let’s pray for the pope
The
annual January week of prayer for Christian Unity has given Donald
Norwood something to think about
We prayed for
the Pope every Sunday at Richmond Hill St Andrew’s, Bournemouth. As
far as I know we were the only non Roman Catholic Church in
Bournemouth to do so. Even the High Church Anglicans with their fond
illusions about being nearer to Rome than most of us restricted
their prayers for the bishops to Rowan and Michael of Winchester. We
also prayed for Rowan and Michael as well as Crispian RC of
Portsmouth, Adrian our Moderator and other church leaders and
councillors. In the so-called ecumenical winter, ecumenical prayers
should be the last thing to be left out in the cold.
Unity is not
only a distant hope. It can also be a present activity. We sing with
gusto ‘One Church, one Faith, one Lord’ and that theology is not
only in a great hymn but in the Bible. Read Ephesians 4 and shout
aloud ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism’! or never tire of the
prayer of Jesus in John 17 ‘that all may be one’. Jesus still prays
it with us. The ‘all’ surely includes the Pope so why not pray for
him and say his name, Benedict. He is after all a Christian and a
Christian leader with a difficult job to do, being responsible for
half the world’s Christians, possibly for us all. We may not agree
with everything he says or even with his being Pope. As heirs of
John Calvin we have no quarrel with his being a bishop and Bishop of
Rome. Some Reformed churches have bishops and Calvin had no
objections. Scots presbyters please note! Pray for the bishops and
for the Pope.
It takes two
to dialogue but only one to initiate. We can act today on the
conviction that there is only one Church and by God’s generosity we
are members of her. Our prayers therefore will never be parochial as
they often are. Some Anglican local parishes have a rota of prayers
which assumes that the only Christians we need pray for are fellow
Anglicans. Some United Reformed Districts do the same. Ecumenical
Parishes then have a bonus because at my own congregation, Holy
Family, Blackbird Leys, one would hardly pray for Fleur without also
praying for David and Roger her Anglican colleagues and Patrick from
Kenya. My hunch is that occasional and formal prayers for Christian
Unity have so little impact because most of the time we act as self
contained little units and forget the Church outside our circle.
Anglicans at each communion say ‘we are the Body of Christ’ and can
so easily forget the Christian folk next door.
Roman
Catholics have a bigger problem which is one more reason why they
need our prayers. Cardinal Kasper, the Pope’s ecumenical officer,
travelled all the way to Brazil last February to assure us and all
our fellow members in the World Council of Churches that the Roman
Catholic Church is ‘irrevocably committed’ to the ecumenical
movement. There is no going back on Vatican II. But then when
challenged by me and other fierce Protestant reporters at Porto
Alegre he repeated the old assertions that even the Church of
England is not really a Church at all.
We have no
wish to pass on the pain this causes. We can turn the other cheek.
The Church of Rome is a Christian Church and this Sunday we will
pray for the Pope and all our fellow ‘catholics’ who are, with us,
embraced in the Ecumenical Creed. ‘We believe in one, holy, catholic
and apostolic church’. We also believe in the forgiveness of sins,
ours and theirs. Let no one shatter your personal belief that the
Church is one, though not yet visibly one. Keep praying what you
believe. This year we have an added assurance to keep on praying.
For the theme text tells of Jesus: ‘He even makes the deaf to hear
and the mute to speak’. Alleluia. Praise the Lord of all!
The Revd
Dr Donald W Norwood is now engaged in ecumenical research in Oxford
