In response to Pope John Paul II's call to conversion, spiritual renewal and human unity in Christ towards the close of the Second Christian Millennium, the Catholic League reflected on its contribution, in terms of its own history and objectives. Recent guidelines on popular devotion and making pilgrimage had suggested that, despite great advances on the road to reconciliation - such as common witness, shared spiritual traditions, collaboration in social justice, and growing affinity in worship and doctrinal understanding - some important first steps need to be retraced. Reconciliation needs penitence, humility and mutual forgiveness, as Father Paul Couturier had taught the Churches from the 1930s onwards.
But these genuine feelings need in turn to be embedded in the lives and hearts of Christians on the way to Unity, as well as in the day to day consciousness of what it is to be the Church. It is part of being one, like the Father and the Son, so that the world may believe the Church's proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ. Pope John Paul thus spoke of the 'purification of memory', and Pope Benedict XVI, from the very beginning of his Petrine ministry, has called for 'concrete acts of unity'. So our prayer for Unity and all our ecumenical endeavours ought to be characterised by a sense of reparation: concrete acts that repair the damage and divisions of the past, purify Christians' sense of memory and history and, since they are gifts of God's own grace, restore for the future the sight of our 'unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace'. In Tertio Millennio Adveniente Pope John Paul called for a 'new memory' for the way that Christians recall the martyrs who died as a result of strife and mutual persecution between Christians because of division and disintegration within the Church. For England this addresses a still keenly felt separation arising from the Protestant Reformation. But hurts from other parts of the Church and its histories are present too. An attitude of reparation, a conciliatory approach to different views of history and an embrace of the whole of the Christian past so that it may be fruitful for unity in the future is therefore at the heart of what Unitas is working for.
The links below show more about the Catholic League's involvement in work for a 'new memory' and concrete acts of reconciliation among Christians.