Reformation and Recusants: Christian Unity and the Communion of Saints

Abstract

I have to thank Dr. Radner for a very stimulating paper. He roamed widely and provocatively across the last five hundred years and I think in his own inimitable style effectively raised some clearly essential issues. I found it a very challenging paper ecumenically. Some of his comments reminded me of an incident I read about before Vatican II, when, as I understand, Patriarch Athenagoras and now-saint Pope John XXIII are reported to have said jokingly that only the hairsplitting and obstinacy of theologians maintains the division between the Churches: the learned will not agree among themselves and project their dispute over the whole of Christianity, though they cannot make any sense of it anymore. In the meantime, of course, some theologians have addressed the same reproach in all seriousness to holders of office. Only the Church authorities, they say, have an interest in division, which is kept in existence by them for the sake of their own survival. Regarding the three questions cited as important for this gathering-Do we celebrate the Reformers' renewal of the Church in light of the Gospel? Do we mourn the division of the one, Catholic Church? Or have events like the globalization of Christianity and the rise of Pentecostalism made the sixteenth-century debates irrelevant?-I am tempted to say both Yes and no to the first two and Somewhat to the third. My comments, however, will focus in three areas. The first of these, not surprisingly, is a reference to the tradition-a very Catholic thing to raise up-alongside Scripture, of course. But here I wish to nuance a