'WHAT I THINK ABOUT THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH' From the Juncture of the Reformation:

...The trends are almost too well known to devote space to a mere recital of them...

...When I arrived at Woodstock for my next appointment, I mentioned to Gustave Weigel that I had been to New York for the funeral of my father...

...I knew Weigel's gifts as a shrewd Catholic apologist, and he remarked on the theological power of Christian' ity Today...

...Bill Buckley I have never met, though I have often wished I knew as much as he does about so many things, and that I had his semantic ability to confuse others when the outcome may be in doubt...

...The summons to my father's funeral came unexpectedly...

...My complaint is not simply that Thomism obscures the -primacy of divine revelation, or that it offers us an invalid proof of the God of the Bible, although that is serious enough...

...Copleston is debunked by some as a second-rate expositor, adulated by others...

...But it is part of my finitude that I can speak only of fleeting impressions that contemporary Catholicism has etched on the heart of far too hurried an evangelical obseryer...

...hold on and I'll call him for you...

...John's Catholic Church...

...I see no prospect, however, of fulfillment of the dream of some neo-Protestant ecumenists of one vast world church in which the Pope is recognized as first among many considered as equals...

...this is Father Smith's, number...

...Catholic Courses My college years at Wheaton-Billy Graham partly overlapped my term-and my seminary days at Northern Baptist were calculated to underscore the differences between sacerdotal religion and personal commitment...

...Here was a spirit often absent from earnest doctrinal dispute, yet not the sort of sentimentality that looks to love to cover illogicalities...

...Religion appeared to be something that was conducted inside a building...

...I know many devout Catholics and devout Lutherans, some of them twice-born stalwarts of faith, but in our home we had little or nothing of the things of the Spirit...

...Oh, you must mean Father Smith," came the answer...

...He had attended a score of churches and pronounced this verdict: "In almost every Protestant church I visited the pastor criticized some other Protestant, but I never heard a Catholic priest attacking a fellow Catholic priest, and that sense of unity has something desirable about it...

...It will be best, I think, to reminisce about Roman Catholicism somewhat autobiographically, since some firm impressions grow out of the experiences of family and home...

...Between that Long Island cemetery and a Protestant body waiting for uncertain burial, and that Woodstock lecture opportunity coupled with prayers for a Protestant soul, I sensed that Roman Catholicism is a global condominium with many diverse apartments...

...In that context I met evangelicals already holding neighborhood cell meetings for prayer and Bible study, some of them aligned rather uneasily with Frank Buchmann's Oxford Group...

...I am told that today the Catholic priests in Central Islip cooperate with evangelicals in Bible distribution and in other ways, but when I was a lad the priests patrolled the sidewalk and required passing schoolchildren to tip their hats to the invisible host on the altar inside...

...In some ways it did not make a great deal of difference that I attended the Episcopal Church rather than some other ritualistically oriented communion...

...To his consternation the parish priest discovered that I had never been baptized so I was both baptized and confirmed within two weeks...

...for lack of a persuasive norm the outcome can only be a breakdown of faith...

...But I was no more regenerate than if Thomas Aquinas or Saint Peter's third cousin had himself dispensed the same guarantees...

...For information call: 313-636-2785...

...During post-graduate studies, however, I did enroll for a course at Loyola in Chicago and audited some courses...

...The interment followed in the local Catholic cemetery...

...I was promptly informed that "no Mr...

...I knew Catholicism in those days only as institutional religion, and denominational Protestantism (those were the theologically-lean years of modernism) as contemporary social analysis in low key...

...At a space of 40 years I have a confession to make: I cradled the telephone and to my knowledge never thereafter met Father Smith...

...But there remains the possibility also of an evangelical awakening which will shake to its roots not only Roman Catholicism and neo-Protestantism, but the so-called evangelical Protestant establishment as well...

...For some of the most impressive works in the realm of biblical scholarship have been coming from Roman Catholic authors...

...AN APPEAL-HOMELESS BOYS NEED HELP: "There are more homeless boys on the street than any of us wish to admit," says Father Tom Physician who runs the Dominic Savio Residence for Boys...

...What I think about the Roman Catholic Church' First in a Series FROM THE JUNCTURE OF THE REFORMATION CARL F. H. HENRY If I had as much sense as some of my Roman Catholic friends I would swiftly decline an invitation to write on a subject which will either cost me Catholic or non-Catholic good will, or cost so little that it is scarcely worth the reading...

...The Catholic commitment to Thomism has not commended the church's cause to me...

...We were Christmas and Easter Christians, and I do not remember that it made much difference- during or after-whether it was Catholic or Lutheran services that we then attended...

...The confusion within the recent conference of bishops on global evangelism reflects in part the difficulty of reconciling sacerdotal and evangelical views of salvation...

...Protestant liberalism, he said, was a non-option...

...But, as a stout Baptist believer in religious liberty, and halting short of solicitation, I answered, "You may"-although I confess to some uneasiness lest I may have leaned a bit on mental reservation...

...because no clear distinction had been inculcated between divine truth and temporary tradition, their faith in the church was placed under severe strain and many no longer accept Catholic tradition unquestioningly...

...Yet something is obviously happening to Roman Catholicism today...

...For most of the remaining teenage years it could not have mattered less to me whether people were Catholic, Protestant, or Hottentot...

...Many of us resented these demands and deliberately crossed the street to pass by on the other side...

...We had both taken part in numerous public dialogues, some on radio and television...

...After my mother's untimely death of pneumonia at the age of 49 in a cold Long Island winter, my father remarried, and once more, a Roman Catholic...

...Although I am aware that more and more Catholic intellectuals seem to restate Thomism beyond recognition, my exasperation continues...

...Send contributions to: Dominic Savio Residence for Boys, Inc., 10128 Dar Lane, Goodrich, Michigan 48438...

...I sometimes wonder what his verdict might have been in the controversial post-Vatican Council era of Kung, Rahner, Baum and others...

...It is time Catholicism asked the real Thomas to stand up...

...The demand that children of interfaith marriages be reared as Catholics is increasingly unacceptable...

...I have recalled elsewhere how, when we reached an impasse in one discussion, he stretched a hand across the table and rested it on mine, remarking "Carl Hertry: I love you...

...when he arrived 45 minutes late, we learned that there had been extensive debate about the propriety of burial since my father had not been baptized a Catholic, but it was nevertheless finally decided to go ahead...

...Weigel and I had corresponded long before I became editor of Christianity Today...

...My first newspaper contact with Father Smith in Smithtown was really an insignificant incident, but it is a reminder nonetheless that important first impressions are often garnered not from a personal meeting with the Pope but rather from personal contact with his legions...

...It would be a welcome development if the spirit of Duns Scotus could feel as much at home as that of Aquinas in Catholic theology, and if the weaknesses of Thomistic analogy were candidly conceded...

...The participation of various groups in Key 73 was more symbolically than numerically significant, but it nonetheless reflected in many places wistful longings that the Spirit of God can fan to flame on a deeper biblical basis...

...did [ have the right number...

...There is much about Catholicism that I admire-its commitment to Christian universities and schools, its recognition of the importance of philosophy as a discipline, its production of books and other literature, its sense of heritage and history, and the impression of global presence and unity that it imparts to the casual observer...

...What happens at the top in hierarchically structured denominations is not in all cases directly decisive, as the Reformation will serve to remind us, but it is so in most cases...

...We must pay a $7,500 mortgage before we can move into our new home...

...Since I soon demythologized the title, however, I was prone to preserve it even when priests more recently were virtually begging Protestants to put them on a first-name basis...

...He spoke of the massive unity of Catholicism, the fragmentation of evangelicals...

...he asked-a disconcerting question to an evangelical theologian convinced that prayers for the dead are too tardy to be serviceable...

...When she and her husband separated, and the priests could do nothing to mend the marriage, she decided that for her that was the end of the road to Rome...

...Some Roman Catholics dismay me while others delight me-sometimes the same persons on different days -which makes them very much like some of my Protestant friends...

...Long ago I learned that people are not to be trusted or distrusted simply because they are Catholics, Jews, or Protestants-or even evangelical Protestants, however prestigious-although atheists seem to me to lack any persuasive basis whatever for moral predictability...

...He had never been interested in evangelical conversion, or for that matter, in a deeper draught of any other religion, confident as he was that infant baptism and confirmation in the German Lutheran Church carried all necessary prerogatives...

...For I was not invited as a Vatican Council observer, and Christianity Today consequently relied on overseas news coverage...

...I considered his untimely death a personal loss...

...In North America papal authority is rejected at the practical level by most Roman Catholics in their attitude toward birth control strictures...

...It would be better yet if the priority of God in his self-revelation were recognized anew, and the authority of the Bible over all ecclesiastical hierarchies openly acknowledged...

...Homeless boys desperately need your help...

...It is perhaps inappropriate for me to say that windows that were opened by the Vatican Council seem to be closing again...

...once outside, those who supported it seemed like those who did not-as I quickly learned to do- to profane God's name, to tell less than the truth, and even to be ready now and then to put over a shady deal...

...But ws carl f. H. henry, the well-known evangelical Protestant theologian, is editor-at-large of Christianity Today magazine, of which he was founding editor from 1956-68, and lecturer at large for World Vision International, a global humanitarian agency...

...We talked freely of our agreements and differences, concentrating on issues rather than personalities...

...As a journalist I had access to the high and mighty, and my anxieties about giving needless offense were mollified by the counsel of a veteran editor of the now defunct Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "When in doubt, the title 'mister' will serve in the United States all the way up to the President," I tried to get acquainted with all the local clergy, but my first contact with the Catholic church was somewhat disconcerting...

...No priest spoke to me, nor did I have opportunity to speak to one of the priests...

...That's the listing," I replied, repeating the digits...

...Graham crusades, and his periodic television appearances, have held remarkable appeal for Catholics at the lay level...

...When I was twelve it was time to be confirmed...

...All this highlights the biblical renewal movement in contemporary Catholicism as perhaps its most significant feature...

...I recall years ago having witnessed about the rewards of personal trust in Christ to an intellectual active in the Great Books discussion groups...

...I shared its rewards readily and eagerly with family and friends...

...Faith in the crucified and risen Lord was for me a magnificently transforming experience...

...I have sometimes remarked that I was born at the juncture of the Protestant Reformation, since my mother was Catholic and my father Lutheran...

...He had traveled Europe with ecumenical theological teams and was constantly amazed that Protestant participants debunked American evangelicals as theologically insignificant...

...Now and then at National Council of Churches or World Council of Churches gatherings, we met as invited observers and compared notes, including the earthy fact that the neo-Protestant ecumenists had paid his way but left me to cover my own travel costs...

...Not only are evangelical attitudes toward Scripture gaining a Catholic following, but significant numbers of Catholics have come into an experience of assurance of-salvation and new life in Christ...

...The spirit of the Vatican Council was in some respects anticipated by Gustave Weigel...

...There we waited endlessly for the priest to appear for the committal...

...I still recall his liturgical assurance to the grandparents that "this child is now regenerate and an inheritor of the promises of God...

...yet encyclicals like other ecumenical resolutions and pronouncements do not change human desolation into creative deliverance...

...I am impressed by the growth of evangelical interest among Catholics, more notably among the laity even than among the clergy...

...But I did press for Catholic observers at the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin (1966) on the premise that evangelicals stand to lose if they do not publicly exhibit their wares insofar as they traffic in authentically biblical truths and vitalities...

...Later I did, however, get to know many Catholic laymen and other priests (always carefully 'fathered,' although for a season with some uneasy recollection of Matthew 23:9...

...At sixteen, while the Great Depression deepened, I became a $15-a-week country newspaper reporter...

...To be sure, I had a few lingering inheritances from Episcopal Sunday School days: the first Bible I ever possessed, stolen from the church pew racks...

...In friendly followup I asked what consideration was decisive...

...The day came when we parked by a four-lane highway and he sought the forgiveness of sins and new life in Christ...

...It may be that now or then-particularly when one of the children carried the raging fever of a childhood disease-my mother spoke a prayer at bedtime...

...May I pray for him...

...Another decade may see the acceleration of initiatives long dormant or now seemingly only of secondary import...

...my father worked like a beaver and drank like a fish, and my mother struggled against poverty as the children kept coming along every year or two until there were eight of us...

...The arrangements were all completed before my arrival, including a scheduled requiem mass in St...

...Smith there...

...I have never had an audience with the Pope, and have no lingering aspiration to meet him until Hans Kung's view prevails that the teaching hierarchy is not only intrinsically fallible but has already demonstrated itself to be so...

...A Peeping Tom seldom has access to all the windows, and I am sure that if more doors were open some remarkably different chapters could be written...

...Vatican Council changes of tradition in worship and practice caught multitudes of Catholics of simple piety off guard...

...It seems to me that in another generation some neo-Protestants disenchanted over the decline of the World Council of Churches may seek organizational haven in Roman Catholicism, and that more Catholic priests who forsake celibacy for marriage will seek haven in neo-Protestant circles in order not to forfeit clerical vows...

...In Latin America Marxist social criticism increasingly comes to the fore as the determinative theme that Catholic theology is made to sponsor, in large part as a penalty for and a reaction to the fact that on a continent where Catholicism has been the majority religion for 400 years the largest Christian sector of dire world poverty has remained untouched...

...in those days we met periodically for lunch and dialogue in Washington, and he invited me for a major lecture and discussion hour with all the Jesuit seminarians at Woodstock...

...Weigel himself had read evangelical works of which non-evangelical Protestants were ignorant...

...One of my brothers married an attractive Roman Catholic girl-which attests that the appeal of any tradition is not to be found solely in its theology-and they have a happy home and are devout communicants as far as I know (I cannot seem to prod correspondence out of them on any pretext...

...I had better confess at once that I know all too few Roman Catholics in more than a casual way-a cluster of scholars in the American Theological Society, a few others that I have enjoyed or endured as teachers along the way, and towering over them all the late Gustave Weigel who had, I thought, a gratifying feeling for fairness and the warmth of charity alongside his unswerving Jesuit loyalties...

...One of my sisters also married a Roman Catholic...

...had no family prayers, no Bible readings, no grace at table...

...The Roman Church like Protestant ecumenism seems on the surface to face a massive crisis of authority...

...Apparently this was a religious compromise since there was a large Catholic church but no Lutheran church in town...

...and knowledge of where the Gospels are located in Scripture so that now and then I read the resurrection stories with a moth-and-flame curiosity...

...a few communion-ritual phrases such as "we look to the shed blood of Christ and are thankful," which I thought had something to do with the chalice of which communicants partook...

...later, at Indiana University, I also registered for a course in Thomism...

...Even when I visited him during serious illness, he reassured me that baptism covered it all...

...On the American political scene the propriety of a Roman Catholic President is seldom any longer a question, although the increasing number of Roman Catholic congressmen (now a record of 123) will be watched by many for any reflection of ecclesiastically-oriented commitments...

...I phoned the church to reach the parish priest and asked, "Is Mr...

...We discussed the alternatives in an earnest way...

...Won't you help us feed, clothe, pay tuition and doctor bills...

...Yet Rome, like Geneva, today shelters a vast showroom of diverse interests...

...I agree with Karl Rahner that the widening charismatic movement in Catholicism is too limited to fundamentally alter the vast religious system with all the diversities that Rome shelters and is able to absorb, and I am unconvinced also that the present evangelical awakening within Rome has the initiative and momentum to achieve any basic change...

...I majored in philosophy in college, and later took a philosophy doctorate at Boston University...

...the family circle included some of each in both relatives and friends...

...It is not only Thomas' five-fold proof that disturbs me...

...My evangelical faith supplied new motivation and resources for integrity and achievement...

...When I was 20 I came into a vital personal experience of Christ...

...faithful to the church, they raised an uninterrupted issue of offspring...

...Moreover, observers at World Council of Churches conferences have frequently noted how its dialogues have often been called to a consideration of basic theological themes by Catholic participants, when the neo-Protestant mood has been engrossed in the socio-political...

...Two years later, in a Christmas card, he mentioned that he had opted for Roman Catholicism...

...I did not first become aware of religious differences until the family moved to Long Island and we youngsters were enrolled in an Episcopal Sunday School...

...Roman Catholicism is a megapolis of faith so immense that none can be sure that he may not be stroking only three or four momentarily active legs of a global centipede...

...Papal encyclicals often contain penetrating comments on the social and political scene, although sometimes they are broad enough to serve as Delphic oracles...

...To my Roman Catholic mother I bore my first testimony to God's grace, and three months later she too became a believer...

...It is additionally that interpreters of Thomas seem to play a shell game with his arguments, so that we are too often told that "you don't understand Thomas" by those who are at odds with each other over what Thomas means...

...He told me that the decision between Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant identification would be a major one for him...

...As editor of The Smithtown Star I was determined to be objectively fair (except to Democrats at election time, since the Macy chain of papers was committed editorially as a Republican enterprise and Democrats had the Smithtown Messenger edited by a Methodist churchman for their misrepresentations...

...Smith" was at that number...

...I had no way of knowing that some day, as a Protestant theologian, I would return to town at the death of my father and with very mixed feelings attend requiem mass in that very church...

...There is clearly a longing for renewal, but its content and objectives are variously defined...

...I am on safe ground, however, when I speak not in veiled prophecies but factually of family and hearth...

...his doctrine of analogy, or denial that we have any literally true knowledge of God, does so equally...

...Journalistic opportunities flourished and I became the youngest editor of a weekly newspaper in New York State and suburban correspondent for leading New York dailies...