Encountering Christ the Saviour

The 2011 World Methodist Council meeting in Durban, South Africa, 1 - 3 August saw the launch of the latest in the series of Methodist Roman Catholic International Commission reports, Encountering Christ the Saviour: Church and Sacraments.

It is the ninth in a series of reports produced every five years.  This year the Commission has also produced a digest of all nine reports, Together to Holiness: 40 years of Methodist Roman Catholic Dialogue.  

It's worth reproducing some of the introductory material to the synthesis as it offers a historical context:

This bilateral dialogue was the result of initiatives taken after the Second Vatican Council and decisions made by the World Methodist Council in 1966. The Joint Commission between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council held its first meeting at Ariccia, near Rome, in 1967. Since then, the Joint Commission has reported to its respective churches at five-yearly intervals. Eight reports have been presented so far, each informally named after the city where the World Methodist Council met that year: Denver (1971), Dublin (1976), Honolulu (1981), Nairobi (1986), Singapore (1991), Rio de Janeiro (1996), Brighton (2001) and Seoul (2006).

Roman Catholic/Methodist dialogue has a singular advantage: there is no history of formal separating between the two churches, and none of the historical, emotional problems consequent on a history of schism.

From the beginning of the dialogue, without any glossing over of difficulties, members of the Joint Commission have increasingly discovered the richness of the certain, though sadly as yet imperfect, communion that Methodists and Catholics already share. The ultimate goal of our dialogue is full ecclesial communion - ‘full communion in faith, mission and sacramental life’. As we move in that direction, we acknowledge the vital elements in the partial communion we already enjoy, while also recognising the remaining differences on which further work needs to be done.

A central place is held in both traditions by the call to personal sanctification, growth in holiness through daily life in Christ. Catholics and Methodists have always held in common, though they have not always fully realised it, what was the conviction of John Wesley, that each human being has a duty to seek holiness
and Christian perfection. Methodists and Roman Catholics find common ground from agreement in the universal call to holiness, and share a wide, deep and rich heritage of Christi an spirituality.

Study of the historical background of Methodist and Roman Catholic spirituality leads to the conclusion that what has mattered most in both traditions has been the reality of religion as it brings about the transformation of the human heart and mind in everyday life. This exceptional affinity between Roman Catholics and
Methodists - in that religion of the heart which is the heart of religion – gives particular hope for the future of Roman Catholic/Methodist relations.

As the title suggests, the latest report focuses on the sacraments, primarily baptism, communion and ministry.  The latter being particularly important as it provides the context for the other sacraments.  the report concludes:

The Seoul Report, “The Grace Given You in Christ: Catholics and Methodists Reflect Further on the Church”, harvested the fruits of Methodist-Catholic dialogue on the Church itself over the previous forty years. In the light of what had been achieved it was able to recommend practical ways in which there could be a mutual exchange of gift s between the two communions that would further the aim of full communion in faith, mission and sacramental life which was early declared as the goal of this dialogue.

In the Seoul Report it was also recognized that some matters remain questions of significant divergence between the two communions. One of these was the sacramental nature of ordination and the understanding of the ordained ministry as priesthood. Related to this was a sacrificial understanding of the Eucharist. This present document has addressed those questions, and in addition, looked for the first time in an extended way at the approach of each communion to the theology and practice of Baptism. It has done this in the context of the larger question of the sacramental understanding of the Church which has emerged consistently in reports of the dialogue over the preceding decades, and also of the paschal mystery of Christ, the way in which members of the Church participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus through the sacraments.

Finally, the report opens up a new and intriguing line of enquiry for the Commission in the future:

At the conclusion of this phase of the dialogue, there seems to be an issue that would benefit from further dialogue between Catholics and Methodists. It is the whole question of the experience of salvation and the response of the believer to the gift of God’s grace. Catholics and Methodists have different emphases in the way they speak about this, which seem to underpin a number of other matters upon which they often diverge. Catholics and Methodists can be very grateful to God that their relationship in dialogue has so deepened that the most profound matters which shape their respective identities are now able to be discussed.