Paul Couturier was a priest of the Society of St Irenaeus in Lyon, France, whose vision of spiritual ecumenism paved the way for founding of the World Council of Churches in 1947 and the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second vatican Council. John Murray PP tells his story.
Fr. Paul Couturier, an obscure schoolteacher from the city of Lyons in France, was one of the great pioneers of the ecumenical movement. Although he died in 1953 he could be called a precursor of the Second Vatican Council. His vision and understanding of Christian unity were echoed in the Council documents on ecumenism but also later in the actions and teachings of the late Pope John Paul II.
Couturier taught a spiritual ecumenism, recognizing that divisions between Churches and Christians were a spiritual problem requiring a spiritual solution. He taught the need for prayer and repentance. Although there was already in existence a ‘Week of prayer for Christian Unity’, his work gave fresh impetus to this initiative.
He was born in 1881 in Lyon and was ordained in the Society of St.Irenaeus in 1906, a company of mission and teaching priests. A graduate in physical sciences he became a teacher at the Society’s school where he remained until 1946.
Walls of separation
As a result of an Ignatian retreat in his early twenties he was encouraged to take up some relief work among Lyon’s many Russian refugees, which in turn, introduced him to Orthodoxy and a hitherto unknown world of spirituality and Church life.
Metropolitan Platon Gorodetsky (1803-1891) of Kiev had a saying, that ‘the walls of separation do not rise as far as heaven’, which became a principle of Couturier’s ecumenical outlook. Strongly influenced also by the teaching of Dom Lambert Beauduin, he placed the prayerful celebration of the Church’s liturgy at the heart of his spiritual life.
Invisible monastery
He believed that all Christians could unite in regular prayer and devotion, each according to their own tradition and insight, for the sanctification of the world and the unity of Christ’s people. So was born the idea of ‘the Invisible Monastery’, a spiritual community, beyond the earth’s ‘walls of separation’, where God’s vision of his Church’s unity could be realized.
Couturier was deeply struck that Jesus’ prayer on the night before he died was not simply for his disciples’ unity, but that they might be one as the Father and the Son are one, so that the world might believe. He realized that the unity of Christians was therefore a reality in heaven and that overcoming worldly divisions through penitence and charity would be to offer a renewed faith to the whole world. Merely human efforts would not prevail.
The power of prayer, and its potential for overcoming the wounds of centuries, lay at the heart of all Christian believers, and so he came to see that, as people grow in sanctity in their different traditions, they grow closer to Christ. If Christians could be aware of each others’ spirituality and traditions, they could grow closer to each other.
In January 1933, during the Church Unity Octave, Couturier held three days of study and prayer. The Octave had been founded in 1906 by the Reverend Spencer Jones and Fr. Paul Watson of the Friars of the Atonement (when still Anglicans) to pray for the reunion of Christians with the See of Rome. After the Friars became Roman Catholic, the observance was extended to the whole Church in 1916.
All embracing
But Couturier wanted to build on the Octave something which could embrace in prayer those who were unlikely ever to become Roman Catholics but who nevertheless desired the end to separation and the achievement of visible unity.
In 1934, Couturier’s new form was extended to a whole week, and the modern Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was born. The annual celebrations in Lyon, with their important speakers and high level ecumenical participation, became famous, attracting attention throughout Europe.
In 1936, the Abbé Couturier organized at Erlenbach in Switzerland the first interconfessional spiritual meeting, mainly of Catholic clergy and Reformed pastors, which was to meet in fellowship for many years and directly contributed to the foundations of the World Council. Two visits to England in 1937 and 1938 completed his initiation into ecumenism with the discovery of Anglicanism.
During the Second World War, largely on account of his extensive international contacts, Couturier was imprisoned by the Gestapo. This broke his health, but he identified his suffering as a cross which he was being called to take up in the service of the unity of Christians. He continued to pray the liturgy of the Church, to make arrangements for the Week of Prayer and to sustain friendships around the world.
Task of unity
He lived to rejoice in the foundation of the World Council of Churches in the aftermath of the Second World War. Although his own Church did not join the new body at that time, his hope that Rome could lead an appeal for convergence was heard by Pope Pius and doubtless informed the forthcoming Council. He died in Lyon on 24 March 1953.
At his funeral, the Archbishop of Lyons, Cardinal Gerlier, hailed him as the ‘Apostle of Christian Unity’. He said, ‘There is no sterner commandment in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose prayer it was that they may all be one. It is the great scandal of the world that Christians are divided. All those who love Jesus Christ, those also who for love of Jesus Christ love their brethren, are homesick for the unity of Christians. It was to this task of unity that dear Père Couturier dedicated his life, with a devotion and charity that were truly wonderful.’
This article first appeared in The Messenger (January 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
