Rules for a Dialogue

As far as anyone could remember, it had never happened before: the same article was published simultaneously in the Protestant weekly Christian Century and the Roman Catholic weekly Commonweal. Appropriately, the article concerned better interfaith understanding. To further that cause, Presbyterian Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, professor of systematic theology at Manhattan's nondenominational Union Theological Seminary, undertook to set up "half a dozen ground rules" for conducting the growing "dialogue" between Catholics and Protestants.

Rule No. 1: Each partner must believe that the other is speaking in good faith. This, Theologian Brown points out, is not based simply on civilized behavior, but on the fact that both parties are "servants of Jesus Christ." This "makes us brethren. Some of my Protestant friends feel that there is an attitude of condescension in the Catholic description of Protestants as 'separated brethren.' I do not share this feeling. I think the phrase an excellent one, for it describes exactly what we are."

Rule No. 2: Each partner must have a clear understanding of his own faith. Protestants will have more difficulty with this stipulation than Catholics, suggests Presbyterian Brown, partly because Protestantism is less dogmatic and partly "because of a longstanding and baleful American tendency to equate the Protestant faith with 'what I find appealing.' " This will mean "some strenuous intramural debate" in Protestantism.

Rule No. 3: Each partner must strive for a clear understanding of the faith of the other. This involves two corollaries: first, willingness to interpret the other faith in the most favorable light ("There are plenty of sins to be exploited on both sides. Those who want to exploit them can have a field day"), and second, willingness to revise one's views. "It is really rather comfortable for a Protestant to believe that the Roman version of the formula 'Outside the church there is no salvation' is the precise equivalent of saying 'All non-Catholics go to hell,' for this makes it easy for the Protestant to use words like 'intolerance,' 'bigot,' and 'spiritual pride.' But if he thinks that that is the actual teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the process of dialogue will let him in for some real surprises, and he will have to change his tune." Similarly, it may be disconcerting to some Roman Catholics to find "Protestants who live under the corporate discipline of the Word of God, who believe expressly that they must live in utter subjection to that Word and who believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament--to say nothing of affirming their own interpretation of the Catholic belief that 'outside the church there is no salvation.' "

Rule No. 4: Each partner must accept responsibility in humility and penitence for what his group has done, and is doing, to foster and perpetuate division. "Many Roman Catholics today are saying that the perpetuation of the divisions of Christendom is not simply due to Protestant wrongheadedness, but also due to the wrong kind of Catholic intransigence. Protestants should acknowledge that for centuries the Protestant tendency was to divide Christendom . . . and that if the ecumenical movement is revising this trend, it is still building on the wreckage of three centuries."

Rule No. 5: Each partner must forthrightly face the issues which cause separation as well as those which create unity. A false sense of Christian charity must not gloss over points of difference that cannot be reconciled. "There is no halfway house, for example, between believing a) that the pope is infallible, and b) that the pope is not infallible. Not even the combined genius of Catholic and Protestant theology could produce a satisfactory middle term. There is no such thing as being 'a little bit infallible.' "

Rule No. 6: Each partner must recognize that all that can be done with the dialogue is to offer it up to God. Ultimate unity may be the hope, but Christians must not be too set on how this unity should come about. "If in typical American fashion we are immediately impatient for 'results,' we will simply have to learn something about the patience of God--or we will try his patience yet further . . .

No Christian is entitled to believe only in what is humanly possible. We have to affirm--and really mean it--that 'with men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.' And this is why the dialogue is important; not because we know what will come of it, but precisely because we do not know what may come of it . . ."

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