In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII surprised the world by calling for a major church counsel at the Vatican.  Entitled Vatican II, it was designed to streamline Catholicism, modernizing it in a way that would appeal to a wide variety of people.  There was a deeper, long-range goal:  ultimately,  Vatican II was intended to reclaim the loyalties of Protestants, reunite the Christian church, and erase the Reformation.  All Christians would be persuaded to celebrate a single form of the Lords Supper.

The Mass is the very essence of Roman Catholic worship.  Believing the real presence of Christ to be in the bread and wine consecrated by the priest, devout Catholics take communion in the belief that they have taken into their beings the physical body of Jesus.  This act is the heart and soul of Catholicism, and it has profound implications.  If it is true, then the authority of the priest is awesome: he is given the power to call Almighty God down from heaven into a wafer called the communion host.

When one believes this to be possible, it is a short step to other beliefs: the priest who has such power can also forgive sin.  He can grant absolution.  He can prescribe penance.  And he can consign a soul to the fires of hell.

The act of communion is, therefore, indescribably powerful in Catholicism.  It logically leads to many other elements of the Catholic belief system, which means that if the Protestant should accept this form of the Lords Supper they would perhaps without realizing its implications- have accepted all the concepts that flow with it.  Ironically, in the process they might feel a warm ecumenical glow.

[L]ittle by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered, in a common celebration of the Eucharist, into the unity of the one and only churchthe Catholic Church.  Unitatis Redintergrato, p.457 (1964)

When the obstacles hindering perfect ecclesiastical communion have been surmounted, the unity of all Christians may at last be restoredto asingle new peoplecelebrating one eucharistic mystery.  Post Conciliar Doccuments, p.515

One eucharistic mystery.  Unity restored.  A single new people.  It is a brilliant plan to reunify the church, and it centers on the Lords Supper which means that when Roman Catholic communion terminology or techniques show up in Protestantism, there may be more happening than meets the eye.

No Christian community can be built up unless it has as its basis the Holy EucharistThe supreme manifestation of this is the Sunday assemblyon whichby apostolic tradition, the pascal mystery is celebrated (p. 117)

In high school geometry we learned the principle that thing equal to the same thing are equal to each other.  Apply that principle to the strategy found Vatican II, and you get the following exercise in logic:  the Eucharist (in other words, the mass), will one day thus be celebrated by all Christians, who will thus be reunited as a single new people.  The supreme manifestation of the Eucharist is the Sunday assembly.  Therefore, Sunday worship will reunite the Christian world.

If, as we have shown, the goal of Vatican II is to erase the Reformation, it is worth noting that most Christians are already doing part of what Vatican II says will accomplish this: they are participating in the Sunday assembly.

So Vatican II redefined modern Catholicism and set up a blueprint for the strategic restructuring of Christianity.  Meanwhile, within the church some very gifted tacticians set about designing how all this could be accomplished in a relatively short time.  In a book entitled Unity of the Churches: an Actual Possibility, they proposed a plan by which the process of reunification could be hastened, and it is worth a moment of our time because it helps to explain the many headlines we have seen in recent years reporting rapid progress in the Protestant-Catholic relations.

First, the proponents of this plan (two respected) European Jesuits recognized that even in todays world many Protestants might balk at rejoining Rome, so they decided that the way to convince church members was not be direct appeal to them.  Instead, they would seek out thought leaders in the various denominations who could be persuaded that it was time for ecumenical reunification.  In other words, the decision would be made privately, by a few thought leaders, rather then by the members of the churches at large.

In turn, these various church leaders would work politically within their several denominations, selling the idea to their own people.  Using the terms and ideas their church members would be most comfortable with, they could work far more effectively than could an outsider.  Gently at first, but persistently, they would keep the idea before their membership in meetings, in publications, in subtle shifts of terminology and emphasis.  In todays world such a change is called a paradigm shift.  Within such a church, the result would be a loss of the sense of unique identity that had once marked that denomination.

As momentum for reunification grew, an ecumenical union of churches would be formed.  Individual denominations would remain, and church organizations would stay intact, but these apparently independent churches would be drawn together under the umbrella of Papal leadership: all partner churches would be expected to acknowledge the Pope as the guarantor of Christian unity.

To accelerate this process, the plan suggested lots of interchange between the churches.  Pastors from the various denominations would regularly exchange pulpits, a technique well-suited to promoting ecumenism.  Expose people to other faiths, so the theory went, and barriers would melt away.  A visiting pastor is discovered to be a real flesh and blood person instead of just a name on the bulletin board of a competing church, and after preaching his (or her) best sermon, the guest speaker has a chance to cement new friendships over coffee in the church social hall.  A little of this, and people will inevitably begin asking a question: how important is doctrine anyway?  Why not just unite on the fact that we are all Christians?

For Christians who dream of unity among believers, the argument is exceedingly attractive.  But buried within it is a challengeL what if unity requires one to give up a known, Biblical truth?

This tactical plan, building on the strategic goals of Vatican II, was published in 1983 by Jesuits Heinrich Fries and Karl Rahner.  Two decades later one is entitled to ask, was the plan any good?

To answer that question, one might consider the following headlines, taken at random from recent news stories:

Baptists embrace ties with Catholics

Evangelicals reach to Catholics

Catholics, evangelicals join hands

Catholic, evangelical decree espouses ties

Catholics, Protestants sign pledge of unity

All of these appeared in various American newspapers during the past few years.  And the cover of a conservative Catholic magazine, as if to remind us of the proposal that change agents should work within Protestant denominations, announced the best-kept secret in the Church: Protestant seminary manufactures Catholic converts.  Sursum Corda - magazine, special promotional edition.

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