Ecumenical Voices

A new mood of liberalism is eddying through the Roman Catholic Church--as the first session of the Second Vatican Council so amply proved. Last week, in the person of a frail, balding octogenarian cardinal and a slim, blond young Swiss priest, the U.S. had the opportunity to hear from two leading proponents of the progressive spirit in Catholicism.

Principal forum for Augustin Cardinal Bea, 81, chief of the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, was Harvard's Sanders Theater, where a hushed overflow audience listened intently to his message. Bea's three lectures were part of an impressive four-day theological colloquium, inspired by the Vatican Council and attended by 150 of the nation's leading Protestant and Catholic scholars. Said Harvard's President Nathan Pusey: "We thought it would be perhaps a hundred years before we could come to the kind of occasion we have here."

The Task of Scholarship. Speaking of the ecumenical spirit as "this surprising fact," Cardinal Bea (pronounced Bay-uh) again and again referred to the lack of Christian unity as "a painful story, an open wound that goes on bleeding and hurting." Healing the wound to attain perfect unity will be long and hard, he warned, and we must not "search for compromises." But while this union is in God's hands, men can prepare the way. Scholarship, said the cardinal, could help bring churches together by clearing away the misconceptions and prejudices that led to the historic schisms, by finding new ways to state theological truths in language understood by modern man, by helping create a common understanding of the book central to all churches, the Bible.

This scholarly work is well begun. Summing up the results of the colloquium's seminar on the Bible, Harvard's Krister

Stendahl, a Lutheran, noted that "there is really a solid basis for a great methodological agreement in the basic discipline of Biblical studies. The kind of thing which Cardinal Bea is speaking of is not just a mood in the Roman Catholic Church right now, but something which is here to stay."

Invited to the U.S. by Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing, German-born Cardinal Bea turned down 70 requests for appearances, will give only eight public speeches during his eleven-day visit. He comes with a private diplomatic mission from Pope John. In Washington, through unofficial intermediaries, Bea will let the White House know the reasoning behind Pope John's surprising new willingness to negotiate with Communism, perhaps explain what further diplomatic moves are afoot. "The U.S. is angry now," the cardinal told a friend in Rome before his trip. "I'm afraid they will soon be angrier."

The Right to Worship. Bea drew vast crowds and hushed, respectful silence whenever he spoke. Tuebingen University's Father Hans Kueng, 35, author of The Council, Reform and Reunion (TIME, June 8), and one of the select few official theologians of the Vatican Council, drew big crowds too--and tumultuous applause. Last week a capacity crowd of 3,000 at Notre Dame's Stepan Center gave him a standing ovation when he appeared onstage. Another 3,000 heard him speak at Boston College, and 5,000 showed up in Chicago for his contribution to a lecture series that has never drawn more than 500 listeners. The enthusiasm was understandable: Kueng's message to the U.S. is a fresh, provocative discussion of the place of freedom in the Catholic Church.

Kueng readily admits that there are superficial parallels between Catholic authoritarianism and Communist dogmatism, and that "even today the spirit of the Inquisition and unfreedom has not died out" in his church. Nonetheless, he argues that Catholicism by its nature is a free society. This freedom is often imperfectly realized and must be won over and over again. Kueng believes that Catholicism still has much to do in answering the demands of liberty, and has some specific suggestions on how it ought to do it. The church, he argues, should:

> Publicly admit the right of all men to worship as they please--and put this doctrine into action in such places as Spain.

> Abolish the Index of Forbidden Books and the prepublication censorship of theological writings, a practice that was inaugurated by such unsavory Renaissance Popes as Alexander VI and Leo X.

> Do away with the star-chamber techniques used by the Holy Office in resolving questions of heresy, since such methods "offend not only against the Gospel but against the natural law, which is often quoted."

> Grant its sons greater liberty of action and recognize that in certain circumstances "a Christian has the right, sometimes the duty, to act, in a spirit of free obedience and obedient freedom, against the literal sense of an order" by a superior.

"A New Day." At Notre Dame, when Kueng sat down, his audience gave him still another standing ovation. It was not just a group of easily dazzled Catholic students who were overwhelmed. Also present were ten faculty members from Lutheran-run Valparaiso University. "It was quite a remarkable experience." said Valparaiso's President Otto Paul Kretzmann. "Kueng sounded a note of reconciliation, kindness and understanding. This note might mark a new day in Protestant-Catholic relations."

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