La communion dans le baptême. Point de vue catholique, questions oecuméniques

This study examines the most significant Roman Catholic documents since Vatican II on the question of the implications of common baptism for communion among Christians. Lumen Gentium recognizes that the baptized are in some real way joined with us in the Holy Spirit. Unitatis Redintegratio states that there is a certain, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. As for the 1987 Roman Catholic response to BEM, while affirming that there is a profound bond among the baptized, stronger than those things which may divide them, insists on the need for agreement on the nature of the Church, in which all sacraments find their full meaning. John Paul Il's encyclical Ut unum sint asserts that mutual recognition of baptism has a fundamentally ecclesiological significance: elements of sanctification and truth form an objective basis of communion. The author then raises a series of critical questions. Can one speak of separated (seiuncti) brethren in the light of the bond (coniunctio) based on common baptism? If all sacraments, including baptism, find their full significance in the understanding of the Church, does not the mutual recognition of baptism have interesting implications for the possibility of fuller recognition of the ecclesiality of the communities which celebrate it? The author suggests that further exploration along these lines might open the way to a more extensive recognition of the ecclesiological, sacramental, christological and pneumatological reality of ecclesial communities.