Discovering new dimensions of catholicity and ecumenism

Abstract

The Second Vatican Council was a fundamental step in the shift from Catholicism to Catholicity, to an ecumenical universal openness to which the Church is summoned and which is one of the important signs of its authenticity. What I call “Catholicism” is the form of Church and theology that was created as a counterculture first vis-à-vis Protestantism and later vis-à-vis the Enlightenment, secular humanism, and secular political ideologies. At the Second Vatican Council, three major overtures in the direction of ecumenism emerged from the besieged fortress of “Catholicism”: dialogue with the non-Catholic Christian Churches, with non Christian religions, and with secular culture, including atheistic humanism.