Review of Current Religious Thought: November 09, 1962

That man Aristotle among others took the view that the learning process has to do with making distinctions—that is a dog and not a cat, and that there thing is an atomic weight. So it goes, and I should like to assay a distinction or two. One day hence, as I write, the General Council will open in the Vatican and will be the Roman Catholic version of the ecumenical movement in action. What we have to sort out are words like ecumenical and catholic, but especially Roman catholic.

The sorting process is simple enough and known to Everyman: the words catholic and ecumenical mean virtually the same thing, i.e., “universal,” with the word ecumenical having a more chummy sound to it because it includes something of the idea of one household. But the term Roman catholic is a contradiction in terms: insofar as a church is Roman, it is not catholic but limited; insofar as it is catholic, it goes far beyond Rome. We have used the term Roman catholic so long that we have blurred the distinction, but we can see it clearly if we try to talk about Roman ecumenical, or Pittsburgh ecumenical, or even Edinburgh catholic. We ought to try such terms on for size just to see the point, just in order not to forget it. This could give us a new sense of direction; we could invite the Romanists to join the catholic church instead of limiting themselves to Rome.

This could be great fun, inviting the Romanists to become catholics. They could lay aside strictly Romish questions, such as whether Peter really was the first pope in case he was ever really in Rome at all, or the infallibility of the Roman pontiff (that seems terribly Roman, doesn’t it, and terribly offensive to the true ecumenical spirit), or the Assumption of Mary, which is as unbiblical as it is incomprehensible. Not that this sort of thing is likely; not half. We are all so delighted that Rome is smiling on us, that they are so big about it all as graciously to allow Protestant “observers” as they go about their work. We have been so conditioned by the idea that Roman priests look like Bing Crosby and that nuns look like Audrey Hepburn (while Protestant missionaries are more like Katherine Hepburn riding down a river with Humphrey Bogart) and that popes are genial old gentlemen like the present incumbent, John XXIII, who would have been retired long ere since in Protestantism, but who will make a good appearance at the Vatican Council while “the boys in the back room” get the work done. How long ago was it that Protestants believed that Rome was the “whore of babylon” and the “antichrist”? Has something happened to Rome or to us since those awful terms were used? It seems to me the words arose when men were having their heads chopped off because they opposed Rome. Have we changed or has Rome changed, in Colombia or Spain, for example? There is a monument of repentance in Geneva because Calvin should not have had a hand in the burning of Servetus. That sort of thing we are ashamed of and the monument says so. Where is the monument which tells us about Rome repenting for the Inquisition?

The Chicago Daily News late in August reported on a pamphlet written by the Reverend James J. McQuade, S. J. (Society of Jesus: that ought to be a pretty ecumenical term!), in which he quotes Dr. Julius Doepfner, Cardinal Archbishop of Berlin, who has listed five ways in which Roman Catholics can help establish Christian unity. Three of these are worth comment as illustrative of where Rome really stands in matters ecumenical, i.e., catholic.

1. They must develop a “thorough love of the Catholic Church” (he means Rome, of course) and reject “indifference which leads to decay of Christianity and frustrates all genuine reunion efforts.”

2. They must practice “prayer and penance to win God’s grace.” If I may here interject, look at that statement as against genuine Protestantism. Just how is one supposed by prayer and/or penance to win God’s grace? How does one earn a gift, and if it is grace, how does one win it? This is one place where we can get all blurred up in failing to see the differences in our longing for unity.

3. There can be “clarifying talks” with non-Catholics (he means, of course, non-Romanists) conducted in “strict adherence” to instructions of the Holy See and the bishops, without “blurring the differences.”

I quote Dr. Doepfner with great approval. We cannot and we must not think about ecumenical movements which “blur the differences.” John Calvin, called by Karl Holl a Unionsmann, engaged in many colloquies shortly after the Reformation began in efforts toward union with Rome. So did Melanchthon and Bucer, and Calvin reports on them in one of his letters:

Philip and Bucer have drawn up ambiguous and varnished formulas … to try whether they could satisfy the opposite party by giving them nothing. I cannot agree to this device … for they hope that in a short time they would begin to see clearly if the matter of doctrine be left open; therefore they rather wish to skip over it, and do not dread that equivocation than which nothing can be more hurtful.

In the book review section of The New York Times for Sunday, October 14, Liston Pope of Yale Divinity School has an excellent review of Robert Neville’s book The World of the Vatican. Parts of his review seem relevant to what we have been saying. “One announced purpose of the meeting,” Liston Pope writes, “was that it should ‘constitute an invitation to the separated communities to seek for unity, toward which so many hearts in all parts of the world are yearning today.’ ”

Professor Pope suggests, however, that this original theme of unity “has been rather muted in later discussion of the council’s purposes.” The purpose now seems to be to study the inner workings of the Roman church. Meanwhile, as Liston Pope points out, “Radio Vatican has added that there is only ‘one road to unity’—the road to Rome. Certainly the doctrines of Papal supremacy and infallibility comprise the chief stumbling blocks to union between Roman Catholic and non-Catholic bodies.”

There will be no equivocation in Rome; don’t look for it and don’t build your hopes on it. The Vatican Council affects so many people in so many different ways; in me it arouses cynicism and a certain sadness as I watch all those goings-on and think on the Man of Galilee. Meanwhile, as I write, the radio is just announcing that the council had prayers this morning for the “Catholics behind the Iron Curtain.” And they meant Roman catholics, I presume.

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