Lecture - The Church - by William Henn

32 the missio Dei and to the initiative of the three persons of the Trinity, by elaborating commonly held biblically rooted insights into the reality of the Christian community as a communion which is a priestly, prophetic and royal people of God, the body of Christ and temple of the Spirit, by seeing her as a means serving the Father’s plan of salvation, as including a rich variety which is shared by local communities joined together with all other such communities in a mission to witness to Christ and to serve the healing of a broken world – by claiming that all of these affirmations express common convictions to which the membership of the vast majority of Christian communities are firmly committed, The Church takes a giant step away from the polemical attitudes which governed the events causing division in the past. [42] In his encyclical on ecumenism Ut unum sint , Pope John Paul II wrote: “…ecumenical dialogue, which prompts the parties involved to question each other, to understand each other and to explain their positions to each other, makes surprising discoveries possible. Intolerant polemics and controversies have made [into] ‘incompatible assertions’ […] what was really the result of two different ways of looking at the same reality. Nowadays we need to find the formula which, by capturing the reality in its entirety, will enable us to move beyond partial readings and eliminate false interpretations” (par. 38). Faith and Order’s mandate as it began the twenty year project which led to the publication of The Church: Towards a Common Vision was to uncover fundamental ecclesiological principles, shared by most Christian communities, which could help them toward greater convergence in the remaining divisive issues. In fulfilling this mandate it has given a positive and more adequate account of the Church that can be shared by many and forebodes well for future dialogues about yet unresolved ecclesiological issues.