22 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION sections explore the different ecumenical strategies, their presuppositions, and their implications, as well as the shift of perspective as proposed in recent contributions. Consensus ecumenism and the problem of reception Remarkable progress has been made over the last century due mainly to personal exchanges and meticulous comparative theological research aiming at consensus on disputed issues. The WCC has been a meeting point for many churches, the Second Vatican Council has offered a significant impetus for the ecumenical movement on all levels of ecclesial life, and the bi- and multilateral dialogues have produced numerous convergence and agreement texts. The addition of the concept of differentiated consensus, leaving space for legitimate diversity in which certain differences are regarded compatible or even complementary,44 has certainly been important for the realization of these documents. However, Lutheran theologian Gesa Thiessen expresses the concern of many ecumenists: Yet, despite such advancement, the slow progress in the reception of these statements into the churches is keenly felt among those who have dedicated themselves to ecumenism, and above all among the many believers whose ecumenism of life is often far more advanced than what has been officially agreed.45 She concludes: “In short, the problem is that the many documents worked out in painstaking fashion are not put into practice in the churches.”46 What is more, Geert van Dartel, the current president of the Council of Churches in the Netherlands, signals that, despite theological rapprochement, initiatives of Eucharistic hospitality that have emerged since the 1970s in the Netherlands have only been discouraged and forbidden in the last fifteen years.47 Catherine Clifford, too, senses a “dichotomy between the growing theological consensus 44 Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, “Seeking Unity: Reflecting on Methods in Contemporary Ecumenical Dialogue,” in Ecumenical Ecclesiology: Unity, Diversity and Otherness in a Fragmented World, ed. Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, Ecclesiological Investigations (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2009), 37, https://doi.org/10.5040/9780567660527. 45 Thiessen, 35. 46 Thiessen, 36. 47 Geert van Dartel, “Uit de zijde van de Heer,” Perspectief, no. 38 (2017): 61, http://www.oecumene.nl/files/Books/Perspectief/38/54/.
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