Reflections on a Term at the Gregorian University

The next section I told them that an Oxford professor had prodded me to think new thoughts when he responded to the question, “How do you see the future of the Church”? He began by saying, “In 300 years, there will only be two religions left in the world. One will be Christianity and the other will be Islam.” He went on to claim that the only Christian Church that would survive was the Catholic Church. That conversation led me to ask what I thought was an obvious question regarding the hundreds of millions of Pentecostals and Charismatics. Where do they end up? His response was that they would find their home in a restored, revivified Catholic Church.

As I have pondered these statements since I first heard them over a decade ago, I have become convinced that such a scenario is, indeed, possible. As a result, I tried to demonstrate how I thought this scenario might play out. First, the level of rapprochement between the Orthodox and Catholic Church in 2018 is remarkable when compared to the events that split the Church in 1054. The Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, and Pope Francis continue to work on issues between them. The Moscow Patriarch, Kirill, and Pope Francis are enjoying a better relationship. The fact that an initial “Pan-Orthodox” meeting was undertaken in 2016, though without the full participation of Russia are all evidence of new possibilities for future recognition between East and West. Is it not possible to imagine a reunited Eastern and Western, Orthodox and Catholic Church in 300 years? [Editor’s note: Read Harold D. Hunter’s review essay of the biography of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “Journey with the Orthodox.”]

While the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith in 1999, resolving a nearly five-hundred-year old dispute between Catholics and Protestants, the decline of membership among historic Protestant churches is troubling. It may be that the enormous decline of Protestant churches in Europe and in North America in particular, point towards the end of the entire Protestant experiment. We can explain this decline in a number of ways, though none of them is necessarily decisive. The contribution to individualism made by Protestantism in the West has also contributed to independence in many areas of life including church life. In some ways it seems like many Protestant churches have returned to the situation described in the Judges, in which “all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25). Virtually all of the historic Protestant denominations are currently shrinking, especially in North America and Europe, some of them quite dramatically. Protestantism seems now to reflect the larger culture instead of standing against the sinful aspects of culture in important counter-cultural ways.

In the meantime, the varieties of Pentecostalisms around the world and especially in the Global South continue to grow, more or less unabated. While many Protestant churches have never embraced those within their ranks who have experienced the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal ways, the Catholic Church has. Not only is it unique in this regard, it has fostered the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in substantial ways. Every Pope since Paul VI has blessed the renewal. Pope John Paul II authorized an official voice for it with an office in the Vatican. Pope Francis made a trip to Caserta, Italy shortly after his installation, where he preached and apologized to the Pentecostals of Italy for past acts of persecution by Catholics, inviting them to work with him on issues of Christian unity. He also participated fully in the events surrounding the 50^th Anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic renewal, encouraging them, and requesting that they work for greater unity between them. Today, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal accounts for over 11% of all Catholics worldwide, approximating or surpassing the membership of the Pentecostal World Fellowship. Is it too hard for God to bring about yet greater renewal in the Catholic Church over the next 300 years in which the message of Pentecostalism might be fully embraced? I think not![6]

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Category: Ministry, Spring 2018