CWR: John Paul II: Diagnostician of Divisions, Doctor of Ecumenism by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille
In the encyclical Ut Unim Sint
, given twenty five years ago, the late pope wrote about “the necessary purification of past memories,” a consistent and urgent theme of his pontificate.
Deville uses both Taft and John Paul II for a discussion of the healing of memories. That certainly is a necessary part of reconciliation.
Nevertheless, there are more recent and more hopeful signs. These have increased with Constantinople’s granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church last year. With Russia thereby losing control over much of Ukrainian Orthodoxy in 2019, the latter remains free to deepen the healing in its already amicable and often co-operative relationship with Ukrainian Catholics.
Whether what is going on in Ukraine is a helpful development or not remains to be seen. The jockeying between Moscow and Constantinople needs to end (and recognition of Roman primacy is not the quick solution that Latin polemicists would make it to be); this may require further humbling of both historic sees by God. There needs to be ecclesial reform happening in many churches, but not the changes that liberal progressives want.
