The promulgation at the third session of the Second Vatican Council of the three Constitutions De Ecclesia, De Oecumenismo and De Ecclesiis Orientalibus Catholicis is clearly an event of outstanding ecumenical importance, though its full significance will clearly appear only in the light of future thought and acitivity. Anything like a detailed consideration of the contents of the Constitutions would be quite impossible in the space at my disposal, but I hope that the comments which I shall make from an Anglican standpoint on some of the more striking characteristics of the first two may be of some interest and even perhaps of some usefulness to the readers of New Blackfriars.

To begin with De Ecclesia. In spite of the vicissitudes through which the Constitution has passed since the introduction of the original schema on November 30th, 1962 (and for information about this I am indebted to the extremely illuminating article by Père G. Dejaifve, S.J., in the Nouvelle Revue Théologique of January 1965), the overall impression which one receives is that of a remarkably systematic, comprehensive and unified document; only one section, which I shall refer to in more detail later, bears some visible marks of a clash of views which reached something less than full reconciliation. Most impressive of all is the way in which the presentation of the doctrine of the Church in primarily juridical and governmental terms which has characterized most Roman Catholic documents and treatises in the past has been completely superseded by an approach which is in the fullest sense biblical and theological.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Catholic theologian could still happily regard himself as the exponent of the most polished set of clear and distinct ideas on earth. This is no longer possible. Catholic theology seems at present in chaos: glorious chaos in the opinion of some, dire catastrophe in that of others. But, however it is to be evaluated, there is no disputing the fact of the present great upheaval in the practice of Catholic theology. Ideas that have been fixed for centuries are in process of revision, positions that have been taken for granted for as long are now under scrutiny for reconstruction. The purpose of this article is to indicate how the situation is shaping inside the German theological arena, and it should be stressed from the outset that this is simply a report, not a hallelujah or a jeremiad.

Perhaps the only surprising feature of the present situation is that it has been staved off for so long. Every form of research undergoes periods of growth-crisis. The very mass of his data forces the investigator to reconsider the presuppositions of his study and the adequacy of the interpretation of his results. There has to be periodical revision of the basic categories with which any science operates. This is how a science ‘advances', not so much by piling up more and more information (erudition) as by revaluing its fundamental interpretative concepts (genius). The maturity of a science is not measured by its immunity from such internal upheavals but by its capacity to produce them.

The establishment of the new Secretariat for other religions in Rome is a sign of a new approach within the Catholic Church. For the first time in history the Church has begun to adopt a positive attitude towards other religions. In the past the belief has been that it is the mission of the Church to ‘teach all nations’ and to convert them from ‘error’ to the knowledge of the ‘truth'. It is true that there has always been a recognition of the fact that there is truth to be found in other religions and that men can be saved in them, and this goes back to the earliest tradition of the Bible, but never before has there been an open recognition of other religions as entities with which the Church can enter into a dialogue. Just as the Secretariat for Unity has taught us to recognize Christian values in the separated Christian Churches and to enter into ecumencial relations with them, so the new Secretariat for Religions is a recognition of the fact that there are religious values in other religions and opens the way to an ecumenical dialogue with them as corporate bodies or institutions.

This new attitude is due, no doubt, primarily to the changed condition of the world. For the first time in history the great religions of the world have come into global contact with one another and have begun to confront one another with mutual understanding.

This article is not about mercy, but about ‘mercy', the English word. This word is the stock translation in religious texts of the Latin word misericordia. My contention is going to be that the quality of ‘mercy’ is far too strained to stand for misericordia; that not only is it an inadequate word to translate the Latin word, it is – more seriously – an insufficient word to convey the full Christian, religious thing. And as this thing, as this value is practically at the heart of the Christian gospel, the good news of God to man, the use of an insufficient and hence misleading word to represent it can have very unfortunate consequences indeed. But with these I am not here concerned. My interest is in finding the best English word or words for translating misericordia in liturgical texts. And my way of doing this is going to be by putting ‘mercy’ on trial.

Misericordia, it scarcely needs saying, appears so often in liturgical texts because it appears so often in the Bible. Two other Latin words appear frequently in its company, the related noun miseratio, usually in the plural miserationes, and the related verb misereor. The first weakness of the English ‘mercy’ is shown by the fact that it does duty, either by itself or in a phrase like ‘have mercy', for all three of these Latin words.

The question I have been asked is: Must one always obey the laws? The first thing to say is that clearly this is not a legal question. By that I mean that you cannot answer the question by saying: but the law says you must. For then your questioner comes back with: and why must I obey that law ? The situation is rather like that of the pilot of a plane or the captain of a ship. The crew and passengers do not obey the pilot or the captain merely because he tells them to. Nor do they do it simply because he is a powerful man and would make them sorry if they didn't. Rather they obey him because they think he has a right to tell them what to do. He has the right because he holds a position of authority. Obeying a government is so like the situation of obeying a pilot, that in fact the word government derives from the Latin word for steering a ship. One obeys a government not simply because of its power, but because of its authority; and it does not get this authority simply by saying that it has it. You do not obey laws simply because the laws say that you must. Why then do you ?

We might ask what gives the captain of a ship his position of authority. There are two answers to this, because there are two questions hidden in it. If we mean, how did it come about that this particular man is filling this position of authority, then the answer would be that he was chosen by the legally approved methods.

Now the Lord went forth to the combat in which he was to make plain to all the triumph that he would win over the devil. They clothed him in a scarlet robe, put a crown of thorns on his head and a reed in his hand, and came and knelt before him. What an unheard of, unbelievable miracle, a sure measure of his great victory! They had condemned him as a man, but now one after another they worshipped him as God. They had considered him cheap and worthless, but now they acknowledged him as a king. Not knowing what they did, they had covered him with reproaches, but now against their will they hailed him as a prophet. They had laughed at him and struck him, but now they gave him the fruits of victory – the scarlet robe, the crown woven from thorns, the reed. Little did they know that against their will he was taking as his spoils of battle all the things they were using to mock him.