Christianity - Overview - Ecumenism

From the second half of the twentieth century there have been serious attempts to restore Christian unity. From 1948, the World Council of Churches, which influenced the whole of the twentieth century with its work on "faith and order" as well as on "peace and justice," excluded the Roman Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s put the Roman Catholic Church's stamp of approval on the modern ecumenical movement and allowed it to enter into bilateral and multilateral dialogues with other Christian communities.