Christianity. And yet others point to the derivation of the word and want to use it to talk of the whole created world – of the unity between all peoples, and between people and creation. These are all positive meanings, but there are also those for whom it is a negative word, reflecting unacceptable compromises about faith or culture. When
The description of this movement of dialogue and mutual exchange on religious questions with non-Catholics, and this on a basis of equality, is first made in a papal encyclical of Pope Pius XI, in Mortalium animos, On Fostering True Religious Unity, published in 1928. This is the popes description: Assured that there exist few men who are entirely devoid of the religious sense, they seem to ground on this belief a hope that all nations, while differing indeed in religious matters, may yet without great difficulty be brought to fraternal agreement on certain points of doctrine which will form a common basis of the spiritual life. With this object, congresses, meetings, and addresses are arranged, attended by a large concourse of hearers, where all without distinction, unbelievers of every kind as well as Christians, even those who unhappily have rejected Christ and denied His divine nature or mission, are invited to join in the discussion. (2) Follows immediately afterwards the popes co
