Meetings of Minds

Between the end of summer vacation and the start of the academic year, churchmen, religious educators and students flock to conferences and congresses. Among last week's meetings and pronouncements :

P:At the fourth triennial conference of the Inter-Seminary Movement, sponsored by the National Council of Churches at Ohio's Oberlin College, The Netherlands' Dr. Willem A. Visser't Hooft told 500 Protestant theology students to be both "slaves and spokesmen'' of Christianity. Said Dr. Visser't Hooft. general secretary of the World Council of Churches and a minister of The Netherlands Reformed Church: "There is a new search for authority in the world today [and ] insofar as we are slaves and spokesmen, the minister has the same authority as Christ." This authority is "total and unlimited, does not admit others beside it. and you can't be neutral when you've met it."

P:At the 14th Congress of the National Federation of Catholic College Students in Manhattan. Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, professor of church history at Washington's Catholic University, told some 600 delegates that Roman Catholicism had failed to provide its share of leaders for the U.S. Catholic graduates, said Ellis, have not, by and large, won "those influential posts wherein the mind of a nation is so often molded in a long-range manner through scholarship." One "great fault" of the Catholic school system, added Ellis, is a "certain failure to stimulate Catholic youth to think for themselves."

P:At the Unionistic Congress of the Roman Catholic Church at St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle. Ill., 125 delegates discussed hopes for the return of all Christians to the Roman Catholic fold--especially those who "left the church as a result of the Eastern schism of 1054." i.e., the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches. In preparation for the day when Roman Catholicism may once again be free to teach and preach in Russia, monks are in training in the Catholic Eastern Rite at Holy Trinity Priory near Pittsburgh, as well as at Fordham and in Rome. The Russian Orthodox Church would have been better able to resist the inroads of Communism, said the Very Rev. Joseph Olsr of Rome's Pontifical Oriental Institute, if it had been able to draw on the Vatican's experience in "fighting against anti-Christian tendencies."

P:At the annual executive meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in Hamilton. Ont., the Rev. Theodore Adams of Richmond (TIME, Dec. 5, 1955), president of the alliance, charged that Baptists are being persecuted in many Latin countries--especially Spain and Colombia. But in Russia, reported Moscow's red-bearded Rev. Yakov Zhidkov, Baptists are doing nicely. Each year, he said, the Russian Baptist Church gains 10,000 to 15,000 members. He added blandly: "Under the Russian constitution all religions have equal freedom of worship. The atheists have freedom too, and they have places where they teach atheism." Said the Rev. Alexander Kircun of Warsaw: "We have baptisms out of doors by the river and can preach as much as we want."

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