Questions at 15

The World Council of Churches is 15 years old, and -- as could be seen last week in Rochester, N.Y., where the 100 members of the World Council's central committee concluded their an nual meeting -- less sure than it once was of its own shape and goals. Much of the council's self-concern is a consequence of a great triumph: the admission to full membership of four Orthodox churches at the New Delhi General Assembly two years ago. Now fully committed to participation in ecumenicism, Orthodoxy has brought its own theological insights and doctrinal claims to World Council discussions, and in the process upset some of the conclusions patiently worked out by the Western and Protestant founders of the movement.

In a major address on the meaning of council membership, General Secretary Willem Visser 't Hooft raised the question of whether the council could be described in ecclesiological terms, although he admitted that the council was "neither the Church nor a church nor the superchurch. The World Council is, by its very nature, the servant of churches" that find in membership "a deeper understanding of the nature of the church and find new opportunities to manifest its true meaning."

In discussion afterward, clerics from the East were loudest in criticizing Vis ser 't Hooft's suggestion that the council could be discussed in terms that pertained only to the churches. Bishop Samuel of Egypt's Coptic Church warned that "the mere mention of this subject makes the work of the Orthodox churches difficult." Brown-bearded Metropolitan Nikodim, head of the delegation from the Patriarchate of Moscow, argued that it had not occurred to Orthodox bishops that the council "re gards itself as having ecclesiological significance." The Rev. Paul Verghese of the Syrian Orthodox Church, who is director of the council's Division of Ecumenical Action, challenged Visser 't Hooft's assumption that council membership implies a readiness to join in a dialogue with other churches involving mutual correction. "If this had been known to the churches," he said, "there are many who would not belong." Vis ser 't Hooft, who is Verghese's superior in the council's hierarchy, answered with a smile: "I will have to find time in Geneva to speak with my colleague."

Parkinson's Law. Questioning the council's role in the world has not been limited to Orthodoxy. In an article in the current Ecumenical Review, Karl Barth, of Basel, warned that the spirit of renewal seemed to be blowing stronger in Rome than in Geneva these days. Many delegates in Rochester were aware of the need to criticize the gradual "institutionalizing" of the council. In a debate on the latest annual in crease in the council's budget, the Anglican Bishop of Winchester complained that professional ecumenicism seemed to many to be proving Parkinson's Law. "Why," he said, "one year we have a secretary, then an assistant general secretary, then a secretariat." Shortly before the committee approved the pro visional admission of nine new churches, which will bring the total to 209, Dr. Kathleen Bliss of Great Britain, a member of the Executive Committee, pointed out that there is a risk involved in growth: the possibility that the council's original sense of fellowship may be lost. "A lot of churches join as a way of making themselves 'O.K.' churches," she said, adding that they often bring "something that is not thereby the World Council's wishes." As it has grown, the council has created a flock of initial-rich branchlets with such titles as D.I.C.A.R.W.S.,*and Council Co-President Charles Parlin, a Methodist lawyer from New York, admits: "Instead of becoming structurally easier, the council is becoming structurally more difficult."

Some outsiders argue that such in decision is evidence that the World Council is going from dynamic youth straight into old age. Council executives, on the other hand, proudly regard such self-criticism as proof that the ecumenical movement is alive and well.

Says Associate General Secretary Dr. Frederick Nolde: "Any organization can become ingrown and lose its per spective, but I don't believe that this can happen in the council, where there is a process of criticism. A form of renewal is taking place here continually."

*For Division of Inter-Church Aid, Refugees and World Service.

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