Emmanuel
From that time on, Hurley became a major player — arguably the
major player — on the ecumenical scene in Ireland. He took part in
a variety of conferences and plans, published papers on ecumenical
theology, and began to receive recognition in the wider church. His
participation and his increasing ecumenical collegiality paved the
way for his very concise summary of ecumenical theology, Theology
of Ecumenism, published in 1968.8 The volume may be slim (a mere 96
pages), but the theology it provides is most impressive, not only for
the time in which it was written but also for today. In the second part
of 1968, he prepared his edition of John Wesley’s Letter to a Roman
Catholic, that eighteenth-century unexpected eirenic overture to
Catholics by the “founder” of Methodism.
The Irish School of Ecumenics
Writing in 2008, Michael Hurley makes the point emphatically that
the reality of Vatican II and rapidly changing circumstances brought
about by television and other social media paved the way for the Irish
School of Ecumenics.9 True enough, but the fact is that without the
initiative, energy, and commitment of Hurley himself, it never would
have happened. The Irish School of Ecumenics has been described
by David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of
Cambridge, as “one of the most imaginative and important academic
institutional developments in Ireland in the past half-century.”10
In Ireland at the time, this inter-denominational school was quite
unique. Its formal inauguration took place on November 9, 1970,
and the inaugural lecture was given by the general secretary of the
World Council of Churches, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake.11 It was a thrilling
moment for ecumenism in an Ireland torn by sectarian strife. Looking
back at the history of the Irish School of Ecumenics, Hurley wrote in
2008: “At the beginning, we had nothing but goodwill and hope; with
these we have risen, if not to glory, at least to be a ‘living and lifegiving’ academic body; we are at least a partial success.”12
This seems to me a typically humble sentiment. Much is dependent,
of course, on how one judges success. The Irish School of Ecumenics
has been and is much more than a partial success. It has firmly and
courageously maintained the ecumenical front at a most difficult time
in Irish history, and the research topics of its alumni as well as their
geographical origins show that its ecumenical seeds are producing a
rich harvest.