CHAPTER 1: ECUMENICAL PROGRESS AND STAGNATION 27 Appreciating the results of consensus ecumenism but considering the difficulties of their reception within the life of the churches involved, Paul Murray suggests a new strategy for the ecumenical process. His main concern is that classical consensus ecumenism does not successfully enhance growth within traditions because it still departs from the question of what the ecumenical partner can learn from ‘us’. Instead, under the name ‘receptive ecumenism’, and following the appeals already made by among others Abbé Paul Couturier and Pope John Paul II,60 Murray advocates for a radical change of attitude. Specifically, he seeks one that embraces the decree’s call to conversion and the primacy of spiritual ecumenism. The basic question should be what one’s own tradition can genuinely learn from the ecumenical other, while confronting its own difficulties. He explains: [T]he primary aim of Receptive Ecumenism is to ask neither how the churches might work more effectively together (the traditional Life and Works concern), nor how they might come to a common mind on disputed matters (the traditional Faith and Order concern). Whilst each of these might be viewed as potential happy by-products of Receptive Ecumenism, here the primary aim is about promoting growth within each of the traditions rather than, directly at least, between them. As such, Receptive Ecumenism represents a strategy aimed not, in the first instance at least, at overcoming difference, nor at finding common middle ground between the traditions, but at seeking to promote learning precisely in face of and across continuing difference (continuing for the medium-term at least) and in such a way as implies not the forsaking and diminishing of diverse particular identities but their intensification and enrichment.61 Through this shift in objectives, Murray looks for ways to give a new impulse to the ecumenical dialogue, which, at this point, despite the reports and documents that are still being produced, seems incapable of effecting practical change in the everyday reality of ecclesial division.62 Murray aims at 60 Especially in UUS in which he proposes a joint effort in finding new ways to shape the Petrine ministry. 61 Paul D. Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning : Receiving Gifts for Our Needs,” Louvain Studies 33, no. 1 (June 30, 2008): 39, https://doi.org/10.2143/LS.33.1.2034334 (italics in original). 62 Paul D. Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning - Establishing the Agenda,” in Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, ed. Paul D. Murray and Luca Badini Confalonieri (Oxford/New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 14.
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