The Church and the churches: ecclesiological reflections at the 11 th Assembly of the World Council of Churches A Igreja e as igrejas: reflexões eclesiológicas sobre a XI Assembleia do Conselho Mundial de Igrejas

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches. However, membership of the fellowship of churches does not imply (tacitly or otherwise) ecclesiological recognition of other member churches. This “ecclesiological tension” has been addressed in a number of ways through the years by the WCC, most notably through the work of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC. Since the 9th assembly in Porto Alegre (2006), ecclesiological matters have appeared in assembly statements, and more substantially in the working agenda of Faith and Order. The convergence document, The Church: towards a common vision was received by the WCC Central Committee and sent to the member churches for discussion and response in 2013. The responses were presented and discussed at the 11 th assembly in Karlsuhe (2022). This article offers a personal reflection on the eccelsiology and the WCC.

Paraisópolis is one of the largest favelasslum areas of the cityin São Paulo. It is home to about 80.000 2 people living in improvised housing on the invaded land of a former farm in Morumbi, which is paradoxically one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in São Paulo.
The favela, which sits inside a kind of crater, jostles for space amidst the wealth. High-rise buildingsluxury apartment blocksand trees tower above the bustling world of the favela below.
I lived in a two-roomed house at the end of a narrow alleyway (beco) off Rua Ernest Renan. The small house was at the top of the third flight of improvised concrete stairs. Across a flat roof, perched on the western corner, was my house. It offered extensive views across the favela to the Morumbi football stadium and the state Governor's palace beyond: improvised houses hugged steep slopes, roads and becos rounded rugged outcrops, kites almost always danced against the blue sky and homemade firecrackers would boom in the night sky. Music blared almost 24 hours a day, from neighbours' houses and souped-up cars. There was chattering and laughter, which only ever seemed to cease in the wee small hours.
I also have memories of the open sewers and the wretched smells that would rise into the polluted sky and the screams of children, which it was not always possible to identify as either being of joy or pain. Then there were the women who worked in the luxury apartments in Morumbi during the day, and continued to work in their own homes in the evening: cooking, cleaning, and caring for children all while facing machismo from their husbands, fathers and sons, and prevailing social prejudices. There was also the sporadic sound of gunfire.
I tell this personal prolegomenon because as my first WCC meeting approached there was a curfew in place as the police blockaded and invaded the favela. This was in response to a wave of violent attacks that had swept through the city. There were restrictions on entry and exit. Inhabitants had to pass through police roadblocks and show identification. There were occasional questions, barked aggressively. It was doors locked and lights out by 9pm; and then the gunfire would begin. 2 The União de Moradores e Comerciantes de Paraisópolis estimates the population to be between 80.000 and 100.000. The Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística estimates the population to be around 42.000, but it divides the territory differently from the União de Moradores e Comerciantes de Paraisópolis, leaving out large areas of territory considered to be Paraisópolis. Nor did I mention that my family was still under curfew in Paraisópolis, with bullets ricocheting through the air and finding stonework or (God forbid) people.
At those first WCC meetings, I was elected to the Permanent Committee on Consensus and Collaboration. This committee inherited the work of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC. It is a parity committee. There are seven members from Orthodox member churches of the WCC, and seven members drawn from other member churches of the WCC. The working agendaoften technical and bureaucraticactually addresses the ecclesiological tensions present in the WCC since its founding. The committee considers matters related to ecclesiology, prayer, and social and ethical issues, amongst other topics.
Ecclesiologyquestions related to fellowship, mutual accountability and freedominformed the work of the committee, and very often overlapped with the work of Faith and Order.
Although the WCC is a fellowship of churches, it was only at the 9 th assembly in Porto Alegre that the WCC made a formal statement on the nature of the fellowship and nature of the Church. 4 Over the years, the WCC has convened a number of meetingsmainly, although not exclusivelyunder the leadership of Faith and Order with a working agenda on ecclesiology.
The work of Faith and Order on the nature of the Church gained greater intensity with the discussion paper on The nature and mission of the Church (2005).

THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES: GEORGE FLOROVSKY'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE NATURE AND UNITY OF THE CHURCH
In order to discover the ecclesiological understanding of the Orthodox Church, and its commitment to unity and the ecumenical movement, it is necessary to turn to an important 1933 essay by the theologian Georges Florovsky, 7 Although Bulgakov and Zizioulas each make  Florovsky (1893Florovsky ( -1979 was an archpriest and leading theologian of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is closely identified with the "neo-patristic synthesis" in Orthodox theology and was a major contributor to ecumenical dialogues. He was a contributor at the Amsterdam assembly (1948). This is an affirmation that demonstrates continuity with the ecclesiology of the influential Russian thinker Alexis Khomiakov from the nineteenth century, and whose position Florovsky tried to broaden. Khomiakov was a lay person who wrote many treatises on ecclesiology. He defended Orthodoxy as the one true Church and criticised the Roman Catholic Church as a local Church that accepted heretical teaching (ALFEYEV, 2011, p. 239).
Khomiakov's opinion is that "dogmatic innovations" were introduced to the Roman Catholic Orthodox ecclesiology tacitly admits the importance of the charismatic boundary and the activity of the Holy Spirit within that boundary through its participation in the ecumenical Critical studies is interested in the borderlands, the boundaries and the "limit" spaces precisely because it asserts that this is where the critiques of current praxis are thought and where new praxis emerges. It reacts to theories that have conspired to "exclude the non-West, the non-male, the non-white, and the non-European, which means the privileging of European, Florovsky's ecclesiology, distinguishing between canonical and charismatic boundaries and observing that they are not necessarily one and the same, is an important (and subtle) affirmation that both can still the Church. On closer reading, it appears that Florovsky is actually challenging Orthodox ecclesiology to discover that which is sometimes overlooked by An aspect of Florovsky's essay that brings this tension to the fore is the discussion of the validity of the sacraments of "a sect in the Church" (FLOROVSKY, 1933, p. 117).
Interesting to note, Florovsky locates a sect within the Church, and in the charismatic boundary of the Church. He tries to explore the themes of unity and catholicity of the Church alongside separation and solitariness the sect. He also touches upon a theological theme found in his later theological writings and ecumenical commitment. "The East and West can meet and find one another only if they remember their original kinship and the unity of their common past" (FLOROVSKY, 1974, p. 161).
Florovsky presents a reading of the Church fathers in which he acknowledges that the Church has given a permissive understanding historically to the recognition of the reality of rites performed outside the canonical Church. He gives two examples: the Church has received adherents not through baptism, and it has received clergy in their existing orders (FLOROVSKY, 1933, p. 118). In other words, baptism and ministry, by what Florovsky calls "sects", that which is beyond the canonical boundary of the Church, have been recognized historically by the Church during the patristic periodone of the major projects of the ecumenical movement, and the Faith and Order Commission, has focused on mutual recognition of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982).
However, Florovsky warns against interpreting this simply as a practical pastoral response by the Church, noting how Jews and Muslims have been treated differently from sectarians. Belief in the one God does not necessarily imply a pastoral relationship that can facilitate being a part of the Church. Instead, Florovsky invites the reader to discern that: "Very often the canonical boundary determines the charismatic boundary as well.
And still more often, not immediately" (FLOROVSKY, 1933, p. 119). This is a key insight from Florovsky´s reflection. According to Florovsky's ecclesiology, "sectarian" space in the Church is situated between these boundaries. Florovsky invites a prioritising of the mystical and (the separation and solitariness of sectarianism) does not bring to an end the "unity of the Spirit" (the unity and catholicity of the Church). His vision is, however, also sacramental (FLOROVSKY, 1933, p. 126). The baptism, eucharist and ministry of the Church are central to delimiting the Church, in a way that other theological approaches would challenge, particularly new and emerging ecclesiologies that we will address in the next section.
The main thrust of Florovsky´s ecclesiology argument is a helpful contribution to understanding how the Orthodox churches mutually recognise those Christians and churches who are outside its canonical limits. However, at this point, it is relevant to consider an observation made by Gennadios of Sassima in an ecumenical dialogue with Evangelicals. He noted that an exact and exhaustive definition of the Church is not possible for Orthodox ecclesiology. Moreover, he goes on to make a point (curiously in harmony with critical studies and decolonial theology) that: One of the greatest ecumenical difficulties facing the Orthodox Church is that its thought forms and terms of reference are different from those in the West.
Since the ecumenical movement was primarily shaped by Western theological presupposition and antecedents, Orthodox participants were, from the very beginning, forced to express their positions and points of view within a theological framework alien to, or at least different from, the Orthodox tradition (SASSIMA, 2012, p. 133).