Friday, Dec. 11, 1959
University Daily Kansan
Churches Building Mutual Respect
Page 5
By Louis Cassels United Press International
Controversy makes headlines. Conciliation doesn't. That's a good thing to bear in mind in reading reports of the current religious dispute over birth control.
Closer Than Ever Before
It would be easy to get the impression from the sound and fury of this dispute that Catholic-Protestant relations are badly strained.
Closer Than Ever Before Actually, in spite of occasional noisy collisions over specific issues, the two great branches of the Christian family are getting along better today than they have for centuries.
On both sides of the reformation chasm, men of good will are earnestly trying to build bridges of understanding, forbearance and mutual respect. The results so far are not spectacular; but from the long view of history, they add up to a persistent and highly significant trend.
Minnesota Enforces Martial Law
ALBERT LEA, Minn. —(UPI)— Minnesota Gov. Orville L. Freeman today declared martial law in this strife-torn town and surrounding Freeborn county to prevent further violence at the strike-bound Wilson & Co. meatpacking plant.
Maj. Gen. Richard Cook, Redwood Falls, Minn., commanded two companies of the Minnesota National Guard ordered into Albert Lea by Gov. Orville L. Freeman.
Gen. Cook's first action when he arrived in this southern Minnesota community of 20,000 before dawn today was to call a meeting of city and county officials and representatives from Wilson and the striking United Packinghouse Workers Union.
The troops, in full battle dress, wearing steel helmets and with bayonets fixed on their M-1 rifles, were scheduled to arrive in a truck convoy by 8 a.m. Lawrence time.
Gen. Cook immediately ordered the plant closed to all but maintenance, management and office personnel.
The plant was the scene of four clashes in two days between strikers and non-union employees still on the job or hired to take the place of UPW workers.
BERLIN—(UPI) — West Berlin Police headquarters reported that a German-born agent of the Polish Secret Police turned himself in yesterday to guards at the railway station zoo.
Polish Spy Surrenders
The report said the man, identified only as Gerhard C., said he had spied in West Germany for more than a year.
Sleep the universal vanquisher.— Sophocles
"A thaw has set in in the cold war among Christians," the Protestant magazine "Christian Century" observed recently. And the Catholic magazine "America" editorially agreed that "a new day has indeed dawned."
Pope John Given Credit
The "Christian Century" credited Pope John XXIII with an important contribution to "the warming of attitudes which is taking place between Protestants and Roman Catholics."
"The image of the Roman Catholic Church as projected by its new Pope is definitely a more friendly one," it said. By many gestures (such as changing Catholic liturgy so that Protestants are referred to as "separated brethren" rather than "heretics") the Pope has made clear his desire for reconciliation.
From the Protestant side, European Lutherans have taken the initiative in sponsoring "Ecumenical Institutes" at which leading Catholic and Protestant theologians explore together basic questions of Christian faith. The idea was imported to America last month when 135 Protestant and Catholic clergymen met at Toledo, Ohio, for a frank and friendly discussion of differences.
period of patient, mutually responsive discussion. What the Ecumenicists are trying to do is to get that discussion going—in an atmosphere of genuine Christian charity,
Fr. Gustave Weigel, the leading U. S. Catholic authority on church unity, points out that all Christians are bound by Jesus' explicit command to "love one another." Simple obedience to this command is therefore the first, all-important step toward reunion.
"In its relatively short history, the Ecumenical movement has broken down the rancors of centuries," Fr. Weigel said. "The different churches do get along better today than they did 50 years ago.
Love is Commanded
But few people on either side believe such efforts will lead to organic unity in the foreseeable future.
Pelikan Helps Relations
A brilliant young Protestant theologian at the University of Chicago, Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, did his part for the growing dialogue with a book entitled "The Riddle of Roman Catholicism." Pelikan tried to go beyond "slogans and slanders" and help Protestants understand the real nature of Catholic dogma and practice, his book has been warmly praised by Catholic reviewers for its objective and sympathetic tone.
"We recognize one another; we see good will in each other; we hold converse with each other. We still feel some irritation, but we are manfully and not without success trying to overcome it."
Protestant-Catholic differences are too real and too deeply rooted to be resolved without a very long
Safest Driver Not So Safe
BEDFORD, Ind. —(UPI)—John Scott, 17, will be allowed to keep the $500 scholarship he won last spring as Indiana's safest teen-age driver, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce said today. Scott was charged with speeding after state police said they caught him driving near here at 100 miles per hour.
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