Magyar Egyház, 1968 (47. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1968-01-01 / 1. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 7 1967 Year-End Summary by Dr. Eugene L. Smith, Executive Secretary, World Council of Churches in the United States 1967 was a year of mounting moral crisis in the United States and of broadening barriers between ourselves and the rest of mankind. In no time since the 1930’s has the nation revealed so much self-doubt. Commanding enormous power, we are deeply doubtful of our ability to use it wisely. Possessing unprecedented prosperity, we seem immobilized by the crisis in our cities, paralyzed in the war on our own poverty. Knowing that chronic famine increases in parts oil the world, we continually cut our foreign aid. Urgently desiring peace, we cannot extricate ourselves from war. The price we pay for Vietnam includes the estrangement of many of our real allies; a spur to inflation at home; delay of domestic reform; and a more widespread distrust of our own government among our own people than any time in 35 years. During these months American churches have been selecting delegates (from member churches) and delegated-observers (from non-member churches) for the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, whose theme is to be “all things new.” The signs of creative newness in America are as real, though less dramatic, as the signs of despair. There is a new determination in the Negro community to win the good life for its people. An unprecedented proportion of law school graduates are seeking to serve the poor rather than the rich. Courses on religion multiply in secular universities. Creative church experiments in new forms of ministry develop in the most unexpected places. A significant and expanding number cf college students give time in personal services—such as tutoring in the poverty programs. The church feels this moral crisis. Representing a stable segment of the population, it thus represents a group resistant to sudden change. This tension has produced a new possibility of a “no-church movement.” Many committed Christians are dissatisfied with the slowness of the church to change. The swelling demand for campus courses on religion comes largely from those apart from the church. No one can now see what this combination of concern about the Christian faith and restlessness about the institutional church may mean for the future. The ability of the organized church to meet this challenge depends on whether it will combine its concern for evangelism with its concern for justice. It will effectively serve this nation in its present crisis only as its call to the Christian life is as broad in its sense as the Old Testament prophets, as deep in spiritual power as the New Testament Church. Roman Catholic-Reformed Dialogue in America A good marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant can be a positive force toward the broader union of Christendom, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian- Reformed churchmen agreed last week. “If two people of differing faiths can live together in deep love and understanding, then we have something pointing to the great church of the future,” explained the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Henry G. J. Beck, Lyndhurst, N. J., during a press conference which concluded a three-day meeting. The talks, sixth in a series of semi-annual conversalions conducted under the auspices of the American Catholic Bishop’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and the North American Area of the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches, were held at Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pa. The consensus on “mixed marriage” was reached by the group’s worship and mission discussion section, one of two working groups that have been a continuing part of the talks, which began in 1965. At the same time, section participants agreed upon the need for joint pre-marital pastoral counseling, joint solemnization of the wedding, and joint availability of the clergy of both traditions after the marriage vows are taken to foster continued spiritual growth of the family. “We would like to see that the parents and any children become familiar with both traditions,” Msgr. Beck, co-chairman of the worship and mission section, said. “For example, if a child becomes a Presbyterian he or she should be honestly reared as a Presbyterian but also should be given a real reverence for the Catholic Faith.” Msgr. Beck and the Rev. William B. Ward of Columbia. S. C., the other section co-chairman, announced that the topic of mixed marriage will be further discussed at future meetings, with a view toward publication of a “practical manual” for use by Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy. The Rev. Daniel O’Hanlon, a Jesuit theologian from Alma College, Los Gatos, California, and Prof. J. A. Ross Mackenzie of Union Theological Seminary of Virginia, Richmond, co-chairman of the section group on theology, reported two central points of agreement in discussing “ministry and order”: a more flexible and changed position in each tradition’s acceptance of the other’s form of ministry, and “a new awareness of demands” from society that call the Christian Church to jointly develop new forms of ministry for Christian response to human need. Though the primacy of the Pope—one of the biggest stumbling-blocks to Christian reunion—was not discussed in detail, the theology section agreed that this roadblock “is not big enough to stop us from what we want to do together now,” Ft. O’Hanlon said. He added, however, that “at this point we don’t want to so emphasize our unity that we appear to be brushing our differences under the rug, but we don’t want to so emphasize our differences that we end up in a squabble.” This issue will be discussed at future meetings. During the Lancaster meeting, the participants, which numbered around 30. joined in common worship. One morning the group attended the seminary’s weekly Holy Communion service, next day Roman Catholic participants concelebrated a mass in the seminary chapel. Msgr. Beck, who preached the homily, told the group that, while differences exist, “there is no reason to have differences where charity, in the sense of Christian love, is concerned. “Our past is a scandal, our present is a problem, but our future belongs to God,” he said. “We must put aside the horror of the past and the anxieties of the present and let nothing stand between us and our common Lord.” The group set the dates of May 9-11 for the spring meeting, to be held somewhere on the East Coast, the fall meeting is scheduled for October 24-26 in the Hungarian Reformed Church of Allen Park, Michigan. Protestant churches participating in the conversations are the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Hungarian Reformed Church in America, the Reformed Church in America, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the United Church of Christ, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U-S-A,
