When the American Bible Society was founded just over 150 years ago, the prospect of Protestant-Catholic cooperation for the printing and distribution of Scripture was rejected—by the Roman Catholic Church. In the early years four successive popes denounced the Bible societies, and numerous problems arose to bar participation.
Now times are changing. As an outgrowth of Vatican II, which encouraged Bible reading in the vernacular by laymen, Catholics now seek participation in Bible society activities and increasingly probe the possibility of efforts toward common Bibles—in Dutch, French, Japanese, and other languages.
Last month cooperation passed another milestone. At the meeting of the ABS Advisory Council in New York City, delegates raised hands to “recommend formulation of plans to include service to Roman Catholics and encouragement of Roman Catholic support of the existing Bible societies.” Their action approved Catholic participation in translation committees and paved the way for a wider pooling of resources for the printing and distribution of the Word.
Last year the united Bible societies distributed nearly 90 million copies of the Scriptures, with the ABS’s share amounting to seventy-one per cent. The strikingly successful common language New Testament Good News for Modern Man (first published in September, 1966) has already sold more than seven million copies. In the same year the ABS registered the largest single shipment of Bibles in its history—520,250 Bibles and 45,500 New Testaments to Ghana for use in government schools.
The constitution of the Bible societies specifies that the Scriptures shall be distributed without notes or comments, and translations of the Old and New Testaments have always been based upon the Greek and Hebrew texts. Apparently both principles are now acceptable to Roman Catholic scholars. Many Catholics no longer insist on officially approved notes explaining points of Catholic doctrine. Nor do they insist upon acceptance of the Latin Vulgate or inclusion of the Apocrypha in all Bibles. The Apocrypha would still be used in most Catholic Bibles.
Catholic interest has been spearheaded in Rome by the unity secretariat of Cardinal Bea and in America by Jesuit Father Walter M. Abbott. Eugene A. Nida, ABS translations executive, reported that an unpublicized, unofficial group of Protestant and Catholic translators met last fall in Switzerland to work out basic principles of Bible translation.
In practice, the fracture of old attitudes goes deeper. Spurred by the difficulty of catching up in Bible translation work (Catholics have placed the Scriptures in about 100 languages in contrast to the united Bible societies’ 800), many local priests and bishops have already joined Protestant efforts. A priest holds the post of vice-president of the Nigerian Bible Society. Cooperation has been established for work on three major languages in India. Roman Catholics have already accepted the Bible Society’s Old Testament text in Thai. And in Africa Roman Catholics are asking for cooperation in scores of languages, about twenty in the Congo alone. In Kenya, Catholics have even received official Vatican approval for use of the ABS text instead of a Roman Catholic text with notes and Apocrypha. Reason: the Protestant text is cheaper.
New Theology For New Zealand
A major split in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand seems imminent following last month’s dismissal of heresy charges against its key educator, Lloyd George Geering.
The case has many similarities to the American theological storm over Bishop James A. Pike. Geering was put on the spot for repudiating the authority of biblical revelation, especially the Resurrection account. He has also denied that Christ had any miraculous or supernatural powers.
Despite Geering’s own public statements on his doctrinal deviations and a thorough hearing on the issues, New Zealand’s Presbyterian General Assembly by a wide majority adopted a resolution saying: “that the assembly judges that no doctrinal error has been established, dismisses the charges, and declares the case closed.”
Geering, 49, is principal of Knox Theological Hall in Dunedin, New Zealand, the nation’s only Presbyterian seminary. The charges against him were brought by R. J. Wardlaw, president of the Presbyterian Laymen’s Association, which had said before the assembly that “rather than a professor of theology, the entire Church, which embraces ourselves, is on trial before our Lord and Master.” Wardlaw, following the verdict in the assembly at Christchurch, resigned from the church and predicted many a like-minded Presbyterian would also “be required by conscience to separate.”
The controversy over Geering, who earned a master’s degree in math before undertaking theology, has been raging for more than a year and a half. “Though I recognize that in some places there have been some church people genuinely distressed, this fact has, I think, been more than balanced by the quite unexpected interest that has been shown from outside the organized Church,” Geering said.
Outside interest has not yet been reflected in church statistics, however. The church lost more communicants than it gained during the past year, despite the fact that the population of New Zealand has been climbing steadily. Presbyterians are the second largest denomination there (after the Anglicans), but though more than 500,000 persons out of a population of nearly 2,750,000 count themselves Presbyterians, only 91,682 are actual communicants. Total offerings for the past year amounted to $606,348. In Geering’s school there are seventy students, and applications are dropping off; recruitment is a major problem.
Because of the unusual opportunities in Africa, the ABS announced a new program for printing and translation there, involving more than $1.6 million over a five-year period. The sum will be in addition to the $7.7 million budget projected for 1968.
No one at the New York meeting wanted to minimize the difficulties of joint work, but the difficulties apparently are not as great as they have seemed. In fact, said Nida, “the real differences are not so much between Roman Catholics and Protestants as between conservatives and progressives within both camps.” With caution, the Bible societies will now move ahead, not for the sake of mere ecumenism, but for the goal of evangelism through Bible reading.
CATHOLICS LAUD ‘DR. GRAHAM’
Roman Catholic Belmont Abbey College, a few miles away from Billy Graham’s birthplace, gave him its Doctor of Humane Letters degree November 21, making sure that the prophet is not without honor in his own country.
In his address the North Carolina evangelist spoke of the “shaking” now going on in religion around the world and particularly of the discord within Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. One thing good has come out of it though, he told his audience of nearly 1,500: “We can talk to one another as Christian brothers.”
He reminded the men of Belmont Abbey and the women of nearby companion Sacred Heart College that in the midst of all the changes, some things do not change. Among these he listed the nature of God, the Word of God, human nature, the moral law, and the way of salvation.
Although there was no invitation during his address at the academic convocation, the evangelist told his audience that he had no doubts about his salvation and said that anyone who trusts in the finished work of Christ on the Cross can have peace and assurance.
Discussing some of the turmoil in the nation today and citing it as one of the “shakings” of this generation, he revealed he had been doing “all I could to help Sargent Shriver” get the appropriations to keep the federal anti-poverty program in business. In a later press conference he defended the effort and said he had called about ten congressmen enlisting their aid.
Belmont Abbey’s citation classed Graham with Picasso, Einstein, Schweitzer, Churchill, and Pope John XXIII as one of the “relatively few men whose individual minds and wills have significantly shaped for good” world events.
Fundamentalists have never forgiven Graham for his first visit to Belmont Abbey four years ago, even though he preached his usual gospel message. But as far back as 1950, Cardinal Cushing’s diocesan paper published an editorial called “Bravo Billy” when the evangelist preached in Boston.
In 1964 Graham and Cushing finally got together, and the cardinal said, “I only wish we had a half-dozen men of his character to go forth and preach Christ crucified as he does.” The search for a “Catholic Billy Graham” has stepped up this year. The evangelist’s emphasis on basic Christian doctrine won praise from Patrick Scanlon, managing editor of Brooklyn’s Tablet, one of the best conservative diocesan papers. A St. Paul, Minnesota, columnist said Catholics have a “lesson to learn” from Graham. And Father John Sheerin of Catholic World told a Columbus, Ohio, audience that Catholics need men with a Graham-like charisma—but to promote ecumenism.
The latest is a Graham-inspired California group that claims to have conducted the “world’s first Protestant-Catholic evangelistic service,” in a Methodist church. If the scheduled soloist and pianist had been there along with the large choir, it would have been pretty close to a Graham meeting. More than 100 clergymen and laymen in Redlands, California, were invited to the service, but only two dozen came.
Roman Catholic Richard Spurney’s message was a salvation sermon no fundamentalist could object to. Afterwards, those who heard it were asked whether they disliked it. None did, though Catholics found the service form uncomfortable. Most attenders were elderly saints who thought it was a good move.
Spurney, who started the movement with Methodist minister Samuel Sallie, is full of praise for Graham and will go all-out for the evangelist if and when he includes Romans in an ecumenical effort. Spurney and Sallie both teach philosophy at Mount San Antonio College.
Spurney thinks Graham has changed a lot since his younger days—he is now less dogmatic, emphasizes less that the Second Coming is right around the corner, is not hostile to Catholics. Spurney has even written the evangelist at his North Carolina home, and has gotten standard, appreciative replies.
Spurney, who admits he once hated Protestantism as a “device of the devil,” thinks converts of Protestant-Catholic evangelism must “be led to read the Bible,” since both sides agree it is “the unerring Word of God” and common versions now exist.
ACCREDIT DISUNION
The Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges is “struggling to be recognized,” says Executive Director Frank Dickey of the National Commission on Accrediting, clearing house for all U.S. accrediting agencies. To gain national stature, he explains, most of the AABC’s forty-seven member schools would have to win regional accreditation—a distant prospect.
As the AABC drew a record 325 persons to its Chicago meetings last month, a possible challenger went without mention. Last June, a group of fundamentalist educators met at Bob Jones University and started a new accrediting agency. The chief organizer, BJU Bible Professor Marshall Neal, said two categories will be included: (1) seminaries, (2) colleges and Bible schools. But he says the new group is not competing with the AABC, since it’s mainly interested in non-accredited liberal-arts colleges. About twenty schools have shown interest, and about ten were expected to join after last month’s organizational meeting at Tennessee Temple Schools.
Executive Director John Mostert of the AABC is reluctant to mention the new organization in the same breath with his own. To him, it appears to be an attempt to compete with already established agencies, and he predicts that accrediting experts will consider the operation “fraudulent.”
Dickey hasn’t heard a thing about the fundamentalist effort, but explained that his group recognizes “only one agency in any field of work,” and that it is friendly with the AABC. Dickey admits that until a couple of years ago it would have been difficult to get Bible colleges accredited in the Midwest or South. But today, he says, quality is the only factor in recognition, based on the “stated objectives of the institution.”
MONTGOMERY VERSUS PIKE
Verbal duels between evangelical theologian John Warwick Montgomery and Bishop James A. Pike highlighted a “Teach-In” on religion last month at Ontario’s once-Baptist McMaster University.
With zealous enthusiasm, Montgomery read a thirty-page, footnoted manuscript ranging over 150 years of theological thought and then turned to Pike, who was seated nearby. He chronicled the Episcopal bishop’s “theological devolution,” leading to “utter arbitrariness in accepting and rejecting biblical materials in accord with his personal religious preferences.” He suggested that Pike’s personal metaphysics, “doubtless his personal drive toward wish-fulfillment as well, … creates the ‘survival’ interpretation he places on psychic data,” and referred to Pike’s new book and participation in séances.
Pike ducked out after the address but returned to demand equal time against what he considered an unfair personal insult, unprecedented in his seventy-five previous campus appearances. Reference to wish-fulfillment was “quite presumptuous,” he said, adding that he has undergone thorough Jungian psychoanalysis. Audience applause greeted his comment that “it helps one to be less judgmental.”
Pike’s own lecture was highly entertaining. But Montgomery called it “a terribly rambling and garrulous presentation” and drew applause by saying the students deserved better. Pike again reacted strongly, but members of the student sponsoring committee said later that except for the exchanges he provoked, Pike was a disappointing bargain for a $2,000 fee plus $500 expenses.
The audience, neutral at the beginning of the weekend, obviously was turned off by Montgomery’s handling of the confrontation and tended to support Pike despite his lack of substantial material.
The opening address on “Nature and Supernature” by Episcopal physicist-priest William G. Pollard included technical references difficult for the 500 listeners to follow. Their attention quickened noticeably in the question period, when Montgomery accused Father Gregory Baum of dualism on the Resurrection.
Baum, the lone Canadian among the four headliners, was a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism while a McMaster student. He is now a rising Roman theologian and a member of the Vatican Christian unity secretariat. His address on “Good News for a Secular Age” drew the students’ best applause. Students liked not only his gracious personality and perceptive comments but his existential orientation, which was closely related to their feelings about their own condition.
WILBER SUTHERLAND
PRIEST PRODS PRESIDENT
“It is not often that a little person like myself has a chance to tell the President what he thinks. So I thought I should say something, whether it would be popular or constructive or not.”
Reasoning thus, the Rev. Cotesworth Pinckney Lewis plunged into the November 12 sermon at his Williamsburg, Virginia, Episcopal church, which George Washington used to attend. He told the congregation, which included Lyndon Baines Johnson—fresh from a crosscountry tour defending U. S. policy in Viet Nam—that he wonders why the United States is there, why civilian casualties are three times greater than military ones, and whether “some logical, straightforward explanation” isn’t due.
The President shook Lewis’s hand after the service and Lady Bird said the choir was “wonderful.” Fireworks came later. United States Senators Harry Byrd, Jr., and William Spong, and Virginia Governor Mills Godwin, Episcopalians all, expressed embarrassment at the rector’s cheek. The Democratic leader and whip in the U. S. House of Representatives expressed dismay. During the week Lewis got 3,500 letters, 200 telegrams, and a phone call from Australia. Most, like Barry Goldwater, supported his right to dissent. Lewis’s bishop agreed, but the vestry of the church sent the President a wire apologizing for their priest’s “discourtesy.”
Lewis, who changed sermons when he learned the President would attend, used Isaiah 9:2 as his text. He said he “asked for God’s guidance” before preaching. He is a descendant of one of Virginia’s first families and of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was formerly dean of the Little Rock, Arkansas, cathedral.
The next week, when a reporter asked the President for a delineation of U. S. policy, he quipped, “I thought all the preachers in the country knew that by now.”
The next Sunday, Lewis returned to his usual non-controversial sermon. And Johnson went to St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in downtown Washington. He arrived too late to hear the sermon, though, so Cardinal O’Boyle added personal well-wishing from the pulpit later.
BISHOPS: FREEDOM—WITHIN LIMITS
Growth, openness, trust … new respect for a pluralistic society … a new style to operate the church, apart from directives and fiats.… The press panel of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which met in Washington, D. C., last month, used these words to describe the “new mood” of the U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Yet after the 211 bishops and six cardinals issued a sharply worded statement reaffirming clerical celibacy, Bishop Alexander Zaleski of Lansing, Michigan, explained: “It isn’t up to us to stop questioning … but if you are a Catholic, you recognize the Holy Father’s word is authoritative.”
The statement rebuked priests burning to marry who thought they might find official encouragement. Pope Paul VI last summer quashed such hopes, but new discussion apparently was necessary after a survey by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal showed that nearly half of the American diocesan priests wanted to altar their marital status.
Bishop Zaleski’s comment may explain why NCCB action was a curious mixture of refreshing liberation and long-standing tradition.
For the first time, the NCCB approved a collective pastoral letter on the nature of the Church. The 20,000-word document, to be published early next year, was not seen by newsmen. Prepared by a committee headed by Pittsburgh Bishop John J. Wright, the letter comments on current doctrinal trends and emphasizes the “organic living Church” as opposed to the “institution as such.”
NCCB President John F. Dearden, Archbishop of Detroit, guardedly identified the letter as a signal achievement “beyond what many might suspect.” He did not elaborate. The letter is expected to be used widely to “persuade” Catholics, rather than as an edict.
For the first time, the bishops revealed the U. S. Catholic Conference budget. Tentative 1968 figures include $8,140,000 for overseas relief and $1,478,000 for domestic purposes.1Comparable figures for the National Council of Churches are $11,641,210 for overseas work and $7,690,620 for domestic.
Even the meeting place was significant. The conference—founded when Vatican II authorized the establishment of national episcopal conferences—met last year at Washington, D. C.’s Catholic University. This time the bishops descended upon a mid-city hotel for five days.
Alfrink’S Dutch Treat
Some 3,700 Dutch students whooped it up during an uproarious Mass in front of Holland’s Bernard Cardinal Alfrink in a huge livestock market hall. Festivities included dialogue prayers, rhythmic handclapping, the waving of opened umbrellas, folk dancing, snake chains, repeated cheers, and thunderous applause.
Most communicants received the Host in their hands, now a common Dutch practice. After the Mass, singing, dancing, and stamping students joined nuns and priests in an hour-long free-wheeling celebration as a brass band struck up “Happy Days Are Here Again.” No wonder when it was all over the youth blocked off the city square and, dancing around the cardinal’s limousine, sang, “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
But even though the bishops moved out of cloistered halls into the teeming downtown, the papal father-figure’s shadow still hovered over the gathering. Closely following the pattern of the Synod of Bishops in Rome the previous month, officials kept tight reins on the press. Newsmen saw no original statements and were barred from all sessions. Daily press briefings were held with selected bishops.
The opening day, the bishops indicated they would authorize extensive experimentation with liturgical forms. Auxiliary Bishop Gerald McDevitt of Philadelphia said the prelates will seek permission from Rome to establish liturgical study centers at three or four Catholic universities. One probably would be at Notre Dame. The following day, however, Bishop McDevitt admitted the bishops had “spoken out of turn.” Rome had requested silence, he said. Surmised Bishop Clarence Issenmann of Cleveland: Publicity “might stir up hopes which are not granted” among the laity. The carefully regulated experimentation would counteract the unauthorized liturgy now used in the underground church.
The NCCB hand-delivered a resolution to the House of Representatives supporting the administration’s war on poverty and urging no cuts in the pending $2.06 billion bill. (The House approved $1.6 billion the next day.)
Noting that the “moral responsibility of the nation has increased,” the prelates adopted a peace resolution that concluded: “We wish it understood we are not pleading for peace at any price.…” Although the statement was adopted unanimously, it was obvious that the bishops were divided on the Viet Nam issue.
The conference, which came on the heels of a week-long Washington, D. C., meeting of the National Catholic Education Association, affirmed the value of parochial schools and the dignity of Catholic teachers. But though they pledged support for church-related institutions, the bishops offered no solution for the schools’ spiraling costs and shrinking incomes.
The bishops also refused unanimously to authorize the English translation of the controversial Dutch Catechism—which lacks an imprimatur—for religious instruction, and opposed efforts to loosen abortion laws.
The bishops were not without visible critics. Two days before the conference, forty members of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement staged a demonstration outside the hotel. One picket carried a sign that read: “With shepherds like these, who needs wolves?”
Summarizing the health of the Roman church, Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty of Newark, New Jersey, said it suffers from “a kind of underlying malaise.” But he added: “The present catharsis could very well contribute to its over-all health.”
RUSSELL CHANDLER
