What would it look like for today’s Church if Paul’s ancient ecclesial vision was true, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12-13, NRSVACE). How can the Church who is wrought with divisions be “made to drink of one Spirit”? Fr. John Crossin provides a dynamic Spirit-led ecumenical program that conforms to the hope of Paul’s vision in Moving into the Ecumenical Future. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Fr. Crossin intersects his specialty in ecumenical ethics with ministry, scripture, and spiritualty. He has dedicated his calling to an ecumenical vocation, and his knowledge, wisdom, skill, and praxis culminates in this book. Fr. Crossin is an “optimistic ecumenist” calling future professional ecumenists into a moral vision for conducting relational ecumenical work.

            The principles of Fr. Crossin’s proposal are the guidance of the Holy Spirit, love, relationality, and virtue ethics. He unpacks these foundational notions theologically, philosophically, spiritually, psychologically, and pastorally. Through his analytical and spiritual evaluation of these notions, Fr. Crossin engages in constructive theology by incorporating these various insights and building towards practical ecumenical proposal of forming a “Working Group that will seek to construct a common moral paradigm” for ethical ecumenical engagement (xx).

            In order to understand Fr. Crossin’s moral common paradigm for ecumenical engagements, we need to say a word on the ground in which it is rooted: “the spiritual, pastoral, biblical, and relational” (xxi). First, the spiritual focuses on the guidance of the Spirit, human persons being made in the image of the Trinity and thus made for relationships, spiritual gifts, and the Spirit’s effect on emotions and reason (14). For ecumenism, it is important to realize that “the presence of the Spirit is a common experience for many Christians” (11). Second, pastoral experience needs to take part as a “theological source” (15). Fr. Crossin qualifies the source of pastoral experience within his Salesian spirituality and the focus on communal discernment, or “spiritual friends.” He writes, “In the context of accompanying others and seeking to minister to them in an effective way, we might seek the counsel of friends who have pastoral experience” (21). Third, reading scripture through the guidance of the Spirit for discerning biblical ethics is important for a moral paradigm for ecumenism because of the “common biblical foundations for [the] personal moral reflection and communal life” of Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox alike (26). And fourth, Fr. Crossin emphasizes the importance of relationality for an ethical paradigm of ecumenism through “ecumenical dialogues and ecumenical friendships” that are theologically, philosophically, scientifically, psychologically, and spiritually rooted in human experience (48). The moral paradigm Fr. Crossin advocates for ecumenical work is a common moral theology shared amongst Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestant that is (1) centered on scripture, (2) in concert with tradition, (3) in accord with reason and experience, and (4) expressed in a “common criteria for personal and communal discernment of God’s will” (114-115).

A brief example from the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification typifies the ecumenical engagement Fr. Crossin has in mind. The principle that governs the declaration is “differentiated consensus” which looks at the different theological explanations of justification as “compatible, although not identical” (53). This difference opens up to tension, but tension can be a creative means for drawing disparate groups closer into relationship together. The call to ecumenism is crucial to the church’s future. Fr. Crossin’s work provides readers with a beautiful picture of the unifying movement of the Spirit that is growing the church of all flavors into deeper communion that is reflective of Paul’s vision: “we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”