Unity Is Not Comfortable Or Safe

A few weeks ago, I listened to a speech by Abbot Primate Notker Wolf "the highest representative of Benedictine men and women worldwide." He had been asked to speak on "ecumenism in the 21st century." Being as I am almost entirely deaf to the nuances of Catholic culture, I may have misunderstood him, but what I thought I heard was very interesting.

Most of his speech argued that calls for religious "unity" were asking the impossible, given human diversity and nature. He supported this contention with personal experiences and global examples.

He pointed out that tolerance of diversity might be common in some areas, but religious tolerance was not "unity." Protestations that we "all get along" or "learn we all share the same faith" generally covered the expectation that everyone else would change to become just like one's self. An insidious hidden agenda of many calls for Christian unity, much less calls for unity with other faiths, this actually caused disunity. A similar expectation undermined the commonly stated Christian desire that we "all be one."

Yet after a long, torturous journey through disheartening realism, Notker Wolf's final message was uplifting. If we really care about "unity" we must learn to live together and love one another with all our differences intact. He mentioned that he meant really live together, not simply host one another as guests, and then go home to our separate communities (as Benedictines are so adept at doing.)

"Ecumenism" meant joining together, and learning to live together, despite old enmities, without first curing those enmities.

What a breath of fresh and bracing air.

Near the end of his rule, Benedict says that as monks grow in humility they learn to support with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of character and body. Benedict expects monks to be full of weaknesses. The goal is not curing your own faults, much less your neighbor's, but learning to embrace each other - annoying weaknesses and all.

If real "unity" is a matter of joining across difference, it is not going to be safe or comfortable. It requires letting go of fear, letting go of the need to own and control, and being willing to open to those different enough to feel very dangerous - without expecting that they will change in any way.

Do I think I can do this? Not to any very great extent. But I desperately wish to try.

It's very heartening that a prominent Benedictine such as Abbot Primate Notker Wolf would set such a hard, realistic agenda for Benedictine communities. He makes me think some mainstream Benedictines might be ready to try also.