I try to make it a habit not to pick fights with people of other faiths, and it’s not because I don’t disagree with them. Even when I read the Pope’s reassertion last week of the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, including the statement that other churches are not actually churches “in the proper sense” but communities, I saw no compelling reason to change my habit.
Most media reports of the Vatican statement were not particularly comprehensive. The document, while controversial, also had something to say about “elements of sanctification and truth” present in other churches. Translation: other churches have some truth, but not all of it.
This is hardly anything new in relation to the Roman Catholic Church and similar attitudes are found in many other churches (including my own). The Pope has every right to reassert the position of the Catholic faith that its authority is derived from a continued unbroken line back to Jesus, problematic for Protestant churches though that is.
Of course, I profoundly disagree with this papal argument of Roman Catholic primacy, because on the basis of reason, secular history and revelation I reject the priesthood succession claim altogether. My own church stands firmly on the belief that priesthood authority had to be restored by divine intervention, not reformed, and that the apostles, lay ministry, missionaries and most especially the doctrines of the New Testament seen today in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are evidence of that Restoration.
Obviously, many other Christians disagree with that as much as I believe in it, and there ought to be vigorous and constructive debate. Yet I can also acknowledge fundamental differences between Christian churches (many of them clearly irreconcilable) without being offended. It matters not one whit to me that the Catholic and some other churches don’t accept “Mormon” baptisms. We don’t accept theirs either. But I can look for a deeper mutual understanding of those differences, strive for good will and hope to embrace others as fellow Christians.
Theological differences need not abridge the kind of ecumenism that brings Christian and non-Christian communities together to address world humanitarian relief or other societal imperatives. Ecumenism, in the larger sense of reconciling theological differences, will always have its limits as those who have spent their lives in that cause fully realize.
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