Michael Hurley, Ecumenical Pioneer
Longstanding Anglican ecumenist Mary Tanner has said of Hurley:“[His]
work for reconciliation has been a beacon in the context of Northern
Ireland.”13 Tanner’s words make reference to Hurley’s participation in
the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation in Belfast in Northern
Ireland, in which he lived and witnessed in a very practical way to the
ecumenical cause from 1983-1993.
The idea for the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation came
to Hurley in 1981. “Its aim was rather to challenge the sectarianism,
injustice, and violence prevalent in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in
our world, to do so in deed not just in word, to give a practical example
of integrated living, of what a more united church, a more just society,
and a more peaceful world could be like, to give encouragement to those
committed to an improvement in interchurch relations.”14 The residential
community prayed regularly together, celebrated the Eucharist daily but
without eucharistic sharing, and the members often worked in the local
community. They were a living sign in Belfast that Catholics and Protestants
could live together, pray together, without rancor even as they had their
differences of belief and practice. The community unfortunately closed
in 2002, due to declining residential membership and financial support.
It was also about this time that Hurley was diagnosed with cancer. He was
to live for almost another decade.
In retirement, Hurley gave retreats and continued to preach, especially
in an ecumenical context. In 1998, he published a collection of his
articles over the decades entitled Christian Unity: An Ecumenical
Second Spring?15 Close to the beginning of that work, he indicates
his intention: “Its aim is to make some modest contribution towards
ensuring that the third millennium does in fact bring an ecumenical
second spring. . . .”16
A former student and good friend of Hurley, Fintan Lyons, wrote this
of him: “His greatest achievement at the public level was his founding
of the Irish School of Ecumenics and perhaps the greatest tribute
to him is that the growth and development of this institution in the
present has occurred while its founder remains in the shadowy past,
hardly to be mentioned.”17 This is probably what ecumenical leaders
and theologians should expect, that is to say, that as the movement
toward greater Christian unity moves forward, they fade into the
background, “hardly to be mentioned.” The legacy of ecumenists’
work and commitment will go on until the goal is reached, however
inchoate that goal may be at this time and w