Summit at the Vatican

A black limousine flying the Union Jack swept past the colonnaded grandeur of the Piazza. San Pietro and into a Vatican courtyard. Out stepped the Most Rev. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, 73, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England. Escorted by the black-clad Chamberlain of Cape and Sword, the Archbishop strode by colorful Swiss Guards armed with halberds and entered the papal apartments. "Your Holiness, we are making history," said the Archbishop to Pope John XXIII. For an hour, alone except for an interpreter, the two churchmen spoke of matters temporal and spiritual.

By the wish of both, the occasion was attended by a minimum of ceremony, and an absence of cameras. But the meeting marked the end of 400 years of church history. Four centuries ago that great, roaring barrel of a man, King Henry VIII of England, decided to end his marriage with his Spanish queen. He was confident of support from Rome, where he had already been hailed as "Defender of the Faith" for his writings against the protestantism of Martin Luther, but Pope Clement VII refused an annulment. On this issue of supremacy, Henry VIII defied the Church of Rome.

To the Scaffold. The schism brought wars, rebellion, and shaped the history of Britain. Henry VIII beheaded the two most eminent men of his realm: Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. In the Roman Catholic revival under Henry's daughter, the Queen the English called "Bloody Mary," nearly 300 persons were burned to death as heretics. Under Queen Elizabeth I, over 100 Roman Catholics went to the scaffold as traitors.

Both prelates--like today's political leaders of the West--were worried lest they raise false hopes that all differences can be settled by a meeting at the summit. Vatican observers said hopefully that "a first and significant step has been taken," and Pope John saw the meeting going "only as far as the threshold of great problems." A cautious spokesman for the Church of England said, "His Holiness expressed to the Archbishop his great desire to increase brotherly feelings among all men, and especially among all Christians." But as the Archbishop had observed in advance: "Talking trivialities is in itself a portent of great significance. The pleasantries may be pleasantries about profundities." He seemed relieved that the interview had been private: "I am quite happy there were no pictures. All sorts of things might have been read into them--odious comparisons made."

Which Is Greatest? The Archbishop made clear his hopes for the future in a sermon delivered the night before his meeting with the Pope. Citing some lines from the Gospel According to St. Luke ("Then there arose a reasoning among them which of them should be the greatest"), the Archbishop discussed the long separation of the two churches. "The cold war was indeed a war," he said. "A strife for victory, for converts, for political power in many countries with victims and martyrdoms and cruelties and oppressions. That period is not altogether past, but it is passing."

He concluded strongly: "We no longer need forbid one another. For if we are not against one another any longer, we are for one another, and so can be gloriously free to be altogether for Christ and for the true unity of his Church. I say deliberately 'unity' not 'union,' for church union or reunion rests upon a reconciliation of jurisdictions and authorities. But unity is only of the spirit, and into that spirit . . . the churches can enter readily, and are indeed entering now."

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