United in preaching the Gospel” “

Solemn Vespers celebrated in the Cathedral of Westminster by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Basil of Sergievo and by the two auxiliary Catholic bishops of the diocese of Westminster, James O’Brien and George Stack: that’s how the 96th Week of Prayer for Christian Unity began in the United Kingdom will begin on Saturday 17January. It’s the first time that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches will join together for so important a religious service, a sign of how much progress has been made by the path towards the unity of the two Churches. This key ecumenical event will be celebrated in the UK by a number of other joint religious services, as well as by the exchange of pastors and congregations. loughborough, an ecumenical community. The various events planned during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity are being organized by “Churches together”, one of the most important ecumenical centres in the UK in which all the Christian Churches are represented. In Loughborough, a town of some 50,000 inhabitants in northern England that is a kind of microcosm of the rest of the country, all the most important Christian faiths in the UK are present, Catholics and Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Christadelphians, United Reformed and Free Churches. Father Philip Scanlan, parish priest of St. Mary’s, one of the two Catholic churches in the town, explains what will happen in his parish during the Prayer Week. “On Saturday 17 January we have invited to our pre-festive Mass the faithful of the Free Church ‘The Well’, and on Sunday 18 January there’ll be an exchange of congregations. The faithful of St. Mary’s will be asked not only to attend the Catholic Mass here, but also to participate in one of the religious services being held at the Anglican ‘Good Shepherd Church’. On Sunday 25 January, at 6.00 pm, we will host an ecumenical celebration with readings from Holy Scripture and prayers of the faithful. All the other Christian churches of Loughborough have been invited and the sermon will be given by the Rev. David Shirtliff of the ‘Trinity Methodist Church'”. “Let’s not disguise difficulties and differences”. According to Father Philip, who is vice-president of “Churches together” in Loughborough, the ecumenical relations between the Catholics and other Christian communities of the United Kingdom improved a great deal after Vatican Council II. “Before the Council, it was impossible for Catholics even to think of participating in a service in a Protestant church. Today such ecumenical meeting are a well-consolidated reality. In spite of everything, we avoid speaking of the obstacles that still divide us. For fear of offending each other, we are very courteous, but not very honest, and in this way the path towards unity does not progress”. A different point of view is expressed by Father Andrew Faley, in charge of the office for ecumenical relations of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. “Over the years the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has yielded important results, especially for the Catholic Church. Today – explains Faley – the faithful of Rome no longer feel themselves a minority discriminated against, as in the past, but an important and essential part of the religious life of the UK. Important progress has been made in the search for unity with the Anglicans. The meeting between the new archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and John Paul II in October 2003 was very significant, and in recent weeks the Anglican Primate has asked the Catholic Church for its help in tackling the problem of the divisions generated by the ordination of the homosexual bishop Gene Robinson”. “Of course, obstacles still exist”, concludes Father Faley, “the Eucharist, the ordination of priests and the difficult problem of authority, but they have a positive role because they spur us to work harder to understand what are the most important truths for Anglicans and Catholics and what is the role and significance of the Church”. According to Fawley, the objective of ecumenism “today is not unity but the preaching of the message of the Gospel to non-believers. We must pursue this goal and work together to achieve it, but the way in which we shall reach it is a mystery, it is in God’s hands. It is up to us only to be his servants”.