Magyar Egyház, 1967 (46. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1967-02-01 / 2. szám
s MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MAGYAR CHURCH Growing Numbers of Christians Observe Week of Prayer Reports received at World Council of Churches headquarters indicate that the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has been observed by growing numbers of Protestants, Anglicans, Orthodox and Roman Catholics around the world. Joint services of worship and intercession were held in many cities, using the theme “Called to One Hope” (Ephesians 4:4). Internationally the week is sponsored by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order and the Roman Catholic Association for Christian Unity, Lyon, France. Next year it is hoped that materials for the observance will be prepared by a small joint committee appointed by the Faith and Order Commission and the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity. In Paris, some 3,000 Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox attending a service at the University of Paris heard the first inter-confessional translation into French of a portion of the Bible, the Epistle of the Romans. The “ecumenical translation” is being made by the team which prepared the Jerusalem Bible plus a team furnished by the United Bible Societies. It is hoped to have the entire New Testament completed in four or five years. Presiding at the service were Pastor Marc Boegner, honorary President of the French Protestant Federation, and Joseph Marie Cardinal Martin, Archbishop of Rouen. In London, a procession of Witness from Trafalgar Square to Central Hall, Westminster, preceded a united service organized by the Westminster Christian Council. Led by a Salvation Army band, several thousand persons marched down Whitehall with a group of Anglican, Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Free Church leaders at their head. At Central Hall prayers were led by Dr. Maurice Barnett, a Methodist, and the preacher was Canon Francis Bartlett, a Roman Catholic. In Manchester, England, John Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster preached to 3,000 people in the Manchester Free Trade Hall. More than 500 churches, convents and Christian organizations in the Greater Manchester area were represented. In Canterbury, England, Father Pierre Michalon of Lyon, France preached in Canterbury Cathedral. He is thought to be the first Roman Catholic to speak in this Anglican cathedral since the Reformation. Fr. Michalon had assisted in the preparation of the leaflet used by Christians around the world in observance of Unity Week. In Geneva, an ecumenical worship service was held in the Cathedral of St. Pierre. The officiants, drawn from World Council of Churches staff and local clergy, represented a wide variety of ecclesiastical traditions. In Miinster, Germany, the preacher at the service in the Roman Catholic Cathedral was Professor Heinz-Dietrich Wendland, director of the Institute for Christian Social Science at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Miinster University. Protestants, Catholics and Anglicans filled the cathedral. In New York, the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity was the scene of an ecumenical service in which brief addresses were given by Archbishop Iakovos, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America and a WCC President; Bishop Terence J. Cooke, Vicar General of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for Manhattan; and Dr. Philip A. Johnson, Associate Executive Secretary of the U.S. Conference for the WCC. (EPS) TIMELY QUOTES ON UNITY Desmond Fisher, a Roman Catholic commentator writing in the Church Times (Jan. 13): “... the ecumenical movement is running into trouble because Christians think of it either as an inter-expert dialogue or, as far as they themselves are concerned, as a sort of garden-party euphoria, a matter simply of being nice to one’s fellow Christians. “Both these elements have their value. But they do not exhaust ecumenism. The basic unifying force must surely be the proper understanding of the Church’s mission in the world. This is a task for all of us ordinary Christians, people in whom the Spirit of Truth is working. Unless we understand what the Church is and what is its mission, we run the risk of missing the whole point of Christianity.” Editorial in The British Weekly (Jan. 19): “What we need really is sheer honesty in all our ecumenical relationships. For this is the ground of so many of our disappointments. If for Roman Catholics mariology is an essential of ecclesiastical dogma for all time, it is better to say so now. If Episcopalians can in no circumstances envisage a united church without bishops, let this be openly put. If Presbyterians are not prepared, under any conditions, to consider the value of the office of bishop, this ought to be said . . . “This is the central problem of the unity saga. Are conversations entered into with convictions but without preconceived prejudices. If the latter are real factors, is this in all honesty, honesty?” Dr. A. C. Craig as reported by the News Bulletin of the Scottish Churches’ Council: “Christian people belonging to different historic Christian churches become aware of a double pressure upon them — the pressure of being driven and the pressure of being drawn together.” The drawing pressure is the prophetic word which continually breaks out from the Bible, he said. The driving pressure is the force and impact of outward circumstance. The churches today face “a widespread declension from Christian belief, Christian ways of thinking and Christian patterns of living. To this kind of challenge — the most serious that has faced the Church for centuries — denominational differences and the things about which Christian ministers are expert in argument are at least 95% irrelevant,” he said.
