Paulists make big splash in interfaith and ecumenical worlds

by Father Tom Ryan, C.S.P.

In 1986, the Paulist General Assembly, the community’s highest decision-making body, placed ecumenism alongside evangelization and reconciliation as one of the Paulist Mission Direction orientations. In doing so, the Paulists were responding not only to Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism and Declaration on Interreligious Relations, but also to their own history of reaching out to Protestants and Jews in North America.

Father Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P., helped put the ecumenical boat in the water. In September 1960, Cardinal Augustine Bea, president of Pope John XXIII’s newly created Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and its secretary, Monsignor Johannes Willebrands, asked him to come aboard their new little boat in Vatican waters as one of the two crewmen.

	Father Tom Ryan, C.S.P.

“All that we had in hand was a three-word papal mandate: Promote Christian unity,” said Father Stransky. “The Cardinal wryly remarked in our original chat, ‘No one will tell us, ‘This is the way we did it last year.’”

The secretariat was formed as one of the preparatory commissions for the Second Vatican Council. In October 1960, they handed Father Stansky the file on a proposal for the Council to address the church's relationship with the Jewish people. He staffed that proposal as it developed through the council to become the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), promulgated on October 28, 1965. Concluding his service in Rome in 1970, he returned to the United States and served as president of the Paulist Fathers. In 1986, he began serving as rector of Tantur Ecumenical Institute until his retirement, continuing to serve during those years as a consultor to the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. Today, he writes and lectures internationally on ecumenical and interreligious relations.

Michael McGarry, C.S.P., now beginning his ninth year as rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, is hopeful for new beginnings in the local and international ecumenical world. Over the last few years, political uncertainties in the Middle East combined with fears in much of the English-speaking Christian world, have discouraged scholars and Christian educators from venturing to Jerusalem. But now many are returning to the place where Christianity began – even though its divisions have all been imported from outside.

Father Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P.

In addition to welcoming scholars to Tantur, Father McGarry works with local Christian leaders for the unity of the church and with Jewish leaders to foster mutual understanding. This specifically includes assisting the leadership of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel. He also serves as the secretary to the Roman Catholic Patriarch’s Commission on Relations with the Jewish People. For many in the west, this may not seem so dramatic, as one may think of local American Jewish-Christian relations. However, one needs to remember that most Holy Land Christians are Arabs, and politics is never far from the discussion even as Israeli Jews and Palestinian Christians seek to understand one another.

Administered by the University of Notre Dame, Tantur is an international institute, so Father McGarry’s work often takes him out of the Holy Land to participate in ecumenical and interreligious conferences; he has recently presented papers in Stockholm and the Gregorian University in Rome.

On the national scene in the United States, Father Ron Roberson, C.S.P., is an associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. Father Roberson’s interest in Eastern Christianity was further strengthened by his doctoral work at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome where he specialized in Orthodox systematic theology.

	Father Michael McGarry, C.S.P.

In the office at the Bishops’ Conference, he staffs the Catholic dialogues at the national level with the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches as well as the Polish National Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church. He also has responsibility for the USCCB’s participation in Christian Churches Together in the USA, a new ecumenical forum that brings together all the major Christian faith traditions of the country. He puts out a monthly newsletter called The SEIA Newsletter on the Eastern Churches and Ecumenism.

Before moving to Washington, Father Roberson was a member of the staff of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity for four years. He is member of the International Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches and occasionally lectures on the Orthodox Churches at the State Department’s National Foreign Affairs Training Center near Washington. Father Roberson has published widely on the Eastern churches and ecumenism in various journals, encyclopedias and theological dictionaries.

In 1998, the Paulist General Assembly moved to create a Paulist North American Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations (PEIR), now located in Washington, D.C., as a way of giving clearer expression to the community’s commitment in work for Christian unity and interreligious understanding and collaboration.

To initiate and develop the work of this office, the community’s leadership put out a call to Father Tom Ryan, C.S.P., who had worked nationally in Canada for 14 years, directing the Montreal-based Canadian Centre for Ecumenism, before serving as founder-director of an ecumenical center for spirituality called Unitas (latin: unity) co-sponsored by eight different denominations in Montreal.

Father Ron Roberson, C.S.P.

Father Ryan’s work can be summarized in four words: information, education, representation and action. Through consultative visits, a quarterly newsletter, and the sharing of information and resources via the Internet, he assists Paulist ministry centers in exercising initiative in their local context.

He also represents the Paulists at various regional, national and international ecumenical and interreligious conferences, assuring a Paulist presence and voice at events such as the National Workshop on Christian Unity, the North American Academy of Ecumenists, and the Parliament of World Religions, as well as by serving on various dialogues such as the Mid-Atlantic Catholic-Muslim Dialogue and as an advisor to the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (Buddhist-Catholic).

Father Tom also promotes Christian unity and interfaith understanding in a variety of pastoral and action-oriented ways aimed at the grass roots: preaching ecumenical parish missions called Gospel Call; leading ecumenical and interfaith retreats; and giving talks, seminars and workshops for clergy and laity. He sends out a monthly column to about 20 church newspapers; writes books and magazine articles; and networks with other related organizations and communities who also carry this mission, such as the Graymoor Friars and Sisters of the Atonement, and the Sisters of Sion.

The Paulists may be a small Community, but the work of these and other Paulists is like a pebble dropped into the waters of the church’s life. Small pebble, but big ripple.

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