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Ecumenical Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Henry St John O.P.
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A Catholic, whose interest in the movement for Christian unity urges him to make ecumenical contacts with other Christians amongst whom he lives, will find himself, at least in town and city areas, confronted by Presbyterians, by Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists, and with a certain dominance of prestige by Anglicans. For his encounter a Catholic ecumenist will want to know about some if not all of these differing religious bodies; what sort of people are they, what divides them from each other, on what are they agreed? He will probably need knowledge to supplement his vague ideas of their history and how they came into being. He will be interested in their antecedent presuppositions, but still more in what are their aspirations, hopes, doubts and fears today concerning the prospect of future unity; its possibility, the changes it would involve and its dangers.

The Star Books on Reunion a series of six inexpensive paperbacks on unity as Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists and Roman Catholics see it, contains the substance of this information in accessible and readable form. It is a pity that a seventh volume, on the Eastern Orthodox, was not included in the series, for full understanding of unity problems, especially the theological ones, requires the witness of these ancient churches. The authors are well chosen, highly qualified, theologically and pastorally, to represent the position of their respective communions. All of them share common ground in their conviction of the paramount importance of the ecumenical approach between Christians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 44 , Issue 515 , May 1963 , pp. 196 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Star Books on Reunion, General Editor The Bishop of Bristol. Mowbray. 1962. 5s. 6d. each.

Roman Catholics and Unity, Enda McDonagh; Anglicans and Unity, David M. Paton; Presbyterians and Unity, J. K. S. Reid, D.D.; Congregationalists and Unity, Erik Routley, D. phil.; Baptists and Unity, L. G. Champion, D. Th.; Methodists and Unity, Rupert E. Davis.

2 The Hard Facts of Unit, John Lawrence; S.C.M., 1961. John Lawrence is an Anglican and Editor of Frontier. A Catholic ecumenist beginning his studies would do well to read this perceptive little book too.

3 op. cit. p. 118.

4 For a measured and dispassionate assessment of the place and vocation of the C.S.I. in the movement towards reunion, by a Catholic theologian, see the article by Pére Louis Bouyer in Istina, 1955, 2, p. 215.

5 Statistics will be found in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Rouse and Neill, S.P.C.K., 1954, Appendix to chapter 10, p. 496.

6 For differing Anglican views on this question see The Apostolic Ministry. ed. K. E. Kirk, Hodder and Stoughton. The Recovery of Unity, E. L. Mascall, Longmans, 1958 (Anglo‐Catholic), Old Priest and New Presbyter, Norman Sykes, C.U.P., 1956. Christian Unity ‐ The Anglican Position, G. K. A. Bell, Hodder and Stoughton, 1948 (Central Anglican).

7 See The Church of South India and the Church, by Donald Rea, Baxters Press, Oxford, 1956. A justification by an Anglican Papalist of acceptance of the measures taken in setting up the C.S.I. in view of the urgency of the need for unity. He pleads the necessity of economy and tolerance, and the Catholicizing tendency of the C.S.I. The Household of God, by Dr Leslie Newbigin, once a Presbyterian minister and subsequently one of the bishops of C.S.I. throws much light on this tendency.

8 ‘Only in the Church, with its living experience of the Holy Spirit, can the Bible be understood in its wholeness. In this sense the Church Knows more than the bare written text of scripture’. Dr George Florovsky, the Orthodox theologian, quoted in The Old and New in the Church, S.C.M., 1961, p. 21.

9 op. cit., p. 55. He goes on to plead that it should not be wrenched from its context, but should be examined in the context of the whole doctrine of the Church.

10 Quoted in Chrysostom, Quarterly Bulletin of the Society of St John Chrysostom, Winter 1962–63, p. 2.

11 See The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, by Louis Bouyer, Harvill Press, 1956, Ch. VI, The Sovereign Authority of Scripture.

12 See The Study of Theology, by Charles Davis, Sheed and Ward, 1962. ch. IX, The Christian Mystery and the Trinity.

13 For an excellent and comprehensive survey of this problem see Christian Unity, Lectures of the Maynooth Summer School 1961, ed. McNamara. Furrow Trust, 1962; Religious Freedom and the State, by Dr Enda McDonagh.