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THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN IVmmammmaamm
GEORGIA BULLETIN, THURSDAY, MAY 18,1967
On The Surface, The Spirit Of Unity Is Active
BY DESMOND FISHER
Georgia Bulletin—St, Louis Review Service
LONDON- Suddenly a hush falls on the noisy reception room.
The shrill cocktail party conversations are stilled. Drinks stay
poised in mid-air. All heads turn towards the main entrance.
Down the stairs waddles an ungainly figure in a purple cassock,
eyes twinkling behind bushy white eyebrows, arms outstretched
in greeting. He goes up to the scarlet-clad Cardinal standing
in the reception line and they exchange afriendly kiss of peace*
The Archbishops of Westminster and of Canterbury, the one a
Roman Catholic, the other an Anglican, greet each other once
more as they now do many times a year in this ecumenical age.
On the outside, certainly the spirit of Christian unity is
strongly working in Britain. Archbishop Michael Ramsey re
views a book in the Catholic Herald. A few weeks later Cardinal
John Heenan reviews one in the Church Times.
During Unity Week celebrations this year, many Catholic
priests and even some bishops preached in Anglican churches.
Up and down the country, priest and parson rubbed shoulders
on the platforms of hundreds of town hall and meeting rooms.
Parish congregations visited each other's churches. In a few
years the frigid atmosphere between the denominations has
melted, giving way to courtesy and friendliness.
More significant developments are round the corner. A big
ecumenical meeting arranged by the Catholic Church is
scheduled for the summer. It will be the biggest of its kind
ever held in Britain. And next August, the second of the official
Roman Catholic-Anglican talks, inaugurated last January at
G azzada in Northern Italy, will be held in Britain.
Advance Is Continuing
In other areas of Christianity, too, the ecumenical advance
is continuing. In the middle of March, an interim statement on
Anglican-Methodist unity stressed that the two Churches hold
enough in common in the doctrinal field to warrant advance
into full communion and ultimately into organic union "despite
differences of belief which remain at present unresolved".
Roman Catholics and Jews, Roman Catholics and Free Church
members, Protestant and Presbyterian Churches are all
coming closer together.
But things are not all going smoothly. An influential group
of Methodists opposes the unity talks with Anglicans and says
that there can be Christian fellowship and unity without
uniformity of worship or of organization.
And some weeks ago, the Council of the Baptist Union
declared "that so far no plan of Church union or scheme
for basically altered Church relations has been put forward
in Britain to which Baptists could unitedly, or near-unitedly,
give assent.”
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In the Catholic community in Britain, there is no outward
opposition to ecumenism. Complaints that the Christian Unity
movement is "merely Protestantizing the Church" are no
longer to be: read in the letter columns of the Catholic press
as they were a year ago, though they are sometimes heard
in private conversation.
But the whole tone of the Catholic approach to unity in
Britain is less positive than in other countries, for instance,
Holland or the U.S. The headline on Cardinal Heenan’s
article in the Sunday Times during this year's Unity Week
fcelebrations was “Obstacles to Unity". This gives an idea
of the cautious attitude in official circles. And a few months
before,a news story in the samepaperon the Catholic approach
to ecumenism was headed: "A go-slow on Church unity,"
Obstacles To Unity
King Harold set out for France (the scene is depicted on the
Bayeux tapestry with Bosham mentioned) and where King
^Canute's daughter is buried, the tragedy of the Reformation
[ is represented merely by a thin red line in the parish records.
Above it was the Church of Rome: below it is the Church of
h Cranmer and Ridley.
The second main reason for the slower pace of the Christian
Unity movement in Britain is, according to Cardinal Heenan, the
need to wait for the Ecumenical Directory, which the Secretariat
. for Christian Unity was asked to prepare after the council and
which is now reported to be completed. ‘The English and
Welsh bishops have decided," he said, "that it would be
wrong to alter the existing program until this directory is
published. The worst thing that could happen would be to
make an advance and then have to come back again."
Cardinal Heenan gives two main reasons for the slower pace
of the Christian unity movement in Britain. The first is the
historical one. On the Continent, the old religion was supplanted
in areas which went over to the reformed Churches. In Britain,
there was not the same obvious break since the Anglicans
claimed to be Catholics. In Britain, the issue was one of
continuity. As Cardinal Heenan put it in an interview in the
Sunday Times last November: "We have an obstacle which
does not exist abroad and which all the good will in the world
cannot overcome. Catholics here have been dispossessed.
It is not a question of persecution but of legitimacy. If St.
Augustine (who brought Christianity to the southern part of
England in A.D. 597 and was first Archbishop of Canterbury)
came back would he regard Heenan or Ramsey as his
successor?”.
This is a psychological as well as a theological question.
Throughout Britain are thousands of churches, many of them
dating back for more than 1,000 years, which are now in
^Anglican hands, and which many Roman Catholics feel should
be theirs. In some, like that at Bosham in Sussex, from where
Improving The Climate
The fact that the second meeting of the Anglican and
Roman Catholic unity commissions is to be held in Britain
is expected by many observers to do something to improve
the ecumenical climate in this country. The meeting, which
will take up where the Gazzada talks left off last J anuary,
will be held "somewhere in Britain,” at the end of August
and beginning of September.
Canon John Satterthwaite, the Anglican commission sec
retary, said that the venue and date had been decided but
details could not be released for publication before official
confirmation from Rome had arrived. This is expected soon
and those taking part in the talks (including Bishop Charles
H. Helmsing of Kansas City) will then be informed.
The British discussions will center round the theme 'The
Church and the Gospel." Eight papers will deal with different
aspects of the questions: What is the Church; who belongs to
it; how closely does it live up to the model presented in the
Gospel.
No
Viet
Aid
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE)
'The Gospel tells us that we
are to love even our enemies
add if it were possible to bring
food, clothing and medicine and
even financial assistance to any
suffering civilians in North
Vietnam, it would be a holy and
just thing to do. But it is simply
impossible and I do hot see any
possibilities bf it happening,
certainly not while the conflict
continues.
iig A'And I .raust. stress. here the
i i w®nd sk'any ^suffering: cirtdli an?*’, yj
because no one in his right
mind would suggest thatwegive
assistance to the armed forces
of a government that is directly
locked in battle with American
troops."
“Originally, Catholic Relief
Services had its main office in
Hanoi prior to the partitioning
of that country in' 1954. At
that time, when the communist
regime came to power in the
newly created North Vietnam,
Catholic Relief Services was
forced to leave the country.”
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TORONTO (NC)—Catholic
philosophy must cease oper-.
ating on a system of “unbridled
free enterprise” and become
"socialized” —and Catholic
editors can contribute to the
process, Canadian .philosopher
Leslie Dewart told a meeting
of Catholic editors!
Dewart, professor of philos
ophy at St. Michael's College
of the University of Toronto
and author of the,prize-winning
book "The Future of Belief,"
spoke at the 57th annual con
vention of the Catholic Press
Association Wednesday at
Toronto’s King Edward Sher
aton Hotel.
Philosophy, he said, has re
sisted socialization—a col
lective search for truth—and
has instead continued “under a
regime of mutual preying, of
unbridled frfce enterprise in
which we ‘fight* each other for
the truth."
Rather than spend their time
hunting forf errors in each
others' work, said Dewart,
philosophers must seek and
purify the truth. ‘The worst
error is nbt to miss the truth,
but to reject it."
Catholic philosophers have
not been immune to this
"philosophizing by scimitar,"
he noted.
‘There were the struggles,
and vendet|tas of Occamists and
Scotists, Of Suarezians and Bal-
mesians, of school against
school, each .one hawking its
patron saint,/ favorite son or
venerable founder with the
tenacity, (fervor and style of
many an j Italian village's
zealous pnotndtion of its very
ow 1 ' miratulous Bleeding
Host.”
Catholic journalists can
either perpetuate this attitude,
or they can contribute toward
"socialization," said Dewart.
“To the degree thatthe Cath
olic newspaperman participates
in the collective intellectual
effort of the Church in the be
lief that there are clear-cut
definitive and irreformable
truths which some philosophers
have discovered but which other
philosophers dispute.,.or in the
belief that the truth is the
opinion which will emerge vic
torious in the struggle of minds,
the Catholic reporter will help
perpetuate that style of
philosophy
icized.
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Bishop John Moorman of . Ripon, leader of the Anglican
team at the talks, said that they would concentrate on funda
mental theological questions.
"Practical matters such as mixed marriages and Anglican
orders are of great importance, of course,’’ he said. "But
we feel that it is better to start with the major theological
differences between our Churches before going into more
detailed divisions, at least for the present. Of course, the
practical questions may be dealt with by other groups, as,
for instance, the Roman Catholic-Wo rid Council of Churches
teams which discussed problems of mixed marriages at ■
Nemi, near Rome, last March."
On the whole field of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations,
Bishop Moorman believes that only slight progress has been
made. ‘There is no doubt," he says, “thatthe Vatican Council
has given us an entirely new ecumenical problem in recent
years. After centuries of isolation, Rome has now entered
the field of discussion and, to some extent, co-operation with
other Christian Churches. Where, before, there was suspicion
and even hostility, there is now discussion, common prayer
and joint activity for the welfare of mankind,
i Toward Reconciliation*
“All this is greatly to be welcomed. But it would be un
realistic and over-optimistic to think that because there are
better relations the problems of unity are any legs difficult.
There is a real danger today of people imagining that a union
between Rome and Canterbury is just round the comer. This
is totally untrue. All that we have done is to create the climate
in which our problems can be discussed. The problems are the |
same as they have always been.
‘Meanwhile,” Bishop Moorman concluded, ‘’progress is
being slowly made along the road towards a union of the
Anglican and Methodist Churches in this country. T|ie interim
report ‘Towards Reconciliation" has raised many problems
which we now realize must be seen in the light of our relation
ships with other Churches, especially Rome and Orthodoxy,
The interplay of these two movements is the most important
question which Anglicans have to face at this moment,"
Clearly the ecumenical situation in England is not easy.
There are some Anglicans who fear that the closer their
Church moves towards the Methodists the further it will get
from Rome. Likewise, there are many Roman Catholics who
believe that while there are some grounds for dialogue with
Anglicans, there is little sense in dealing with the Free
Churches.
And behind all the ecumenical hesitation, there is the
spectre of the rapid de-Christianization of Britain. As
Cardinal Heenan has said; ‘The most urgent task of all
the Christian Churches today is to restore God to a world
which is rapidly losing its belief in Him."
“On the contrary, if he
participates in intensive specu
lative effort which character
izes the present moment of the
Church in that ‘spirit of thought*
which we have so inadequately
cultivated in the past, his role
in the eventual socialization of
Catholic philosophy will be no
less real and valuable than
that of philosophers them
selves," he concluded.
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