Revolution or Retreat?

Telstar II, the communications satellite whirling around the earth at 15,000 miles per hour, served to promote the ecumenical dialogue last month. It brought together on television four leading churchmen and selected questioners from Rome, London, and Princeton, New Jersey. They were able to look each other in the eye and talk almost as if they were all in the same room. And people across North America and Europe saw them on the same television screen. The broadcast, second such “Town Meeting of the World,” was dubbed by some visionary “The Christian Revolution.”

How was it, asked a Newsweek correspondent in Rome of Dr. Franklin Clark Fry in Princeton, that less than two years ago the World Council of Churches’ New Delhi assembly was lamenting widespread indifference among the laity, and now church leaders were purportedly enjoying “a Christian revolution”? Could it be that ecclesiastical activity is largely confined to the higher echelons and that the laity is more aloof than ever?

Fry ignored the disparity between the two themes cited by the correspondent. He limited his reply to a denial that very many churchmen are promoting institutionalism.

As if reflecting church history, Fry and Bishop Lesslie Newbigin in London lost contact for a time with Rome. When communication was restored, a Princeton Theological Seminary student from India asked whether “all Christians everywhere” should be involved in some kind of a “meaningful program of family planning.”

The query drew laughter from both sides of the Atlantic, and the comment from Father Hans Küng that it was “one of the most difficult questions you could ask.” Küng noted changes in Catholic thinking on the subject in recent years, but added: “You can’t expect that we can find all solutions now in one day.”

Fry asked Laurian Cardinal Rugambwa of Tanganyika, first and only Negro Roman Catholic cardinal, what could be done to lessen competition among Christian missionaries, presupposing that Rugambwa favored reduction of such competition. Rugambwa did not indicate whether he accepted the presupposition—much less suggest steps to lessen competition. He merely cited good relations in “hospitals, social centers … in things in which we need to cooperate.”

Moderator Eric Sevareid of the Columbia Broadcasting System, which put on the program with the British Broadcasting Corporation and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, might have sharpened the debate had he asked the churchmen to comment on Christendom’s numerical retreat. Of all the reasons given for the current unity and reform movement, not a few observers feel this to be singularly significant. Christian forces, like an army being outnumbered, are trying to regroup.

Accommodation For Reunion

The Vatican Council’s determination to express doctrines in words more acceptable to separated brethren became clearly apparent last month.

Albert Cardinal Meyer of Chicago declared the present teaching on “The People of God” neither adequate nor realistic. A proposed chapter stresses that “we are all sinners” who sometimes fall even after baptism. Another cardinal, Leo J. Suenens of Belgium, one of the council’s four moderators, emphasized that “this is the age of the Holy Spirit, who is given not only to pastors but to all members of the Church” and that any treatment of bishops and hierarchy saying nothing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit would be defective. He urged the council to avoid giving the impression that the church is no more than an administrative machine cut off from the influence of the Spirit of God.

Archbishop Lawrence Shehan of Baltimore, speaking in the name of the U. S. bishops, asked clarification or deletion of the phrase “regrettable separation,” interpreted to refer to church and state. Another bishop said the real problem was the separation of the church and the world, and a theologian explained that this opinion coincided with Protestant teaching on the separation of the Church and the world-system or cosmos, of which the state is only one phase.

All amendments to the schema on liturgy were approved overwhelmingly. Most were technical, but were intended to popularize some forms of worship. One designed to meet criticism by Protestants and others states that extreme unction would be better called “the anointing of the sick” inasmuch as it involves prayer for health.

There is no reason to expect that any real change will be made by the council in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church despite desire for “reunion.”

Catholics believe that their dogmatic doctrines, once promulgated by the pope, comprise “revealed truth.” To amend or revoke one of these doctrines would be a tacit admission that it was not truth in the original instance, that it was in error when promulgated by the pontiff.

Theologians of various Christian communions have understood this from the outset of the council’s deliberations, but it was brought into sharp focus for the lay mind when a Catholic theologian, in response to a news writer’s remark during a press conference that he could detect “no change” in a certain doctrine, said:

“We don’t want change. We want the removal of erroneous understanding.”

Many leading Catholic theologians take the position that the doctrines are not, per se, obstacles to ecumenism, but that erroneous interpretation of them bars the way to “reunion.”

LANCE ZAVITZ

Voice And Visibility

Martin E. Marty’s latest role as journalistic pundit landed him in a literary skirmish with one U. S. Protestantism’s leading editors.

Marty fired the first shot in a new book, The Religious Press in America (see review, October 11 issue, p. 44). He asserted that “in the public life of the nation” the Protestant press “is well-nigh invisible.”

“Is the self-nurture of a denomination through a house organ the highest goal the Protestant press should have?” Marty asked.

Henry L. McCorkle, editor of The Episcopalian and president of Associated Church Press, promptly took issue.

“As the editor of an officially-sponsored publication,” he said, “I am weary of having my publication automatically classified as a ‘house organ,’ and thus dismissed from any important role—potential or otherwise—in American life.”

McCorkle’s forum was a publication called Dynamic, which Marty would undoubtedly label a house organ since it is the official publication of the Associated Church Press, largest fellowship of religious periodical editors (more than 160 member publications).

Added McCorkle: “Religious publications today, for the most part, are far more than ‘house organs.’ They attempt to relate their readers not only to organizational machinery but to many of the most important contemporary issues before us.”

He conceded that “we do not speak with a common voice. But is this a sign of weakness? On the contrary, I think it is a sign of strength.”

He questioned the necessity of public exposure such as newsstand sales, and cited the fact that the Protestant press reaches nearly twenty million families through the mail. “These families collectively may be our own kind, compartmentalized and stratified, but they are plunk in the middle of our society. In serving them, we help to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ into much of North America without the necessity of direct, frontal attack.”

To Marty’s defense, implicitly at least, came the booming editorial voice of The Christian Century, the magazine which Marty serves as an associate editor. In an unsigned lead editorial stretching over nearly a page and a half, the Century tried to mollify McCorkle. He was right, the editorial said, when he characterized Protestantism’s lack of a common voice as “a sign of strength.”

“On the other hand,” the Century added, “it seems to us a rationalization to assume, as our respected friend apparently does, that the status of specialized denominational publication justifies acceptance by them of a position of ‘invisibility’ …”

The editorial concluded on a cheery note: “If our dialogues and debates convey the impression of a multiplicity of sounds, with melodically independent and individual parts or voices, we can still give forth simultaneously in contrapuntal harmonies, to the greater glory of God.”

Strangely, the Century failed to mention (1) Dynamic as the source of McCorkle’s remarks, and (2) that a book by Marty had occasioned his comments.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.