Difference between revisions of "Ecumenical"

Latest revision as of 13:45, 30 October 2015

The adjective 'ecumenical' - pronounced with the stress on the third syllable 'ee-kyoo-ME-ni-cal' IPA: /iːk juː ˈmɛn ɪk ^əl/ or, as a primarily American realization, 'eck-yoo-ME-ni-cal'IPA: /ɛk juː ˈmɛn ɪk ^əl/ - means 'worldwide'. The same applies, mutatis mutandis to the older and now obsolete form ecumenic, ecumenism, ecumenist and other formations; in Early Modern English these were usually written with the initial digraph ɶ. The word comes from the Greek οἰκουμενικός‚ (oikoumenikos, worldwide), an adjective formed from ἡ οἰκουμένη (he oikoumene), which means 'the (inhabited) world'.

The word 'ecumenical' has two main uses.

• The word is used to describe certain Councils of the Christian Church which have been called from time to time to settle disputed points of doctrine and other matters of general concern to the Church. These Councils are ecumenical Councils because, at least in theory, they are attended by bishops from all parts of the (Christian) world. The first ecumenical Council, which was held in 325 CE at Nicaea, a city in northwest Asia Minor, was called and presided over by the Roman emperor Constantine, who had issued invitations to attend to all the bishops in the Roman Empire - though in fact of the approximately 275 bishops who attended no more than half-a-dozen were from the western half of the Empire. In practice, given the difficulties of communication and travel in the Ancient World, the presence of all the bishops at the early ecumenical Councils could never have been a realistic expectation, and it is only the more recent Councils which have involved the presence of bishops from all parts of the world. Altogether there have been twenty one ecumenical Councils, though after the Great (East-West) Schism in 1054, when the Roman Catholic Church separated from what is today known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, ecumenical Councils have involved only bishops from the Roman Catholic Church; and the Eastern Orthodox Church recognises only the first seven Councils as ecumenical. Perhaps the best known of the ecumenical Councils is the Council of Trent, which met in the city of Trento in northeast Italy between 1545 and 1563 and addressed the need to reform the Roman Catholic Church to combat the spread of Protestantism. The last ecumenical Council was held in Rome between 1962 and 1965.

• The word 'ecumenical' is also used to describe a movement which began towards the end of the nineteenth century and seeks to promote Christian unity and to encourage cooperation between the various Christian Churches. The movement gained significant support at the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, and its aims were adopted by the World Council of Churches, an organisation which was established in 1948 and has among its members many Protestant denominations, the Anglican Church, most of the Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches, but not the Roman Catholic Church. The noun 'ecumenism' may refer either to the ecumenical movement or to its aims and the beliefs which motivate it.