Graduating and Saying “Good-Bye”

Yesterday we graduated. Today people began to leave in earnest. (Father Ioannis left before the Rome trip because his father was having an operation and Kinsie left last Wednesday, but the exodus really began today.) I was up at 5.30 to say good-bye to Kongolo and Angelina; then we farewelled Linda and Anna at 11; and finally Konrad Raiser and Konstantine left after lunch. Every so often it hits me that the Graduate School is over and that I will never experience this community again – and I cry. Between homesickness and jetlag at the beginning of the five months, John’s death in the middle, and now the leave-taking at the end, I’ve cried a lot here.

I have also been spending the day trying to fit all my possessions into the one 20 kg suitcase that Austrian Airlines allows me. I’m not sure it’s going to work – I may have to rapidly eat all the Swiss chocolate that I’ve bought for my family.

{I suspect that Jesus told the disciples not to take anything with them when they set out to evangelise because he knew what a bad effect packing has on one’s temper. People with big suitcases would just be too bloody frustrated to share the gospel convincingly.}

I gave one of the speeches at the Graduation Ceremony: the one on the academic programme. (Fritz-Gerald got the interesting speech on “community”.) Since it summarises what we’ve been doing at Bossey, I thought I’d stick it here, too. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the actual academic programme on this blog before, except to whinge about exams. So, this is what the “School” part of the “Graduate School” was about.

Speech for Graduation

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12b) Over the past five months we have studied deeply, and at the end of this Graduate School our flesh is very weary.

We have pondered the nature of Spirituality. We examined it from the perspectives of the Orthodox and Catholic churches; and the ‘Life and Work’ and ‘Faith and Order’ streams of the World Council of Churches. We heard about the spirituality of the World Student Christian Federation and the Missionary Movement. And we were enlightened by Jewish, Muslin, Buddhist and Hindu visitors, who shared their approach to Spirituality with us.

We memorized the dates and the names of more ecumenical conferences than you can imagine. We will never forget Edinburgh 1910, or Stockholm 1925, or Lausanne 1927. And if any of you would like to know what happened at any of these gatherings, we can tell you in almost excruciating detail. But through this list of names and dates we learnt of ecumenical pioneers who have inspired us: J. H. Oldham; Charles Brent; Nathan Solderblom; W. A. Visser t’Hooft; Suzanne de Dietrich; Sarah Chakko; and many, many others. We in the ecumenical movement are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses that we can confidently run the race that is set before us, seeking the visible unity of the one Church.

In our modules we studied biblical hermeneutics, ecumenical theology, missiology, and social ethics. We listened and we argued, we discussed and we disagreed; and over our five months together, we learnt a lot. We appreciated the great commitment, knowledge and openness of our module professors. Since they’re both here today, we particularly thank Konrad Raiser and Gervasis Karumathy. The students in Social Ethics and Biblical Hermeneutics were given the great gifts of Konrad’s wisdom and experience and Gervasis’ enthusiasm and love of the Scriptures, and we want to offer them our deep gratitude and appreciation. We’d also like to mention Elizabeth Raiser, who did not have an official role in our academic program, but who together with Barbara Robra shared with us the role women have played and continue to play in the ecumenical movement. Without Elizabeth and Barbara our understanding of ecumenism would be unbalanced.

{At this point Aimee took over for a paragraph, mentioning that we also learnt French, and thanking our French teacher in French. Did you know that apparently you cannot say “It was also a lot of fun” in French? She had to say that bit in English. Weird.}

Finally, we survived the exams, and for this we all thank God. For some of us, the prospect of doing an exam in a language that is not our mother tongue was terrifying. Others of us had never done oral exams before and had no idea what they would be like. For two weeks a deep, dark cloud hung over Bossey. Now that we have emerged again into the sunlight we can look back in celebration and appreciation of everything that this Graduate School has given us.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7) Over the past five months we have not been fools. We have learnt together in the fear of the LORD, and we thank Bossey, all the Friends of Bossey, the World Council of Churches and the wider ecumenical movement for giving us the opportunity. Thank you.

Rome: Hierarchy and Humility

I don’t like hierarchy, especially not in the church. I don’t know whether this is a Uniting Church thing or an Australian thing or an Avril thing, but the idea that some people are more important than others sets my teeth on edge. I know that true equality is impossible in this world, but I don’t want to accept inequality. I want our understanding of humanity to begin from the perspective that every single one of us is created in the image of God, and so no one human being is greater than another.

I had difficulty with the manifestations of hierarchy I saw in Rome. For me, “hierarchy” is not a positive thing, and I was surprised by the explanation of members of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the Unity of Christians that one of the things necessary for full communion between the Catholic Church and other churches is the “apostolically-related hierarchic ministry”. In the understanding of the Catholic Church, “having bishops is part of God’s understanding of the church”. The church needs hierarchy.

They would argue that the way they are using “hierarchy” is not the way I use it. I see it as a form of domination; they see it as a form of service. There needs to be some authority in the church to hold it together as a community, and so the church has been given the gift of personal episcopacy as the way in which that authority is to be exercised. The Pope himself is the “Servant of the Servants of God”, not a tyrant.

Yet it seemed to me that the hierarchy I saw in Rome did promote inequality within the Catholic Church. Priests are more important than the laity; bishops are more important than priests; cardinals are more important than bishops; and the Pope is more important than anyone else. And you can tell this because of the clothes that people wear, and by watching who bows to whom and whose ring is kissed.

(Given that the Catholic Church sees women’s ordination as something “introduced in recent decades by some Reformed churches”, this means that men are always more important than women.)

I first noticed this sense of hierachy in the thanks that our Catholic liaison person made on our behalf to the various people who spoke to us. It seemed very clear that the various cardinals and bishops who met with us were more important than us and that we should be very grateful that they had condescended to meet with us. It was not just a matter of them being busy people who had made time for us in busy schedules – they were intrinsically more important than us.

The second place that I noticed this was, of course, at the Papal Audience. The crowd screaming “Benedetto” and desperate to meet the Pope and shake his hand turned the “Servant of the Servants” into some sort of celebrity. And celebrities are by definition people who are more important than we run-of-the-mill types. There is no doubt that the Pope, in the role he plays in the world, is more important than most of us. But the church is the church of the least, where the last shall be first, and where we are not to lord it over each other. It’s hard to remember the radical equality that characterises the gospel of Jesus Christ at a Papal Audience.

I know that there is a hierarchy within the Uniting Church, and that it is possibly more insidious because we can’t tell who has got the power simply by looking at the clothes people wear. But the Uniting Church also opens its governance to all members, lay and ordained, women and men, through its various Councils; and seeks to ensure that everyone is heard within those councils by using consensus proceedures within them. I think that this is much more reflective of the nature of the church as Body of Christ than “hierarchic ministry”.

When we came home and reflected together on our time at Rome I was given another perspective. One of the African students spoke appreciatively of the great humility of the Pope. Despite the role the Pope plays in the world, he said, the Pope was humble enough to come and shake the hands of the common people at the Audience. He compared this favourably with the behaviour of leaders within his own (Pentecostal) church in Africa, who once in positions of power will not allow “ordinary people” to talk to them, and will definitely not shake hands with them.

It appears that the Catholic Church is more hierarchical than the Uniting Church in Australia, but less hierarchical than at least one pentecostal church in Africa!