I have a deep confessional identity. Born, baptized and raised Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism is second nature to me, like a mark on my skin. I do not regret at all the congenital anchor that it exerts in me, although now I consider it more as a base than as an end point in my journey of faith.
The Roman Catholicism in which I was raised inserted me into the mystery of Christ: Jesus, the Church, the sacraments, the Sermon on the Mount. For that, I couldn’t be more grateful. It also taught me to be slow in judging someone. However, it also taught me (with some concessions to Protestants) that basically only Roman Catholics would go to heaven, that the Roman Catholic Eucharist is the only one that produces the full “real presence,” and that Roman Catholicism is the only way totally authentic to be Christian. In addition, non-Christians (those not baptized) could not go to heaven, except for serious exceptions. Only later did I learn that other Christian denominations and world religions were returning the favor and regarding Roman Catholicism as deviant.
Things have changed for me and many others. I remain an unwavering Roman Catholic, but now I live my faith and my Roman Catholicism in communion with Anglicans, Episcopalians, Protestants, Evangelicals, Jewish and Muslim believers, all of whom are now cherished faith partners for me. At this stage in my life, I deeply appreciate the truth (which Ephesians affirms) that ultimately there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who is Father of all, especially as I increasingly appreciate more than all of us who share this one God we also share the same pains.
Several years ago, I met with a group of Divinity students at Yale University. The students came from a variety of Christian backgrounds and denominations, but shared a common goal; all were training for some type of ministry, lay or ordained, in their particular denomination. It was an open debate in which they asked me questions. Two questions dominated the discussion. The first was practical: “How do you get a job in the church?” The second concerned our topic. Some students asked, “Can I belong to more than one denomination at the same time? Can I be Evangelical and Roman Catholic at the same time? Can I be Protestant, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic at the same time if I value aspects of all three religious traditions?” .
I had no convincing answers and his questions left me with my own questions that I encounter daily at the school where I teach. The Oblate School of Theology where I teach has a doctoral program in spirituality that attracts students from various Christian denominations. These students are together in the same classes, the same cafeterias and the same social circles during the years they study here, all within a Roman Catholic institution. Very quickly, in months rather than years, as they study, pray, socialize, and share their common ideals and struggles with others, denominational issues basically disappear. Nobody cares what denomination the others belong to anymore. It is not that they do it lightly and that there is a generic fusion of the various confessional identities. That has not happened. On the contrary: in the ten years that we have been with this program, not a single student has converted to another denomination.
However, his view of other denominations and of his own denomination has changed; in essence, it has been expanded. There is a universal respect for each other’s denominations, and more than that. As these students focus on spirituality, they find that it can take them to a place where they can each affectively support other denominations, even more deeply appreciating their own.
The profound lesson is this: there is a communion and an intimacy in faith that we can have with each other, and an affective support that we can give each other beyond our confessional differences. By studying together and sharing a common faith (that goes beyond confessional differences) we realize that what we have in common is infinitely greater (and more important) than what separates us. We are also realizing that we all have the same sorrows.
Also, this is not just a rarefied experience that occurs in some divinity schools. More and more, it is becoming the common Christian experience.
So why the continued suspicion of others? Why are we more defending our own denominational specificity rather than proactively moving toward embracing each other in a common faith, especially since this can be done without threatening our own separate denominations and ecclesiologies?
The invitation is not to move towards an uncritical syncretism that is blinded to authentic confessional differences, but rather to begin to embrace more and more all our brothers and sisters in the faith, and not just those of our kind.