Facing the Right Questions

...They shared how Christian social conscience can best be expressed within their own varying systems--whether socialistic or capitalistic in orientation...

...For an assemblage of undeniably bright and, mostly, well-intentioned men (519) and women (16), there is a lack of intellectual curiosity not only about the legislation which they declaim about and vote on, but also an astounding lack of interest in the historical foundations and evolution of the Congress itself, in which the delegates to the Constitutional Convention placed so much faith and hope...

...It takes five times as much land to support the food consumption of an American as it does to provide what an Asian, African, or Latin American gets to eat" was documented...

...The only people who can break that selfishness are the "officials" --that is, the people who are paid to look at the whole educational system of a given city or county objectively and to recommend action accordingly...

...The CCIA took issue only with the reference to "steadily accelerating" suggesting that this was acceptable if it meant continued improvements of the "quality" of human life, but not if it was to be interpreted in crass terms of merely Gross National Product...

...Limited economic growth rather than continually expanding GNP was necessary "while not neglecting positive aspects of technological productivity...

...No body of people is more selfish than the parents' association of a well-provided school...

...The Committee of the Churches on International Affairs quoted a Sixth Special Session of the United Nations plea for "the establishment of a new international economic order based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence and cooperation among all states irrespective of their economic and social systems, which shall correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries, and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development in peace and justice for present and future generations...

...We do believe, however, that the only alternative to either starvation or totalitarian socialism may be voluntary sharing by willful reduction of their material standard of living on the part of the affluent nations...

...The context of any Christian study of man is those cries of anguish in which men and women suffer at the hands of their fellow men and women...

...They are well aware that they do not represent the rank and file of their membership at this time when they approve what all the churches vote, and that they have a "selling job" to do every time they go home from a meeting...

...But the most obvious point here is that without a radical redistribution of resources --i.e., money--as between the already well-provided and the deprived areas, genuine "democracy" in education is impossible...

...You don't know whether a school was right for your child until it is too late...

...a way of giving the illusion of democracy without the substance...

...It is more "show-than-go," although it receives more press coverage than the House...

...What is the present theological rationale supporting the actions of the WCC...

...It is a much advertised part of Conservative "individualism" to emphasize the rights of parents to choose the schools they prefer...

...This is one reason why I think the Conservative educational program is a political swindle: that is to say...

...It set up an Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society to provide loans to small industries, handcrafts and farmers in the Third World...

...These things cannot be objectively set down in a prospectus: they are realities that can only be assessed by experience...

...But, generally, these achievements have come as a result of being pushed and plodded by exterior events and by Presidents who knew what they wanted...

...Potter to call the meeting to prayer, she commented, "It would be impossible to convince the affluent to give up 'the good life' were it not for the fact that the good life isn't so good...

...Schools have a great deal of freedom to "do their own thing," to develop particular courses, to emphasize particular values, etc...

...The first Senate met nine times in the late winter of 1789 before it achieved a quorum...

...The "Theology of Liberation," the "Theology of Unity in Hope," and "Black Theology" present their claims forcibly...

...The necessary restructuring of the economic distribution "can only be achieved," it said, "if it is based on a voluntary withdrawal of people from their dominant and advantageous role in world society...

...But there are several snags when the choice is presented in practice...

...Nevertheless, the conference reported areas of agreement...

...Men are concerned not with who they are but with whether they can survive," Prof...

...One could cite scores of pages more of comment of this sort offered in the meeting, documented with examples and statistics, and received favorably by the membership...

...The House has increased from its original 65 members to 435 today...

...This is why they think they can be a "third force" above nationalistic conflict, magnified by the competition of systems, to introduce enough objective ethics, based on religious conviction, to help to avert further exploitation of the weak, or even a third world war...

...The percentage of inflation is running at two digits...

...Today, as yesteryear, the Congress, in legislative and administrative ways, behaves as if it consisted of 535 morn-and-pop grocery stores...

...Several of the programs reflected growing involvement of the Catholic Church, which, although not a member of the WCC, holds membership in such committees as Sodepax (concerned with Third World development), and the Joint Working Group...

...In our times, the candidates who defeated Douglas of Illinois, Gruening of Alaska and Morse of Oregon have illustrated no great causes---and show no signs of ever doing so...

...Nothing is less likely to bring about a redistribution of resources in favor of those who need it than "parent power...

...Unlike the United Nations no great power has a right to veto...

...It protested jailings of Christian leaders for dissent in South Korea and the Philippines, made plans to introduce the anti-sexist cause into the program of the Fifth Assembly, continued reconstruction aid to Indoehina, and voted that administration of holy places in Jerusalem should be decided "within the context of the final political settlement," with due attention paid to the wishes of the people who live there...

...There are now 271 churches in full membership in the WCC...

...Bland men looking for bland solutions...

...Not that the House is without members who would be effective Speakers Anderson of Illinois, Boiling of Missouri and Udall of Arizona, among others...

...and, occasionally, Raybum...

...It falls behind the House in an ability to generate "meat-andpotatoes" legislation...

...It voted to continue its five year mandate-expiring program to combat racism as an integral part of the WCC ongoing program at a cost of $300,000 a year for aid to movements fighting against "racial oppression," with "no strings attached" except that the money "is not to be used for military purposes...

...When the churches came together, the younger churches of the developing countries as well as the older churches, all contributed their experiences...

...At times, in the federal system of shared powers, Presidents have grabbed not only the bed-clothes, but also usurped the bed itself...

...After pages of statistics on the severity of the world food and energy crisis, which seemed to presage "doom" for one-third of the world's people, the report called for a "new asceticism" on the part of affluent nations as well as scientific world management of resources...

...The WCC plans to institute educational programs in all the member churches to teach its people to listen, and hear...

...The WCC faces up to what doubtless is a fact--that humanity is in a state of crisis...

...Woodrow Wilson, as a Congressional scholar, phrased it more elegantly when he noted that the Congress consists of ambassadors from different lands coming together to exchange favors...

...Reed, who ran a tight ship in the 1890s...

...But then the Eastern Orthodox and Russian Orthodox gained in influence and the younger churches of the Third World...

...Conflicts are arranged beforehand by consensus and sleight-of-hand...

...In identifying with the cries of anguish can come Commonweal: 7 repentance...

...With $1 million in hand the Society will be in business as soon as member churches have placed $5 million of their capital funds in it, expected to be in about six months...

...MueUer replied, "We are aware of the disadvantage our non-membership in the WCC presents, but staff members on both sides are coping with that problem by close association...

...Each tries to beg, borrow and barter the best for itself...

...The walls which we thought were eternal between the WCC and the Catholic Church have fallen down," Dr...

...However, the great issues, domestic or foreignmsuecessfuUy or unsuceessfuUy resolvedmhave also been refracted through the prism of great personalities, among them, Webster, Calhoun, La FoUette and Borah...

...Some theologians like Paul Verghese of India thought they had let the scientists down...

...The first House of Representatives, 25 times...

...4 October 1974:6 Underneath its actions and permeating its discussions the Central Committee was wrestling with the implications of a cluster of reports centering around the report on a five-year "humanum" study conducted under direction of Prof...

...It brings only ulcers, mental breakups and heart attacks," No doubt delegates from Soviet countries were delighted to hear people from the Free World singing the praises of austerity, an old tune to their ears, but this reporter did not conclude that the line was a sour grapes cop-out from competition with socialism, so much as it was a genuine expression of sensitivity to the illusionary nature of some of our values, the song we have heard our own young people sing, with perhaps more prophetic instinct than they knew...

...M. M. Thomas, chairman of the WCC Executive Committee said, "but when we go to a country we like to do good for it and for our churches, and that would not happen at Jakarta next year...

...JOHN KNOBLE (Father John Knoble, an Episcopal priest, writes a regular column for the New Haven Register...

...This process will require a concerted, organized strategy rather than coercion, and must be based on worldwide cooperation rather than confrontation...

...WASHINGTON REPORT POST-WATERGATE RECONSTRUCTION--U From the beginning, the Congress never really has pulled itself together...

...There are several large Pentecostal bodies, one of which is the influential Church of Jesus Christ according to the prophet Simon Kimbangu, which numbers 1.5 million members in Zaire...

...To Americans quite happy with the system as it is, this could sound like a "Communist plot...

...Cannon, albeit with a negatively charged vision...

...Christian hope in Christ's Kingdom would be "no other-worldly escapism" but a way of "understanding the judgment of God upon much that we have wrongly valued in our technologically powerful societies, and a call to see positively our participation in history and the promise of the new that is to come--a better world for more people and qualitatively closer to the promised Kingdom...

...Yes, contests take place, But reliable spokesmen at the cutting-edge of issues no longer sit in the Senate...

...But the question of 'What is man?' if it is posed at all in the struggle is a cry first of anguish...

...It emphasized need to stress the quality of life, justice and new kinds of human settlements to break down a dangerous 50 percent urbanization...

...There were a variety of other resolutions, and endorsements of ongoing programs, carried on by the WCC staff of 300 in its Geneva wodd headquarters...

...This is difficult for delegates from Soviet-dominated countries, but they do not feel it is impossible, any more than do the American delegates quail at the prospect of presenting their brand of idealism in the midst of a capitalist economy dominated in many ways by giant corporations...

...At the least it is like what some of those long-haired "alienated" Commonweal: J young people have been saying--those who could not see the importance of going off to fight Communism in Indochina...

...One caught the unanimity of the Committee that it was time to heed...

...There was a report on "Threats to Survival," containing statistics on the hunger and food crisis, contrasting its severity in undeveloped nations as compared with affluent ones...

...wholesale prices rose 3.9 percent in August, the largest one-month increase in 25 years...

...The emphasis is on bringing Christian insights into whichever system one's country has...

...housing "starts" haven't been lower since World War II...

...The meeting wrestled with that in terms of response to the report of a Conferenee on Science, Theology and the Future of Man, held in Bucharest in July...

...Occasionally one hears of absurd anomalies, like the case of two Catholic parents who could only get their child into the secular school they had preferred, by renouncing their faith...

...The reports, though not without offering hope, were grim...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE WORLD COUNCIL FH r THE RI6HT O UESTIONS The Central Committee Meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC), which recently ended in West Berlin, presented a striking contrast to so many church assemblages where the answers all seem to be to the wrong questions...

...Yet as long as white unemployment remains at about 3 percent or less for male white-collars, the Congress isn't going to respond effectively and energetically to a jobless rate of 6 percent nationally~and double that, or worse, for non-whites...

...David Jenkins of Oxford University...

...Consensus politics does not address itself to epic problems afflicting us in recent years: economic depression and exclusion of non-whites from American life and military commitments in Southeast Asia...

...Secondly, it is in fact very difficult indeed to make an intelligent assessment of the merits of various schools in a given area...

...The history of the Senate reads differently...

...If the white-collars begin breathing their hot breath on the collective neck of the Congress as in 4 October 1974:8...

...The decisions of the WCC are not made by white Europeans, but are expressions of the whole membershp...

...Thus, the process by which God can save his people and his world begins with Christians really hearing those cries of anguish...

...At first the Lutheran and Reform Churches of Western Europe predominated in influence along with American churches...

...the Senate, from 26 to 100...

...In an atmosphere where response to a religiously derived call to seek justice prevailed rather than national advantage, the representatives of the churches in affluent nations listened...

...For example, the Catholic school system in most places simply mirrors the secular system, at least as far as the relevant factors go...

...The first is that as long as there is a selection procedure, allegedly based on intellectual ability but in fact based just as much on attainment (and of course, attainment is much bound up with social class) then the parents of children who do badly in the attainment stakes have much less choice than those of children who succeed...

...But this either means more taxation, or the spending of the money raised by taxing the wellto-do on the deprived...

...To this end it is seeking "to effect a partnership with science and technology," sensitive both to the issues affecting mankind's physical survival, and to opportunities in the crisis for improving the quality of human life in terms of justice, community, and in relation to nature...

...But they discovered that in many countries the problem was not so much within their own countries but with exploitation from outside, from interests controlled by the great powers, whose churches were represented in the WCC, and had a history of defending the interests which had exploited them...

...In the struggle for survival as human beings, insights arise which can point to possibilities of meaning, fulfillment and even glory...

...It envisions as a necessary aspiration in obedience to Christian conscience, power coming into the hands of those who will have "discarded any form of colonialism forever," but will seek to build a "new world economic order," based on closing the gap between undeveloped and developed nations and in wkich the common people will possess the means of effectively insisting upon social justice and racial and sexual equality...

...Seldom has the Congress evidenced a sense of self as an institution, unlike the Presidency...

...Viewing the process is like being at an ITT board of director's meeting...

...WCC people know their way well now around Rome, and curial staff members, even two cardinals, visit Geneva...

...Jenkins' report began...

...But another reason has to do with the question of choice...

...But such cases are very rare...

...The spirit of the meetings is one of an assumption of coexistence...

...that its job is to bring to bear Christian insight and the dynamic of Christian response to God through action, upon that crisis...

...Even the information that is available is liable to be out of date because of staff mobility and other factors., I have said nothing about the religious question in all this, largely because it does not usually bear much on the situation I've described...

...But since Rayburn returned to his native Texas to die in 1961, there's been no effective Speaker...

...In this partnership, it conceives of itself as no mere "pan-protestantism" but rather as a movement in the direction of a "new theology" which will contain such concepts as will unify Christianity and provide a rallying point for other world religions to create a "third force " for humanity and especially the poor of the earth...

...There is greater procedural latitude for discussion simply because it has fewer members...

...What is needed in the educational service, as in the health service, is more money, especially in poor areas...

...Lukas Vischer of the WCC Secretariat on Unity declared...

...It gained momentum after World War II, as a search for unity of the churches, a unity which appeared as a logical goal in the new dawning of the realization that this is "One World...

...The idea was to get outstanding scientists and theologians together to see what would emerge...

...For the successful child's parents, choice is often a reality: for the rest, i.e., the great majority, it is more often a sham...

...The meeting voted certain actions...

...Only the repentance of the church can give it the power to act in unity and inspire the affluent to share...

...The Congress, on some issues, is almost the last institution to respond~even the last to understand what this issue is about, as in the ease of civil rights and the Vietnam war...

...The government and the local Christian' churches were willing to risk it," Dr...

...Vatican-appointed visitor Msgr...

...BRIAN WICKER (Brian Wicker is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Britain...

...A humorous note was introduced by anthropologist Margaret Mead when after a bleak moment which had induced Dr...

...And only in repentance can the unity of Christ be found...

...Since both socialist and free enterprise systems are represented in their membership there is tacit agreement that there must be no arguing in the WCC about which system is intrinsically best...

...The history of the House may be read in the biographies of its great presiding officers, its Speakers-Clay, who dominated President Monroe...

...A still gloomier picture for the Third World was presented when cost in relation to earning power was demonstrated...

...Perhaps there is no assembly in the world so representative of the aspirations of all people, both men and women...

...They were not "providing the kind of theology scientists were looking for...

...The Senate has had fewer titans than the House, particularly in recent years when its personal and committee staffs play such a vital role...

...But the courageous, plain-speaking men of the Senate, be they Tories or Populists, become fewer and fewer...

...They feel they have much to offer as to the possibility of a more genuine drtente than now exists...

...One is reminded, as one or another biU is put together in the Senate cloakrooms, of the definition of a camel as a horse assembled by a committee...

...The two bodies of the Congress have not been without their individual and collective achievements...

...The thought occurred, "If the young people knew that high placed representatives of the so called 'establishment churches were now thinking in this way, some of them might come back to the churches...

...However, the WCC is not committed to any Marxist party line...

...The conference understood the relationship between science and faith "in terms of partnership rather than opposition, since both are fundamentally challenged by the present ecological and social crisis...

...It switched the site of its Fifth World Assembly in 1975 from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Nairobi, Kenya, sensitive to protests of Moslem leaders who represent 85 percent of the population of Indonesia...

...Neither course is likely to appeal to the instincts or interests of the kind of parents who are certain to rise to preeminence in the Tory school system...

...On economic problems, the Congress' white male middle-class orientation is even more noticeable...

...Limits to Growth" theory weaved its way in and out of the discussions, but a spokesman said, "The WCC does not start with that...

...The problem of parents" power and democratic control and indeed of choice, is a political one that affects all areas and all schools It can't be solved, however, by an electoral gimmick...