The Supreme Realist

To Christianity as a whole, the most interesting half of the double bill set up for next October's Second Vatican Ecumenical Council is not "modernization" of the Roman Catholic Church but "Christian unity." No swift healing of the break that stems from Luther is remotely in prospect; yet many a move can be made. Hard at work on behalf of the Vatican is a German-born cardinal who got his red hat from Pope John XXIII in 1959: Augustin Bea, S.J., head of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

It is Bea who is handling the delicate problem of providing invitations to non-Catholic churchmen who would like to at tend the council as observers. His top flight staff of clerics has compiled a long list of unity-related subjects for the council agenda, including proposals on religious liberty, the rights of individual conscience and mixed marriages.

Much in contrast to his years as a back room scholar. Cardinal Bea now keeps himself as much in the public eye as his 81 years permit. He answers more than 2,000 letters a year, and has become good friends with such non-Catholic clergymen as Willem Visser Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches; the Most Rev. Geoffrey Fisher, retired Archbishop of Canterbury; and Franklin Clark Fry, who last week was elected first president of the newly merged Lutheran Church in America.

In the past six months. Bea has delivered nine major public speeches and has given 15 press conferences in five languages about the Vatican Council. Bea denies that any magic or mystery is involved in his transformation into a public figure. "There is no charisma," he says. "Just an incitement to work. I was preformed for this job."

Debt to Protestants. The son of a carpenter, Bea was born in Baden, became a Jesuit because "I was much inclined to the scholarly life." He was made professor of scripture in 1917 at Valkenburg, the Jesuit house of studies in The Netherlands, and four years later became provincial of the Jesuits' Upper German Province. That job did not last long. One day, the Jesuit general asked Bea why he was not sending more of his promising students to Rome. When Bea replied, "Because we have better schools here." the general made him superior of the Jesuit house for doctoral studies in Rome. In addition, Bea began teaching scripture at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Bea has written nine books and almost 300 articles on scriptural problems, and admits his own debt to Protestant scholarship.

Bea's finest work does not bear his name. In 1943 Pope Pius asked Bea's help in writing an encyclical letter on Bible scholarship; the resulting document. Divino afflante Spiritn, has been hailed by Catholic Bible scholars as their 20th century declaration of independence because of the latitude it gave them in Biblical interpretation. Two years later, Pope Pius asked Bea to become his confessor.

Mountains to Scale. Bea is described by associates as "a master in the art of the possible, a supreme realist." Bea's realism has led him into occasional conflict with the powerful minority of stand-fast conservatives on the Roman Curia. At one meeting of the Central Commission for the Council, one prelate proposed that all bishops be forced to take an official oath for the council, composed of the Nicene Creed and the oath drawn up against the Modernist heresy (a turn-of-the-century attempt to reject dogmas and sacraments that could not be reconciled with contemporary philosophy and science). Bea protested; the majority of other clergymen present upheld him.

Bea knows that the union of Christendom is far off. "There is no need to fool ourselves about the prospects for union," he says. "There are veritable mountains to scale. In addition to the work of the divine spirit of union, there must be cooperation of all the baptized in a long and patient effort, gradually to come closer and to understand each other."

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