144 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT The exchange of gifts has become, of course, a fundamental concept in the ecumenical movement after Vatican II and especially Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint. The concept is present in the interviews, both explicitly and implicitly. BE, for example, says about his perception of the relation between his own childhood congregation and the nearby Catholic parish: “I always experienced always this dimension of complementarity, I would say, betweenmy own church, or my church tradition, and, uh… the other one.”350 Brother TC stresses that in Taizé, there is no competition between the churches. Ecumenism is not a negotiation with winners, losers, and compromises. Instead, TC stresses that the community can “rejoice”351 in the gifts each tradition has to offer. He starts from faith in the resurrection, which allows competition and exclusion to be overcome by fullness: And in the spirit of… the death and resurrection, it means that you are no longer on the defensive, no? That you don't need an enemy to exist, I think I used that, with Olivier Clement used to like to say that as well, some people need enemies to know that they exist. Otherwise, they're not sure they exist, no? So, they have this kind of adversarial identity, without an adversary they don't know they exist. And so, the spirit of resurrection liberates you from that, no? You don't need an adversary to exist, you don't need to. It's not a zero-sum game, doesn't have to be a winner and a loser, we can... work there to go towards fullness, which is something which Congar says also (…) that our only interest is fullness... It's not compromise, it's not negotiation between denominations. Some people think ecumenism is kind of a negotiation. But it's actually fullness that is... our aim. We want the fullness of the mystery, and so... so we, we open up to that fullness wherever it can be found... and so on...That means sometimes saying, oh, maybe I didn't keep uh?... this as much as the other church, and I can learn from that other church, and so on. And if there is that spirit, then… then you are more likely to allow that undivided church to… to arise, no?352 To TC, this is a very liberating thought. It replaces fear, protectionism, and exclusion with abundance. He is filled with hope that discovering the richness of other traditions will lead the church to fuller unity. 350 BE-1,12. 351 TC-1,4e. 352 TC-2,6d.
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