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Ninety years ago, the Ottoman empire began to kill the Armenians within its borders. Systematic genocide took up to a million and a half Armenian lives. By 1923, almost the whole Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared.
"The past haunts the victims," Catholicos Aram I told the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) today, using the painful story of his own people as an example. "We cannot free ourselves from the past unless that past is duly recognized," Aram I said, in the last report of his term as moderator of the committee.
The moderator, who is Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church (see of Cilicia), called the church worldwide to rediscover healing as a comprehensive ministry that transforms, empowers and reconciles. "God's mission calls for a healing church in the midst of a broken, fragmented and alienated world."
Healing must include "addressing the root causes of injustice" alongside medical treatment and faith-healing, Aram I said. "The healing power of God is at work where and when the church provides care to the sick and expresses its solidarity with the oppressed."
The WCC central committee this year gathers under the overall theme of "Healing and reconciliation", anticipating the upcoming Conference on World Mission and Evangelism in Athens, Greece, 9-16 May. The theme for that conference invokes the Holy Spirit to "come, heal and reconcile", and reminds the churches that they are called in Christ "to be reconciling and healing communities".
Reconciliation with God means reconciling with one another and the whole creation, building bridges across religious, social and cultural divides, Aram I said. It means more than political agreement: "It is a change of consciousness, transformation of attitudes, healing of memories."
Acknowledging unpalatable truths is the necessary first step. "Guilt must be admitted; truth must be told", Aram I said. Recognition and confession open the way to forgiveness. This does not mean forgetting the past, but seeing it "in a different way", while looking forward with "new faith, hope and vision".
Through recognition, confession and forgiveness, both victim and perpetrator can "liberate themselves from the bitterness of the past" and, by looking for "restorative and transformative justice", commit themselves to "life together in peace with justice".
God's healing power transforms the ambiguity of human power, moving the world from power that is absolute, centralized, violent and self-sufficient to power that is vulnerable, accountable, non-violent and shared.
In the conclusion of a rich and theologically profound report, Aram I outlined six tasks as continuing priorities for the ecumenical movement and the WCC in the years ahead:
- exploring what it means to "be church";
- caring for life in all its forms;
- addressing contemporary ethical issues;
- viewing ecology as a moral, theological, and spiritual question;
- promoting reconciliation as a key element in mission; and
- challenging the dominant concepts and practices of power.
The WCC central committee meeting continues until February 22. This is its last session before the ninth assembly of the Council, which meets in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in February 2006, with the theme "God, in your grace, transform the world".
The text of the full report, free high resolution pictures and additional information about the WCC central committee meeting are available at:
