Signs of a Thaw

Ever since its founding in 1948, the World Council of Churches has been cold-shouldered by the Russian Orthodox Church as well as the Vatican. At its annual meeting last week at the University of St. Andrews, the World Council's policymaking Central Committee happily noted signs of thaw on both fronts.

For the first time, a message came from Russian Orthodoxy's head, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow, who sent observers to the St. Andrews meeting. "We can only rejoice," wrote Patriarch Alexis, "when Christians come together in a common effort to reach one mind in resolving questions which separate not only themselves but all mankind."

The Central Committee also learned that the Vatican, which had refused to send official representatives to the World Council general assemblies at Amsterdam in 1948, and Evanston, Ill. in 1954, had recently created a secretariat for Christian unity to keep in touch with the ecumenical movement. The secretary of the new body, Msgr. Johannes Willebrands, was present at the St. Andrews meeting with another Catholic observer.

Quick to welcome the growing friendliness between Vatican and World Council under Pope John XXIII, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America and chairman of the Central Committee, observed that "there is little doubt that . . . the Vatican has come to see that the ecumenical movement is not inspired by a vague humanitarianism but by the basic Christian convictions."

But World Council leaders were care ful to warn against too optimistic a picture of a Catholic-Protestant alliance. Said the Rev. Henry P. Van Dusen, president of Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary: "Anything which suggests the possibility of closer unity among Christians is of course to be welcomed. But frankly, no one here really thinks that there is any possibility of reunion with Rome."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.