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PROVIDENCE — The Catholic Church recently celebrated the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. First proposed by the American Episcopal minister-turned-Franciscan friar Father Paul Watson in 1908, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is a period, usually taking place in the second to last week of January, in which leaders from different Christian denominations come together to take part in prayer services and other events dedicated to promoting ecumenical dialogue.
Such a period leads us to reflect on those major questions concerning the nature and goals of the ecumenical movement. Yet, what often goes unappreciated is how the efforts of the ecumenical movement unfold on a local level. This is important to consider, since it is how Catholics and non-Catholics interact with each other day-to-day that lays the basis for how and at what pace the goals of the ecumenical movement unfold.
In the Diocese of Providence, the man who did the most to set the stage for the ecumenical movement on a local level was the Most Rev. Russell McVinney, D.D. Serving from 1947 to 1971, he was the bishop who represented the diocese during the Second Vatican Council, and was the first to implement the teachings and reforms of the Council in Rhode Island.
To understand the significance of Bishop McVinney’s contribution to ecumenical efforts, we must first appreciate the religious history of Rhode Island, which serves as the cornerstone for most of the history of the Ocean State.
The Rhode Island colony was established in the early 17th century when Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished from the Plymouth colony and settled in Rhode Island within a few years of each other in the 1630s, establishing communities in what is now Providence, Portsmouth and Newport. Williams was a member of the newly emerging Baptist Church, and Hutchinson was a supporter of a school of thought common among some radical Protestants known as antinomianism. Both antinomianism and the Baptist church were seen as heretical by the Puritan establishment in Plymouth.
From an early period, the political and religious leaders of the Rhode Island colony desired the establishment of a purely secular government, one that did not regulate religious affairs or establish a state-funded church. The charter of the Rhode Island colony was the first to allow for complete religious freedom for all religions. It was because of this that, according to J. Stanley Lemons, a professor-emeritus of history at Rhode Island College and the in-house historian for the First Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island quickly became the home to various fringe Protestant sects and was thus given such nicknames as “the hive of heretics” and “Rogue Island.”
Prior to the early 19th century, Catholicism was non-existent in Rhode Island. The earliest record of a Catholic Mass being celebrated on Rhode Island soil was among French troops stationed in the Rhode Island colony during the Revolutionary War. At the turn of the 19th century, a small group of French colonists from Haiti, most of whom were Catholic, temporarily settled in Rhode Island to avoid the heated political situation resulting from the Haitian Revolution.
The first long-term Catholic communities in Rhode Island were established in the 1820s with a wave of Irish immigrants who settled in this region during this time to help in the construction of the Blackstone Canal. The Catholic population grew slowly but steadily over the course of the next century, until by the early 20th century Rhode Island had a majority Catholic population.
Despite its large Catholic population, and its heritage as an innovator in religious toleration, Lemons describes the relationship between Catholics and Protestants in Rhode Island at that time as “mutually terrible.”
“Anti-Catholicism was no worse in Rhode Island than elsewhere,” Lemons continued, noting how many Rhode Islanders gave in to the nativist fears that Catholicism would undermine American culture and politics. This motivated some Rhode Islanders to ally themselves with radical political ideologies and movements, including the KKK, with even some prominent clergymen endorsing or joining the group.
Father Robert W. Hayman, Ph.D., in his upcoming book on the history of the Catholic Church since the latter part of the 20th century, describes what these tensions were like.
Even though anti-Catholic sentiments were somewhat curbed in the 1940s and 1950s due to the patriotic tendencies that resulted from the Second World War, they did not entirely go away even during this period, sometimes being propagated even by prominent institutions within the State.
In spite of this, as early as the late 1920s and 1930s several organizations formed, both in Rhode Island, as well as nationally, made up of representatives of Catholicism, Judaism and the various Protestant denominations to promote interreligious harmony and cooperation between different religions on various social justice causes.
Bishop McVinney always had some level of involvement in these groups since the earliest days of his career.
Father Hayman notes that, in 1940, while still serving as a priest, then-Father McVinney gave a speech at an event organized by a local ecumenical organization.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, several prominent Catholic laymen and clergy from the state were honored by the Rhode Island/Southern Massachusetts branch of the National Conference for Christians and Jews (NCCJ), an early organization meant to promote interreligious dialogue. Bishop McVinney frequently attended events organized by the NCCJ and was even one of the clergy honored by the organization in 1964 for his promotion of fair housing policies.
Despite his early involvement in the ecumenical movement, Bishop McVinney’s views on ecumenism evolved with time. For example, in a sermon delivered in 1953 at the beginning of an eight-day-long series of prayer services held at the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul to promote Christian unity, Bishop McVinney promoted what was then the major point of emphasis within Catholic theological circles concerning ecumenism, namely that non-Catholic branches of Christianity represented members of the flock of Christ who had become estranged from the one, true Church, and that true unity can exist in the Church only when all Christians are in communion with the Catholic Church under the leadership of the pope.
While the Second Vatican Council did not reverse this view, the Council did bring about a shift in emphasis, claiming that Catholics should take a more dialogical approach in which they work together with non-Catholics to talk through their differences, and act together for the sake of social, moral and political goals of common interest.
In his final years as diocesan shepherd, Bishop McVinney exemplified this attitude, and this was seen particularly in his friendship with Pastor Homer Trickett, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Providence.
Father Hayman notes how Pastor Trickett was one in a series of non-Catholic clergymen appointed to the Diocesan Ecumenical Committee in 1967, which also included representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church and Episcopal ecclesial community.
Yet, of all the non-Catholic leaders with whom Bishop McVinney worked, he was on particularly friendly terms with Pastor Trickett, and it is for this reason that on December 16, 1969, Pastor Trickett invited Bishop McVinney to deliver a sermon at his church on the occasion of an ecumenical event hosted by the First Baptist Church, thereby making Bishop McVinney one of the first Catholic clergymen in Rhode Island to preach in a non-Catholic place of worship in any official or formal setting.
This event represented a major breakthrough in Catholic-Protestant relations in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, in spite of this, not all Baptists were at first on board with the general direction that Pastor Trickett and other like-minded pastors and theologians wanted the Baptist Church to go in. Lemons described Pastor Trickett as “a strong advocate of ecumenical relations” whose views were “typical of American Baptist pastors of a liberal bent.” Yet, he went on to note how more conservative Baptists continued to see Catholic theology as being seriously flawed on a fundamental level and believed that Catholics needed to be converted to Protestantism. Yet, in the ensuing decades, many Catholics and conservative Protestants began to ally with each other in response to various hot-button social issues, especially abortion.
While these hot-button social issues made possible a certain level of dialogue and cooperation between groups that had traditionally been hostile towards one another, it was these same issues that further complicated the ecumenical movement in the state.
“In my opinion, the thing that put the death nail in ecumenism was abortion,” said Father John Kiley, the director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Activity for the Diocese of Providence.
Issues of abortion, gay marriage and transgenderism represented what Father Kiley describes as a “parting of the ways” between Catholicism and more liberal Protestants.
On the other hand, while more conservative Protestants, particularly of an Evangelical bent, hold to views nearly identical to that of the Catholic Church on many social issues, and therefore have an increased openness to working with Catholics on these issues, many members of these denominations still have a certain level of hesitancy with regard to taking part in formal ecumenical meetings or prayer services with Catholics.
Father Kiley noted that it is for these reasons that ecumenical activity has slowed down in Rhode Island. Much of the ecumenical activity in the diocese is kept alive by small groups scattered throughout the state made up of representatives from different denominations.
Father Kiley suggested that the laity begin to take a more proactive role in ecumenism, bringing to the attention of their local priests concerns for ecumenism and help to organize ecumenical events under the guidance of their local clergy.
