Magyar Egyház, 1966 (45. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1966-01-01 / 1. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 7 people in America. Let us love, honor and help our brethren in other denominations. Let us respect our church and make any sacrifice for her but let us be happy that our brethren in other denominations are alive, are progressing and prospering. May we encourage them that they too, like us, may preserve our common heritage. If the time should ever come that they cast out of the ship of life this precious cargo which we now call our Hungarian Reformed heritage as excess baggage, let us be reminded that this sick lethargy could happen to us as well. As time goes on, may it bring us life, not death. Again, may I say, God gave us the year 1966 as a gift. Let us answer Him with gratitude, faithfulness and service: Lord, we, Thy Hungarian Reformed children in America stand at our posts on the battlements of our faith watchfully. Help us, by Thy grace! Louis Nagy, Bishop Dr. Eugene L. Smith: Trends Toward Acceleration 1965 Year End Summary 1965 was a year of marked acceleration in the ecumenical movement. Vatican Council II, just now adjourned, has borne witness to the powerful surge for renewal in the Roman Catholic Church and to its concern for fellowship with other Christians and Churches. By the Decrees on Ecumenism and Religious Liberty, and other actions of the Vatican Council, the ecumenical movement gained a major added dimension. A 14-member joint working group, with official representation from the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, has already held two meetings to consider possibilities for cooperative study and action. A number of joint consultations — on mission, laity and other subjects — have also been held, while others are in the planning stage. While these new ecumenical impulses in Roman Catholiscism are the best known and most dramatic example, many other striking indications of acceleration in the ecumenical movement have appeared in 1965. Conservative Evangelical leaders from several continents met near Geneva last May with representatives of Churches belonging to the World Council of Churches to consider the nature of the Church and its responsibility in the world. The Central Committee of the World Council had in January urged the strengthening of relations with evangelical Churches outside the membership of the World Council. In August, for the first time in history, a representative group of Jewish leaders from the United States and Europe met with a group of Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants from various nations under the auspices of the World Council of Churches. This interfaith group considered “the situation of man in the world today” and recommended joint action of Christians and Jews in matters of common social concerns. Meeting at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in January, Patriarchs and leaders of the ancient Oriental Orthodox Churches called for closer relationships and cooperation among themselves. They also issued a call for deeper unity with the Greek Orthodox Churches, and for a fresh theological study of the causes of their centuries-old Dr. Smith is the executive secretary for the World Council of Churches in the United States. division. The ancient Oriental Churches include the Armenian, Coptic (Egypt), Ethiopian, Syrian and Malabar (India) Churches. The division of these Churches and Greek Orthodox dates from the Council of Chalcedon in 538 A.D. Here in the U.S., ecumenical acceleration was also plainly felt: • The Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas was increasingly effective as an expression of unity among the Eastern Orthodox Churches of this hemisphere. The Churches represented in the Standing Conference are also members of the World Council of Churches. • Representatives of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenical Affairs and the National Council of Churches met several times in 1965 to consider practical measures of cooperation. Similar consultations of the Bishops’ Commission with representative committees of various denominations are going forward, as well as interchurch consultations on the state and local level with the involvement of state and local councils of churches. • The W'eek of Prayer for Christian Unity in the week of January 18-25 in annually observed by Protestants, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics in the United States and throughout the world. The prayer leaflet for this observance has this year for the first time been jointly distributed in this country by the World Council of Churches and the Greymoor Friars. Renewal in the life of the churches is essential to meaningful unity. With inner renewal there comes a new sense of urgency for the missionary outreach of the Church, and for serving human need. The recent addition to the New York staff of a Secretary for Mission and Service in the person of Dr. T. E. Floyd Honey is an expression of this World Council concern. END OF VATICAN II BRINGS COMMENTS (Geneva) — The end of the Second Vatican Council on December 8, after 168 meetings spread over four years, set going a flow of comments on its successes and failures. Here is one of them. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, head of the Lutheran Church in America and chairman of the WCC’s Central and Executive Committees, said that the Council had fulfilled his expectations. He thought that the Council’s “two most influential and substantial achievements” would be found to be its Decree on Ecumenism and its Constitution on the Church. In the Constitution on the Church, Dr. Fry said, “the outstanding virtue was recognition that not only Christian individuals but Christian communities exist outside the Roman Catholic Church by reason of their baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit. As such, it represents a new true understanding of the whole Christian family.” He thought that the Council’s “major omission” was in not acting on a liberalization of the rules governing mixed marriage — the marriage of a Catholic to a Protestant or a Jew. An Interconfessional Theological Faculty has been established at Berkeley University in California (USA). It is open to all who have completed their theological studies in the frame-work of a Theological Faculty of their own confession. This new inter-confessional Faculty is to be financed in common by Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans and other denominations.
