Emmanuel
EUCHARIST: LIVING & EVANGELIZING
Michael Hurley, Ecumenical Pioneer
by Owen F. Cummings
Irish Jesuit Michael Hurley dedicated his life to healing the divisions among
Christians. He challenged the Catholic Church of his day to move beyond fear and
to be an active player in the work of restoring church unity. Unity is for mission and
for love; lacking unity, the church has nothing to say to a broken world.
Owen
Cummings, a
deacon of the
Diocese of
Salt Lake City,
Utah, is the
Regent’s Chair
of Theology at
Mount Angel
Seminary in
Saint Benedict,
Oregon, and
a frequent
contributor to
Emmanuel.
T
he division of Christians is for me probably the greatest scandal of the
church’s history. I am convinced that it is, much more than the vices
or mistakes of our societies, the greatest obstacle to evangelization.
Jean M. R. Tillard1
It is the considered unanimous view of all the churches involved in the
ecumenical movement that Christian disunity is a contradiction of the
church’s very nature, preventing the church from being the church,
reducing it steadily to the position in which it is more an obstacle than
an instrument of the Spirit, more an enemy than an ally of the Gospel.
Michael Hurley2
In July 1995, two theologians, both ecumenical pioneers, received
honorary doctorates from Trinity College Dublin, Hans Küng and
Michael Hurley, SJ. Both were Catholic priests, both were born in the
same decade — Küng in 1928 and Hurley in 1923, Küng in Switzerland
and Hurley in Ireland. Hans Küng became a household name, as it
were, throughout the Christian world and Michael Hurley was well
known only in Ireland. Arguably, however, Hurley achieved great
things ecumenically in Ireland, no less than Küng did globally.
If in the words that open this essay veteran ecumenist Jean Tillard
(1927-2000), the late Canadian Dominican, invites us to recognize
Christian division as the greatest scandal of the church’s history,
Michael Hurley (1923-2011) demonstrates a life committed to healing
that division. He was certainly the pioneer of ecumenism in Ireland,
the founder and first director of the Irish School of Ecumenics, now