Whetting the Appetite for Papal Primacy

From Atlantic to Pacific came sounds this month of a sometime-forgotten refrain: return to Rome.

Episcopal Bishop C. Kilmer Myers of California went so far as to set conditions under which the pope could be regarded as “chief” of Christendom. Myers seemed thus to echo a campaign now under way for Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox unity talks by the American Church Union, of which he is a member.

In Boston, the National Council of Churches’ General Board was treated to a thirty-nine page report on Christian relations that saw things going just that way.

Myers, successor to Bishop James A. Pike, called on Protestants to acknowledge the pope as the head of Christianity, thus making a move “far more important” than efforts for unity merely among non-Catholics. “We Anglicans and Protestant Christians ought to reexamine our relationship to the Holy See as the chief spokesman for the Christian community in the world,” he said.

Pope Paul VI was urged to implement more convincingly the ideas and actions of the late John XXIII and show himself “the chief pastor of men.” Paul VI ought to visit North and South Viet Nam, Myers said, and “stretch out his arms in a loving gesture to all men.”

Given such a “Christian amplification,” Myers added, “we should, I for one believe, acknowledge him as the chief pastor of the Christian family and we should joyfully acclaim him as the Holy Father in God of the Universal Church.”

The high-church Episcopal paper American Church News published a “solemn declaration” drafted by Dr. J. V. Langmead Casserley of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary urging the Consultation on Church Union to invite Roman Catholics and Orthodox to enter the negotiations “on terms acceptable to themselves.” The Roman church and Orthodox groups currently send “observer-consultants” to the meetings.

“We would not wish to continue with any kind of reunion scheme so much smaller in scale as envisioned by the COCU negotiations, unless it is clearly understood and enthusiastically agreed that nothing can be resolved or done as a result of the COCU negotiations to which those who will represent the church of Rome, the Orthodox churches and the (so-called) Wider Episcopal Fellowship, in future negotiations could conceivably object or regard as a barrier to our closer relationship with them.” The plea asserts that “the reunion of Christendom is impossible without the Papacy.”

Four Episcopal bishops have signed the statement, and at least three others were expected to sign even before this month’s publicity drive began.

The NCC report, product of a year-long study, was a candid appraisal that shook one side of the ecclesiastical spectrum by suggesting that reunion is just around the corner. “It is my conviction,” said Dr. John E. McCaw, professor of church history at Drake University, “that we are approaching, if not actually in, the time of the American church, and the very center of that church could well be the Roman Catholic Church.”

McCaw’s survey, commissioned by the NCC and conducted on a fellowship from the American Association of Theological Schools, shook another segment of the church world by displaying a degree of refreshing candor and objectivity not commonly found in interfaith reports. He enumerated a number of “dangers” implicit in the notion of an “American church” and urged, interestingly enough, “a return to the philosophy that the individual is the key unit in society.” McCaw, a minister of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), included a generous defense of the evangelical cause, in which he said he was raised.

Reprieve For Rcda?

Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, a semi-monthly report threatened with extinction, won a vote of confidence from the National Council of Churches’ General Board this month. A resolution introduced on the floor expressed “deep interest in continuing the publication” and a referral committee added the stipulation that support come from designated funds. Some NCC liberals have been trying to deemphasize RCDA or put it out of business altogether (see April 28 issue, page 24).

The NCC General Board at its spring meeting in Boston, voiced its strongest plea to date for a halting of the bombing of North Viet Nam. It also lamented what it considered the disparity in Congress’s treatment of Adam Clayton Powell and of Thomas Dodd.

His strongest words were directed against persons who minimize personal piety. “A true prophet is a holy man, not a purveyor of four-letter words.” He declared that “today’s anti-evangelism, anti-conversion, and anti-personal-holiness mood is separating church institutional staffs from the parishioner, whose innate desire is for total commitment, for leadership to higher planes, and for programmed discipline resulting in achievement.”

Along with the McCaw report, the NCC board got a briefing on talks between the Vatican and the World Council of Churches. The fifth and most recent meeting of the “Joint Working Group” was held last month near Rome. Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of the NCC and a member of the joint group, said the five-day meeting ended with a private audience with Pope Paul.

Toward Unity On Communion

When is a mass not a mass? An ecumenical non-mass was held in Milwaukee last month. The communion elements were present but not the “intent,” explained Lutheran R. W. Anderson, who joined in celebrating the experimental mass with Episcopalian John P. Talmage and Bernard J. Cooke, head of Marquette University’s theology department. As a guitarist played, a loaf of rye bread was broken and goblets of wine passed to seventy-five nuns, priests, and laymen.

Days before, the Vatican had issued liberalized rules on sacraments, the first of several installments of ecumenical regulations. Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians may now partake of Roman Catholic communion and other sacraments in “emergency situations,” if they declare a sacramental belief “in harmony” with that of Catholicism. Catholics may receive Orthodox communion if their bishops approve, but not Protestant communion.

These ecumenical rules were followed by a 12,000-word list of eucharistic regulations from Pope Paul that puts the brakes on ecumenical experiments such as living-room agape feasts between Catholics and Protestants. The Pope said no priest or layman is permitted, on his own, to tamper with the liturgy.

The ecumenical guidelines permit Protestants to participate in confession and extreme unction (anointing of persons close to death). The document takes a strong stand against rebaptizing a convert who has been baptized under “the norms of his own community or church.” Conditional rebaptisms such as the controversial one given Luci Johnson in 1965 are prohibited “unless there is prudent doubt of the fact, or of the validity, of a baptism already administered.”

The requirement of sacramental “harmony” presumably would still prohibit many, if not most, Protestants from taking Roman Catholic communion. The most likely to be affected are Anglicans. The same week the rules were issued, teams of Roman Catholic and Episcopal negotiators met in Milwaukee and reached general agreement on “the Eucharist as sacrifice.” Participants said the Catholics saw that the Anglicans really do regard communion as a sacrifice, while Anglicans found that Catholics do not believe each mass is a new sacrifice and death of Christ. The agreement was stated jointly as follows:

“In the Lord’s Supper we participate at the same time in Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.… Christian people participating in Christ’s priesthood through baptism and confirmation are meant to be a living sacrifice to God. That sacrifice finds its fullest expression in the eucharistic offering of the priesthood of the people of God.… The sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist is not just the sacrifice of the cross but the sacrifice of Christ’s whole life of obedience to the Father which culminated in his death on the cross and his glorious resurrection.…”

Wycliffe On The Move

Lured by an offer of a free 100-acre site or money to buy a comparable plot of land, Wycliffe Bible Translators decided to move its offices from Santa Ana, California, to Dallas by a year from September.

A committee of thirty Dallas business and civic leaders campaigned to land the interdenominational group, which develops written forms of the languages of remote tribes and then translates the Bible into them.

Representatives of WBT’s 2,000 staffers met at the new field headquarters near Mexico City this month to ponder “organizational readjustments” in light of the organization’s “rapid growth.” WBT also reports a record enrollment of 281 for its Summer Institute of Linguistics courses at the Universities of North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Washington.

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