Religion: Council of Renewal

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Germany—notably Dominican Yves Congar—have started to think out a "theology of the laity," based on the Pauline doctrine of the "priesthood of the faithful." Sensing the temper of the times, such farsighted prelates as Montreal's Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger and Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing have established diocesan advisory councils of laymen.

>In the rarefied world of theological scholarship, the rigid scholasticism of 19th century Catholicism has given way to a more open form of Thomism, capable of incorporating insights from Freud, Dewey, Sartre and even Marx. During the past 20 years, Catholic Bible scholars have begun to catch up with their Protestant counterparts, now are beginning to work with non-Catholics on new interdenominational translations of Scripture. In the late Jesuit Paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the church possessed a religious figure who attempted—with near success—to bridge the wall between modern science and traditional faith.

> In social doctrine, the Vatican seems to have abandoned the rigid anti-Communist stand of Pius XII. Most notable sign of Rome's new drift was John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magistra, which gave papal blessing to socialization that did not deny man's basic right to private property. Last February the Pope asked politically conservative Italian bishops to criticize Premier Amintore Fanfani's "opening to the left." Pope John is no friend of Communism, but he hopes somehow to make it possible for the 63 million Catholics behind the Iron Curtain to preserve their freedom of worship. The church, argues one close associate of the Pope's, is not "a dam against Communism. This is an entirely absurd concept. The church should not be against anything. It should be positively for something. When we support only one bloc we alienate half of humanity."

Friendly to Protestants. To other Christians, the most promising sign of change within Catholicism is the church's positive reaction to the ecumenical revolution that is starting to knit together the scattered divisions of Protestantism and Orthodoxy. A generation ago, Protestants were "heretics" to Catholics, and Orthodox churchmen "schismatics";* in Catholic circles now, the U term for non-Catholics is "separated brethren." In 1954, Chicago's late Samuel Cardinal Stritch forbade his priests to attend the World Council of Churches Assembly at Evanston; last November, five Catholic priests were sent by the Vatican to New Delhi as official observers. Under the skilled diplomatic direction of Augustin Cardinal Bea. Rome's new Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity solicited Protestant suggestions for the agenda of the Vatican Council and arranged for 60 non-Catholic observers, representing more than 225 million Christians, to attend it as Rome's official guests.

Catholicism is far from being a monolith, and the spirit of renewal would move within the church no matter who was Pope. As it happens, many of the new directions within Catholicism are either tolerated or openly encouraged by the smiling old man who patently enjoys his many-titled job of Bishop of Rome, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Primate of Italy, Patriarch of the West, and, as 260th successor of St. Peter, Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth.