Perspectief 2015-29

2015-29 41 Reageer Reaction from a Roman Catholic Perspective Peter de Mey Being a Roman Catholic reader of the text, I found it important to study the new document especially in the light of a substantial 20 page reaction to The Nature and Mission of the Church submitted in January 2008 to the Faith & Order commission by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. As I usually focus on ecclesiology in my research I will particularly pay attention to the way ecclesiological themes are treated in this document. I Stilistic issues I appreciate – definitely compared to the lengthy boxes in The Nature and Mission of the Church – that the italicized passages at the end of most subsections not only make mention of remaining divergences among the churches participating in this dialogue at multilateral level, but they also contain an invitation to the churches to overcome these difficulties. In some cases information which was previously found within the boxes has been transferred into the body of the text, because one now better understood that it actually belonged to the consensus among the churches. At the end of chapter III, when dealing with the issue of primacy, one was e.g. able to accept the suggestion in the PCPCU reaction to now state in the body of the text that “[t]here has been significant ecumenical discussion of New Testament evidence about a ministry serving the wider unity of the Church.” (§ 57) Sometimes divergences have been removed because a Church considered the description in the previous version to be a caricature of its actual position. The longest box in The Nature and Mission of the Church contained among others the following observation: “One type of Ecclesiology identifies the Church exclusively with one’s own community, dismissing other communities or persons which claim churchly status into an ecclesiological void.” The PCPCU reaction presumed that one was alluding here “to the