Oxford 2014: Healing the past and hopes for the future
(Vatican Radio) Theologians from different countries and different Christian traditions
are gathered in the English university city of Oxford for the 8th international
conference of the Ecclesiological Investigations research network. Their three day
meeting is exploring the theme of new hope in ecumenical and interfaith relations,
with a particular focus on the English context of Anglican-Catholic dialogue.
Philippa
Hitchen is attending the conference - listen to her report:
From the soaring
spires of the medieval Oxford colleges to the brand new, prize winning chapel of the
seminary at Cuddesdon where we’re staying, participants in this conference are being
constantly challenged by memories of the past as they search for hope in the modern
ecumenical movement.
Ripon theological college was built in the mid- 19th
century by prolific English architect George Edmund Street who’s best known as the
designer of the Royal Courts of Justice in London. A leading practitioner of the Victorian
Gothic revival, he also designed the two Anglican churches of All Saints and St Paul’s
in Rome . Built in the idyllic and peaceful setting of rural Oxfordshire, just a few
miles from the city centre, Ripon is today the largest training institution for Church
of England clergy with around 70 men and women currently being prepared for ministry.
On
the first evening of the conference, we gathered in its ultra-modern chapel for a
liturgy drawn up by the ecumenical Iona Community famed for its new inspirational
music and styles of worship. Standing beneath the pale, slender, interlacing timber
columns of the chapel’s stark, light filled interior, we remembered the great Lutheran
theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the day he was executed in a concentration camp
for his defiant resistance to the Nazi regime.
The following day we were taken
for a whirlwind tour of some of the oldest Oxford colleges – Christchurch, with its
ancient cathedral, stunning stained glass windows but also some surprisingly modern
art works designed to make visitors pause and consider the role and place of religion
in contemporary society.
Then Oriel college, the birthplace of the Oxford
Movement which sought to reclaim the Catholic heritage of the Church of England. At
the top of a narrow staircase near the entrance, we visited the small oratory where
John Henry Newman prayed and worked before being received into the Catholic Church,
while in the grassy graveyard outside his companions John Keble and Edward Pusey are
buried.
Finally we finished the day with evening prayer at St John’s college,
passing on the road the place where three Anglican bishops Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley,
known as the Oxford martyrs, were burnt at the stake under the Catholic Queen Mary
in 1555.
Such vivid reminders of past divisions and efforts at reconciliation
make a fitting backdrop for this conference. How can we effectively heal bitter memories
that continue to hinder the work of reconciliation between the different Christian
Churches? How can we recover our shared spiritual heritage from the centuries before
the Reformation or the schism between East and West? Participants here are hoping
that their discussions, in some small way, can help on that journey of bringing new
hope to the ecumenical future