Review of Current Religious Thought: November 23, 1962

“When you cross the river,” says a Zambesi proverb, “speak kindly of the crocodile’s mother.” An echo of this sentiment could be found in Rome during the opening weeks of Vatican Council II. Whoever questioned motives or closely examined official statements or mentioned the Reformation or brought Scripture into it, was watched by eyes set more in sorrow than in anger. There was, in fact, no surer way of rocketing up the scale of People To Be Watched.

That such an atmosphere should exist at all is ultimately a reminder that the Roman church has been in the business a long, long time. It is also part of a large-scale offensive which leaves no situation unexploited, no potential ally unwooed, which makes a skillful use both of words and of silence, and in which the charmer charms never so wisely. Thus a stream of Protestant potentates has made its way, cap in hand, to the third-floor apartments of the Vatican. All seemed suitably grateful that their existence (and maybe even their right to exist) had been recognized. Overnight they had become “separated brethren”—suggesting some sort of leprous body not-yet-persona-grata-but-they’re-working-on-it.

Around the central fortress of our faith we sometimes tolerate pleasant suburbs of mild heterodoxy, but there are elements in the present situation which even the most accommodating Protestant must face squarely. True unity is not achieved by halving or dividing the things of God, nor, in Dr. Marcus Barth’s phrase, “by exchanging concessions, like railroad companies.” This is an essentially Protestant delusion which Rome encourages. For example, much has been made of the fact that at the council opening the Pope made no reference to a return of non-Roman Catholics to the fold. Such eager embracing of the argument ex silentio, an almost pathetic clutching at straws, bedevils Protestant attitudes. In his encyclicals Ad Cathedram Petri (usually known as “Truth, Unity and Peace”) of June 29, 1959, and Aeterna Dei Sapientia of November 11, 1961, John XXIII makes very clear that (1) the Church of Rome is the Holy Catholic Church; (2) the supreme rule of faith and life is Scripture and Tradition as interpreted and defined by the Pope; (3) since unity depends on union with the Apostolic See, the only way to attain it is for non-Roman Catholics to return to the one Church.

Aeterna Dei, we may note in passing, appeals to Christians threatened by Communism and secularism to present a united front by embracing the supreme and infallible magisterium reserved by the Lord for Peter and his successors. This is the argument from expediency which offers a false choice and does not present Christianity primarily for its own sake. Moreover, it leaves itself vulnerable to telling references to Communism’s hold on Pope John’s Italy. Yet prudently, when he was still Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, the pontiff said in addressing the city council with its sizable proportion of Communists: “… There may be some here who do not call themselves Christians, but who can be acknowledged as such on account of their good deeds.” This is as theologically confusing as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s famed “atheists-in-heaven” remark.

Another vexed question which cannot be ignored is that of Mariolatry. Addressing a group of Austrian pilgrims some time ago, the Pope thus outlined three paths for the return of all Christians to the Church of Rome: “Fidelity to the Gospels, love for the Saviour, and trust in His Mother and ours, Mary.” It was no accident that the Vatican Council’s opening day, October 11, was the Feast of the Divine Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin, and the anniversary of the Council of Ephesus which in 431 proclaimed the Church’s faith in “Mary, Mother of God.”

No less relevant to the current situation is the position of the Pope himself. Lytton Strachey in his Eminent Victorians says: “It is not so much because he satisfies the reason, but because he astounds it, that men abase themselves before the Vicar of Christ.” As I watched the two abbots and two superiors general, at the end of a long line of other council fathers who were “making their obeisance,” kissing the Pope’s foot, I could not help wondering what a certain Galilean fisherman would have made of it all, particularly in view of his words in Acts 10:25, 26. As the Pope was borne away on his throne at the end of the service, after the reading of a plenary indulgence and amid the adulation of a packed basilica and excited cries of “Viva il Papa,” one bethought himself of a different occasion and different multitude who with not-so-different intent cried, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”

He will be misled who thinks that Hans Küng’s book The Council and Reunion reflects the position of the Roman Catholic majority. Many of the hierarchy believe that Küng’s trumpet blows an uncertain sound, and even urge the book’s withdrawal. It has been read at mealtimes in the refectories of many of the religious colleges in Rome, but never, curiously enough, at the English College, which has strong traditionalist tendencies. That “error has no rights” is far from being an outdated attitude, can be seen in the following extract from a recent pastoral letter of the Bishop of Madrid-Acala: “In spite of the ecumenical movement and the Week of Prayer for the reunion of Christendom, we must move without any humane considerations against Protestants when they try to spread their errors and heresies, because true ecumenicalism, after all, means only return to Rome.”

Almost every utterance of the Pope on the subject of the scandalous divisions of Christendom implies that these are the consequences of the sin of all Christians, clergy and laity, Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. Most of us would admit that this is sadly true, yet we find that the suggested remedy must not involve any change in the nature of one body which professes a share in the universal guilt. This kind of double-talk is both confusing and revealing. It shows why Rome elicits vastly different responses (true Church or cosmic swindle?), and why the present council, which professes to “proclaim the mind of Christ,” is dismissed in some quarters as a gigantic publicity stunt.

Some of us might question the wisdom of the three Irish Reformed Presbyterian ministers who traveled to Rome for the council opening and read aloud Revelation 17 while the fathers passed by in St. Peter’s Square. Like London’s left-wing New Statesman, they are convinced that at the end of the day the Scarlet Woman will emerge from the council in her old familiar garb. Whatever our views, we can follow the Pope’s appeal to pray for a hastening of the time when there shall indeed be “one fold and one shepherd.”

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