Perspectief 2015-29

Perspectief 6 The Making of an Ecumenical Text An Introduction to The Church: Towards a Common Vision 1 Odair Pedroso Mateus This text was originally written as a brief introduction to The Church: Towards a Common Vision meant for theological students attending introductory courses on ecumenism. It brought together in an elementary way the case for ecumenical theology and its challenges; the Faith and Order work on ecclesiology that culminated in The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV); and elements for the reading of the text as an ecumenical text on ecumenical ecclesiology rather than just a collective text on ecclesiology. These three topics still constitute the architecture of this essay. But the decision to equip it with an exhaustive Faith and Order bibliography which mapped the long and winding road of the ecclesiology study pushed me to re-write several passages of the sections dedicated to the three main phases of the process in order to add information related to the process itself or to the successive configurations of the convergence document The Church: Towards a Common Vision . The text became burdened with endless references to places, dates, names of people, different outlines etc. While in its present form the text has lost part of its original lightness and introductory character, it has gained a new dimension. The summary description of the process whereby successive versions of an ecumenical text become a convergence document lays the 1 Lecture held at the conference of the foundation Communicantes and Theological Institute of the Free University of Amsterdam on Churches and Reconciliaition in Ukraine at april 4 2015 in Tilburg. The photos in this article were made by Helene Guiziou and Benedek Poszgay during the reconciliation visit of the brethern of Taizé to Ukraine in april 2015.