CHAPTER 1: ECUMENICAL PROGRESS AND STAGNATION 25 realm of reason. He considers that the cognitive level is overemphasized, or, consequently, that other dimensions are underemphasized and underdeveloped. He coins the term “de-cognition of recognition,” to propose a transfer of the prime interest of the ecumenical dialogue from an exclusively cognitive dimension to a state in which all aspects of human interaction and encounter are included.53 His view echoes the focus of Couturier’s spiritual ecumenism. Spiritual ecumenism and receptive ecumenism Abbé Paul Couturier, the ‘father of spiritual ecumenism,’ resisted and challenged the triumphalist attitude of the then dominant ecumenism of return paradigm. Couturier’s views centered around the conviction that all Christians, including the Roman Catholic Church, should acknowledge accountability for divisions and the need for repentance and conversion. This is an utterly spiritual way of understanding ecumenism. Walter Kasper, too, acknowledges the insufficiency of an isolated consensus ecumenism. In a lecture delivered at the International Theological Colloquium held in Taizé in 2015, commemorating Brother Roger and addressing his contribution to theology, Kasper said: Brother Roger knew and acknowledged that the council had led to remarkable dialogues and exchanges among the Churches. We then produced a large stack of ecumenical documents. Of course, they are helpful; they have solved many problems and prepared the path of reconciliation. But they are not enough; they remain a dead letter if they are not put into practice and become a life which is lived out. And that is the program, or better yet Brother Roger’s very personal ecumenical mission. With him everything became existential. Ecumenism for him was not a dead letter but a reality written by his life and his personal biography.54 The spiritual dimension has accompanied the bilateral dialogues from the beginning and consists of repentance for past misunderstandings and 53 Gabriel Monet, “The De-Cognition of Recognition: Theological Reflections on the Consequences of Recognition and Non-Recognition in the Local Church Context,” in Just Do It?! Recognition and Reception in Ecumenical Relations/Anerkennung und Rezeption im ökumenischen Miteinander, ed. Dagmar Heller and Minna Hietamäki, Beihefte zur ökumenischen Rundschau (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2018). 54 Walter Kasper, “Mercy and the Ecumenical Journey of Brother Roger,” in Brother Roger’s Contribution to Theological Thought: Acts of the International Colloquium, Taizé, August 31 - September 5, 2015., ed. Taizé Community (Taizé: Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 2016), 291.
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