The designation of the days between January 18th and 25th each year as a time of prayer for church unity goes back to 1908. It began in an Anglican monastery at Graymoor, a desolate mountain-top retreat near Garrison, across the Hudson river from the military academy at West Point in New York state.
The man responsible was a priest of the Episcopal Church of America, Father Paul Wattson. His aim in life was to reunite Anglicans and Catholics and he believed the Papacy should have a central role in bringing this about.
To pursue his aim he founded an Anglican religious order, in the Franciscan tradition, at Graymoor and called them the Society of the Atonement (derived from "at-onement"). Now Catholic, and known as the Friars of the Atonement, the society today has houses in many countries and is totally dedicated to the promotion of ecumenism.
From the beginning Father Wattson had supporters throughout the world. One of his English collaborators was the Rev Spencer Jones, an Anglican rector in Gloucestershire. Mr Jones had founded the Society of St Thomas of Canterbury, which periodically gathered Anglican and Catholic scholars for dialogue on disputed issues.
In late 1907 he wrote to Father Wattson suggesting a day of prayer for Christian unity might be observed throughout the English-speaking world in 1908 on the Feast of St Peter, June 29th. Father Wattson replied suggesting the inauguration of a church unity week, beginning with the Feast of St Peter's Chair in Rome, January 18th, and ending with St Paul's Day, January 25th.
Without waiting for a reply Father Wattson began preparing for the first unity week in 1908. Because there were eight days between the two feasts he decided to call it an "octave". Catholics warmed to the association of the octave with the feast of St Peter's Chair and the conversion of St Paul. They could see no unity except through conversion to the Catholic Church, "unity by reform", as it was recalled.
By the time the Church Unity Octave marked its third observance Father Wattson and his society had become Catholics. Other Christians, however, had a different perspective, and the choice of dates did not exactly appeal to them. By the early 1920s they had a new focus for unity.
A movement had begun which was to culminate in the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948. The movement included a section called Faith and Order, which had Christian unity within its brief. By 1926 it was advocating and promoting its own Prayer for Unity centred on Whitsuntide. By contrast the Wattson-led Catholic side renamed its observance the Chair of Unity Octave in the early 1930s.
At this point a new prayer initiative was on the scene. It was to become the model which, after the Vatican Council, would replace all that had gone before. It began with Father Paul Couturier, a French Catholic priest of the diocese of Lyons. He realised the necessity of finding a new formula to enable Christians of every tradition to join in a common observance for unity.
Drawing inspiration from the prayer before Communion in the Roman missal, which asks that peace and unity be granted the church despite the sins of its members, in 1935 he inaugurated a Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Father Couturier's formula was grounded in scripture and had a broader appeal than had Father Wattson's octave. It was to be observed in January on the same dates as the latter, and attracted support from Protestants and Orthodox Christians.
IN 1941 the Faith and Order group of the World Council of Churches transferred its own prayer observance to January. During the Vatican Council, Rome suppressed the January 18th feast of the Chair of St Peter in Rome and merged it with the February 22nd feast of the Chair of St Peter at Antioch. It is now celebrated simply as the feast of the Chair of Peter.
A significant stage of integration took place in 1957 when the preparation of a common text for each year's prayer week was begun by a joint group from the World Council of Churches in Geneva and a nearby Catholic ecumenical agency at Lyons associated with Father Couturier.
In 1966 its task was taken over by a more official joint group nominated by the Faith and Order commission of the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
While Father Wattson and Father Couturier remained close friends there arose among their followers in the Catholic Church two distinct rival groups loyal to each separately and theologically in contention. During those years Irish Catholics stayed with Father Wattson's group while Irish Protestants followed Father Couturier's Week of Prayer as promoted by the WCC.
The impasse was broken when the Second Vatican Council committed the Catholic Church to the ecumenical movement and encouraged prayer in common with other Christians for unity. Norms for implementing the conciliar teaching came with the publication of the first Ecumenical Directory in 1967. In due course the Week of Prayer began to be observed jointly by all denominations.
There was great excitement in Ireland in 1973 when, for the first time, the leaders of all Christian denominations came together in the ProCathedral in Dublin for the inaugural service of the Week of Prayer and in Christ Church Cathedral for the closing service.
E, the former on television and the latter on radio. In June that year also the first crop of students (the writer included) graduated from the Irish School of Ecumenics, and the first meeting of church leaders took place at Ballymascanlon in October.
Mgr Patrick Devine is Dublin Diocesan Secretary for Ecumenism and parish priest at St Anthony's, Clontarf