Can Hard Questions Soften Relations?

Abstract

Although the Pentecostal movement and the Roman Catholic Church have largely developed alongside each other in the first half of the twentieth century, after Vatican II and the entrance of Charismatic spirituality in the Roman Catholic Church, some great minds in both ecclesial families have made the effort to search for fruitful ways of ecumenical interaction. This led to the establishment of the International Roman Catholic–Classical Pentecostal Dialogue (IRC-CPD) in 1972, a continuing dialogue that entered its sixth phase in 2011.¹ Theological analyses of all the past phases have been undertaken, which show the results of serious efforts to bring the dialogue partners into closer proximity.² These efforts also required “thinking outside the box” on the level of ecumenical method, which is in line with Gillian Evans’s observation that “different communions have different priorities and therefore different methods are needed in their pairings with others bilaterally.”³ Up until now, no research has been undertaken to describe, analyze, and/or assess the ecumenical method in the IRCCPD.⁴ This chapter focuses on one specific element and aims to describe the development of the dialogue method in the IRCCPD: How did the dialogue partners organize their dialogue and work toward the creation of the Final Reports?⁵