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   INTRODUCTION - select
   I. THE ECUMANICAL SITUATION - select
   II. FUNCTIONS AND OPERATIONS OF THE JWG - select
   III. ACTIVITIES OF THE JWG DURING THE PERIOD 1983-90 - select
   IV. PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE (1991-98) - select
   MEMBERS OF THE JOINT WORKING GROUP - select
   APPENDIX A - select
   APPENDIX B - select
FULL TEXT

FOREWORD TO THE SIXTH REPORT OF THE JOINT WORKING GROUP

    The Joint Working Group for relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches has just become twenty-five years old - an opportunity for it to take stock of what it has achieved.

    The Joint Working Group came into existence immediately after Vatican II and the opportunity the latter opened up and endorsed for the Roman Catholic Church. The Group was entrusted with studying the conditions for cooperation between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church and even - in the first few years - with considering the possibility of the latter's becoming a member of the WCC. When that prospect proved premature, the JWG turned its attention to furthering relations and practical cooperation between the two partners as far as possible.

    In submitting the sixth report of JWG, we wish first of all to say how grateful we have been for the experience we have had since it was given its present membership, following the 1983 Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Vancouver:

    Fraternal cooperation among its members has indeed been gradually consolidated till il has become a real fellowship characterized by mutual trust and respect. We have learned to talk to each other and listen to each other with real openness. And our awareness of the common mission of our churches in the world has deepened to the point where that mission is seen as the urgent priority.

    Reading this sixth report will in itself show the extent to which the productive relations between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church have multiplied and developed. Setting aside the places in which they have found institutional expression, especially in the Commission on Faith and Order; most of the sub-units of the WCC and their Roman Catholic partners have worked out a process of mutual consultation and sometimes common action which must be taken fully into account. The JWG has constantly applied itself to following this process through and expanding it. It has nevertheless not confined itself to this but has also sought to contribute its own bricks to the common structure. The JWG decided to publish as an appendix to this report two documents - on "The Church: Local and Universal" and on the "Hierarchy of Truths" - which it had ordered and officially received and which demonstrate this. We hope they will make a useful contribution to opening up new stages of fruitful reflection on the journey towards Christian unity.

    It is true that we have also had to face certain difficulties - especially, as the report shows, in the field of social thinking and action. And in the last few years Roman Catholic participation in the World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation was subject to a variety of ups and downs on which there is no occasion to go into in detail here. We would mention only that this enabled its to realize that as Cardinal Willebrands put it "the difference in nature between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church" represents a continuing obstacle to the full development of their relations. This obstacle must be analyzed more thoroughly. That must be one of the priority tasks of life next JWG.

    Above all, however, we wish, in submitting this report, to state jointly our firm conviction that whatever mar be the hazards of the day-to-day history of ecumenism, the search for unity must never cease. We have to be completely and constantly obedient to our Lord's command: "that they may all be one." We cannot play fast and loose with that prayer and take up our stance in some status quo. On the contrary, we must gratefully appraise the whole way along which the Lord has already brought us over the last fifty, years and go forward yet more boldly and hopefully out the path lie himself has opened tip and in which lie constantly walks ahead of us and awaits its!

MGR ALAN CLARK PASTOR JACQUES MAURY
Joint Presidents of the Joint Working Group

 

 
 
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