Perspectief 2015-29

2015-29 The Making of an Ecumenical Text 27 Reag eer servant of God’s design for the world; its unity is not uniformity, but unity in legitimate diversity; it lives, or is called to live, as a universal communion of local churches. 3. Chapters 3 and 4 Against the background of this vision of the nature of the One Church, the churches in via , divided but no longer isolated from each other, are called to grow in what the text calls “the essential elements of communion”, namely, apostolic faith, sacramental life, and ministry. Out of the 25 paragraphs that constitute this chapter entitled The church: Growing in Communion , no less than 13 are dedicated to three issues related to Church ministry: ordained ministry, the ministry of oversight (especially personal episcopate) and, particularly, a universal ministry of Church unity comparable to the ministry of the Bishop of Rome in the Catholic Church. The last chapter, The Church: In and for the World (9 paragraphs), completes a circle by returning to the theme of the first chapter, but this time to call the churches to address together, despite growing difficulties, challenging issues related to moral issues (particularly human sexuality) and issues of Church and Society such as poverty, racism, and climate change, given that they are inseparable from faith in God’s reign. 4. The Rhetoric of the Architecture In order to interpret an ecumenical text we need to understand first of all the rhetoric of its architecture, and this is what we have just attempted to do. The structure of The Church: Towards a Common Vision tells of the attempt to invite Christian communities from around the world to join in a converging Trinitarian understanding of the missional Church as rooted in Scriptures and Tradition, structured by a threefold form of ministry (deacons, presbyters, bishops) and served in its conciliar form of universal fellowship by a universal ministry of unity. These would be requirements of its optimal participation in what God is doing in and for the world today. 5. Reading an Ecumenical Text But the rhetoric of the architecture of the text is not enough. We need to take into consideration two other elements. The first is the fact that an ecumenical text is rarely the work of an individual. An ecumenical text is often a fabric (think of the words “text” and “textile”…) produced with different, very different threads. Its row material is often