Healing Gifts for Wounded Hands

Healing Gifts for Wounded Hands is a work-in-progress. Please send your stories, Healing Gifts for Wounded Hands
learnings, insights and suggestions to sacc1@picknowl.com.au - thank you!
May 2014
The promise and potential of Receptive Ecumenism…
The preparation of this booklet was inspired by Professor Paul D Murray, a lay Roman Catholic theologian,
who visited Australia and New Zealand in mid-2012. Paul is Professor of Systematic Theology, and Dean
and Director of the Centre for Catholic Studies, at the University of Durham, UK. His many interests and
commitments include being a member of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission III. He is
Editor of Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary
Ecumenism (Oxford: OUP, 2008).

Paul’s visit encouraged and offered hope-filled possibility to many people across the Church in Australia &
New Zealand and led to the desire of the South Australian Council of Churches to keep alive the conversation
and action on the promise and potential of Receptive Ecumenism. We are grateful to Paul who offered
wonderful insights, wisdom, words and images during his time with us, several of which are included in this
booklet. We hope that people across the Church, in whatever land and at whatever stage or level of
involvement, will feel inspired to a new disposition and spirit-filled action on unity in Christ through the way of
Receptive Ecumenism.

This booklet is a work-in-progress: we invite you to share with us the fruits of your own deliberations and
actions.

South Australian Council of Churches South Australian Council of Churches

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our Your notes
heart is restless until it rests in you.” St Augustine

1. Principal characteristic of Receptive Ecumenism invites us, through a spirit of
   humility, and a desire for healing, to share the pain,
   Ecumenism to date the woundedness, the felt-absence, with our
   ecumenical other.
   What do others need to learn from us, if we are to “Healing gifts for wounded hands.” Paul Murray
   make real progress?
   Receptive Ecumenism encourages us to make a
   The question is understandable – being committed safe space for learning, for receiving the giftedness
   to the gifts and understandings of our own tradition of the other, for conversion and for growing more
   and discovering more about one another across fully into who God made us to be, of becoming
   the traditions is appropriate. We give thanks for the more authentically what God has called us to be.
   many positive initiatives that have grown through
   the ecumenical movement and we rejoice in the Receptive Ecumenism speaks to all layers of the
   many people who have shared their gifts and Church, without one waiting on/for another, and
   resources and responded to Jesus’ prayer for can be carried out at the level of
   unity. We trust that action together will continue to ? Local Parish or Congregation, e.g. Church
   occur. Council …
   ? Agency, e.g. Welfare, Education, Finance …
   However, conversion/inner change and resultant ? Governance/Decision-making body, e.g.
   growth has remained generally at the individual Synod, Diocese, Bishops Conference,
   level, with seemingly little impact on corporate Assembly, Board…
   conversion – leading to the wellness, or healing,
   across the structures, systems, processes and Receptive Ecumenism offers an approach that
   practices of the life and mission within each includes the potential for change, including and
   tradition. especially, across the structures and the practices
   of the various traditions – and even the way we

serve the world - “…they may all be one. As you,

1. What is Receptive Ecumenism? Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also
   be in us, so that the world may believe that you
   The question Receptive Ecumenism asks is: have sent me”. John 17:21
   What can we – and what do we need to - learn
   and receive, with integrity, from the other “Receptive ecumenism is more about self-
   traditions? examination and inner conversion than convincing
   the other; Anglicans and Roman Catholics can
   There is a growing awareness that if we were all help each other grow in faith, life and witness to
   asking and acting upon this question, we might be Christ if they are open to being transformed by
   moving in ways that could open up new God’s grace mediated through each other.” ARCIC
   possibilities in relation to our unity in Christ. The III Media Release May 2011
   question, therefore, invites us all to consider and
   address the challenges within our own tradition Receptive Ecumenism is about letting the Light of
   through learning from other traditions. Christ shine on those parts of our Church – people,
   practice, processes, systems, structures - where
   Receptive Ecumenism starts from a yearning, with we may feel shame, sorrow, confusion or absence.
   the awareness or a frustration that some practice
   or structure or process within one’s own tradition Receptive Ecumenism is about Leaning into the
   may be an inadequate, or a painful, or even an Spirit…about Longing - Listening – Learning –
   ‘absent’ manifestation of the fullness of Trinity. Loving… in the way of Christ.

Continues…