Words & Works

P: When churches fail to be "merciful neighbors," they misunderstand vast social changes, said Germany's Dr. Martin Niemoeller to a Christian World Mission meeting in Silver Bay, N.Y. "The Socialist movement grew in Europe without any assistance or correction from the Christian churches, and the way was paved for the atheistic Communist system which has found its bulwark in Russia. The churches ought to have shown a Christian and human way of dealing with the growing crisis of coexistence between East and West. But they were and are hopelessly linked to the bourgeois world. They did not even see the travail of those who needed them."

P: It is time to give the Southern Baptists a new name, urged the Rev. Dr. Forrest C. Feezor, executive secretary of the Texas State Baptist Convention. " 'Southern' is a sectional term that no longer describes our location. We are now in nearly every state in the Union and in Canada." The name is a handicap "to our ministry in areas beyond the South." Dr. Feezors suggestion: the Continental Baptist Convention.

P: "Social utility" may well motivate the U.S. religious boom, wrote the Rev. Andrew Greeley of Chicago in the Roman Catholic magazine The Sign. "But it is at least possible that within the outer froth of religiosity there is an inner core of authentic religion hardened by the firmness of Divine Grace ... If intelligent Catholics stand apart from it in disdain, they may run the risk of putting themselves in the same class as those fastidious Italian noblemen who wondered how any good could possibly come from the Poor Man of Assisi and his ragamuffin band of followers."

P: As Catholic chaplain of the Massachusetts house of representatives and chapel administrator at Boston's South Station, Monsignor Christopher P. Griffin prayed in the house last week for a bill granting a subsidy to the New Haven Railroad's Old Colony commuter line. Prayed he: "Heavenly Father, you know what is in my heart--so teach me the prayer today. How, 0 Lord, wouldst thou pray if thine own temple were now on the Old Colony line?" Turning to the legislators, he continued: "I pray for you, now it is your turn to pray over me. I'll pray--you vote--let God decide. Amen." The Senate tabled the bill.

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