CHAPTER 1: ECUMENICAL PROGRESS AND STAGNATION 15 Roman Catholic ecumenical engagement Due to its exclusive identification with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of Christ, and its tradition of polemics portraying other Christians as schismatics and heretics, the Roman Catholic Church initially observed the movement of the “pan-Christians”20 with the utmost suspicion. Catholics were forbidden to participate in it, as was officially stated in Pope Pius XI’s 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos. However, Pius XII, following the cautious examples of the earlier Popes Leo XIII and Benedict XV, opened the way for Catholic involvement in ecumenical discussions, albeit under strict regulations and supervision.21 The Catholic conception of restoring church unity was still explicitly an ecumenism of return or an invitation to other Christians to return to the Roman Catholic Church. An important initiative utilizing the space given by Pius XII was the Catholic Conference for Ecumenical Questions (CCEQ) in the Netherlands, initiated by Dutch priests Johannes Willebrands and Frans Thijssen. The Conference established a European network of Catholic ecumenists, as well as numerous ecumenical contacts. The CCEQ operated under supervision of Cardinal Augustin Bea.22 A major shift in Catholic ecumenical engagement was initiated by Pope John XXIII. He proved not to be the intermediate pope he was expected to be upon his election in 1959. To everyone’s surprise, he convoked a Council dedicated to aggiornamento and ressourcement. He also envisioned the Council to prioritize the theme of Christian unity.23 John XXIII appointed Cardinal Bea as head of a new body, the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity (SPCU), with Willebrands as its secretary. They employed the CCEQ’s networks for setting up the SPCU and for inviting ecumenical observers to the Council. From the start, the scope of the SPCU’s activities was limited (although these activities were deliberately formulated rather unspecified to enable newly 20 Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, Encyclical on Religious Unity (Rome, 1928), 5 and 8, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280106_ mortalium-animos.html. 21 Karim Schelkens, “Pioneers at the Crossroads: The Preconciliar Itineraries of W.A. Visser- ’t Hooft and J.G.M. Willebrands,” Catholica. Vierteljahresschrift Für Ökumenische Theologie 70, no. 1 (2016): 27. 22 Karim Schelkens, Johannes Willebrands: Een leven in gesprek (Amsterdam: Boom, 2020), 195–98. 23 UR, sec. 1 therefore declares that “[t]he restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council.” Cf. John XXIII, “Allocutio Ioannis PP. XXIII in Sollemni SS. Concilii Inauguratione,” 1962, https://www.vatican.va/content/johnxxiii/la/speeches/1962/documents/hf_j-xxiii_spe_19621011_opening-council.html.
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