| Popis: |
DURING i enacted in a great number of American communities. A Protestant clergyman, a Catholic priest a d a Jewish rabbi appear together before an audience which due allowance having been made for the merely curious consists of people who feel (a) that religious prejudice is a calamitous and outmoded disease, and (b) that the ethical imperatives respected by all monotheists are of such value to society they ought to be fully utilized. On matters of doctrine, the speakers insist, the various faiths are as separate as the fingers of a hand, but on fundamental tenets of the lex aeterna they are "as united as a clenched fist." Are such programs testimonials to the existence of any genuine reality or are they merely echoes of a pious wish that would be father to a purpose? I can imagine many a citizen thinking as he weighs the question that although educated Protestant dislike of bigotry is sincere the Catholic Church remains uneasy over any display which assumes that it can meet dissident or disaffected groups on a plane of theoretical equality. No one can speak "for" even the 20,000,000 Catholics of the United States but it is quite possible to write scientifically "about" Catholic views on cooperation because these are determinable things. The trend towards religious unity which has to some extent characterized the recent past grows out of two quite different conceptions. The first is based upon the feeling that the chaotic disarray which confronts the observer of organized Christianity 282 |
