Magyar Egyház, 1968 (47. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1968-08-01 / 8-9. szám
8 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ Five of the six new presidents of the World Council of Churches, elected at the Uppsala General Assembly, from left to right: Bishop Hans Lilje, presiding bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany; Dr. Ernest A. Payne, former general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland; Dr. D. X. Niles, Methodist, of Jaffna, Ceylon, chairman of the East Asia Christian Conference; the Rt. Rev. Alphaeus H. Zulu, a member of the Zulu Royal House, Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Zululand and Swaziland; Dr. John Coventry Smith, general secretary of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations (COEMAR) of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, also the present moderator of its 180. General Assembly. Missing from the picture is one of the six new presidents, German. Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.— The Uppsala Assembly also elected a 120 member strong Central Committee (the chief governing body of the World Council between Assemblies), 89 of whom are clergymen, 31 lay men and women; among the Central Committee members, 23 are Orthodox, 19 Reformed, 17 Lutheran, 13 Anglican, 13 Methodist. The Central Committee’s new chairman is M. M. Thomas, a member of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, and director of the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society in Bangalore, India. Hungarian members of the Central Committee include Bishop Dr. Tibor Bartha (Reformed Church, Hungary), Bishop Zoltán Kaldy (Lutheran Church, Hungary). W ORLD COUNCIL HEAD EXPRESSES DISAPPOINTMENT WITH POPE PAUL S ENCYCLICAL ON BIRTH CONTROL (Geneva, Switzerland)—Disappointment at Pope Paul VPs encyclical on birth control was voiced here by the general secretary of the World Council of Churches. In a statement issued on July 30, the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake said: “It is disappointing that the initiative taken in 1964 to re-examine the traditional Roman Catholic position on family planning and birth control seems with the encyclical Humanae Vitae to have ended up approximately where it began, despite such a long and careful study. “Some member churches of the World Council of Churches, particularly some of the Orthodox theologians, take a position very close to that expressed by Pope Paul. It is, however, a disappointment to many Christians in all the member churches of the World Council as well as to many Roman Catholics, ihat no early breakthrough to a solution to this problem of conscience can be envisioned. My personal reaction to the encyclical, at the first reading of the central parts, is that the distinction between artificial and natural means of birth control must he more thoroughly examined. It also appears that the Roman Catholic position as now stated depends too much upon an old conception of natural law to he persuasive to 20th century man.” LEIDEN STUDENT GROUP PRACTICES INTERCOMMUNION \RPPS)—The Christian Student Movement of the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, has moved, after seven years of intensive interconfessional work, to an official policy of intercommunion between its Protestant and Roman Catholic members. The Reformed student pastor, J. A. Eekhof, said that the decision was made after careful consideration of all aspects of the question, and because the group was aware of its profound unity in faith and of its responsibility to the large number of confessionally mixed marriages among the university’s students. Eucharistic theology, which for centuries has been the major harrier between the Roman Catholic Church and the churches of the Reformation, can no longer justify division if it is approached in the spirit of the Dutch Roman Catholic “New Catechism”, said Mr. Eekhof. The decision was taken with the knowledge of the responsible Roman Catholic bishop and Reformed church authorities. “We have reached a point,” according to the student pastor, “where we can only go forward in the search for new forms, but not backward.” He said that there has been a shift in the mentality of the younger generation, particularly with regard to their relationship to the life of the Church. Those who are not yet prepared to accept intercommunion should not be pressured into doing so, said Eekhof. “But”, he added, “there must he a possibility in our churches to receive bread and wine together as a sign of the One Lord of both churches.” LIGONIER CONFERENCES If the Lord so wilt, elders and pastors from our Hungarian Reformed Churches in North America will meet for their annual conferences in Ligonier, Pa., September 1-4. The invitations, sent out to all the congregations in time, promise a rich and variegated program. We trust that the Spirit of Truth will lead many to Ligonier and prompt them to work on the edification of our spiritual house.
