Episcopal Press and News
Browning Joins Ecumenical Meeting With Pope
Episcopal News Service. September 24, 1987 [87190]
Charles Austin
COLUMBIA (DPS, Sept. 24) -- More than two dozen top Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox church leaders who met with the Pope here Sept. 11 called their 90-minute session and massive ecumenical worship service "more than a symbol." The participants were openly touched by the relatively simple ceremony and clung to words expressing a heartfelt longing for Christian unity.
At the same time, the topics they cautiously laid before the head of the world's 800 million Roman Catholics suggested that the ecumenical movement has a good deal more moving to do.
"Our meeting brought together the widest range of national Christian leadership I have seen," said Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning. "It is interesting that it was the visit of the Bishop of Rome that drew us together. Surely this meeting was a sign of Christian community and witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Why shouldn't we meet regularly and do more together in the United States? Why shouldn't we find a way to continue the conversations with John Paul? Why couldn't we do more on such urgent issues as justice, peace and human rights, especially religious freedom?"
"The ecumenical movement is a glacier," said Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. "It moves slowly, but it does move."
A number of unique aspects of the meeting here lifted the hearts of some participants. "I believe this is a first step in a new conversational style" of relations with the Pope, said the Rev. Leonid Kishlovsky, secretary for ecumenical and external affairs of the Orthodox Church in America. The head of the Orthodox Church in America, Metropolitan Theodosius, was one of those taking part in the meeting.
The Rev. Arie R. Brouwer, general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a participant in the session with Pope John Paul, said he believes it was important for American Protestants to see their leaders sitting down with the pontiff. Meetings like this are a "pastoral affirmation that is very important" said Brouwer.
The wide publicity surrounding the papal visit and the participation of Protestant leaders in the visit can counter what Brouwer called a "fair amount of anti-Catholicism" which is present in American society.
Despite the formal structure of the meeting -- an official exchange of greetings, some comments by the American church leaders and a general response by Pope John Paul -- the session enabled the Americans to speak directly to the Pope about some new concerns.
Several Orthodox church leaders told of their concerns for Catholic-Orthodox relations in troubled parts of the world such as the Middle East. The question of relations between Catholic and Southern Baptist missionaries was raised, as was the delicate question of the role of women in the church. There was even a vague allusion to some internal Roman Catholic difficulties, as Bishop Philip R. Cousin, president of the National Council of Churches, told the Pope that Americans are interested in "personal freedoms" and "freedom of inquiry."
The ecumenical worship service that evening, attended by thousands, was even more packed with ecumenical symbols. Clergy and laity from several denominations took part. Browning was one of the intercessors.
"I liked the way the Pope just appeared at the end of the line of those leading the service," said Kishkovsky. The pontiff did not circle the stadium in his glass-covered "popemobile," and the order of the proceedings, in an apparent attempt to show that it was truly an ecumenical gathering, did not draw undue attention to the Pope.
A small number of fundamentalist Christians, carrying placards denouncing Roman Catholicism, didn't mind being polecats on a day when when the Pope was greeted by a massive outpouring of southern hospitality in a state where Catholics are only three percent of the population.
At the ecumenical worship service, only the most intolerant of the fundamentalists could have taken issue with the Pope's homily on family life and traditional values, obviously planned to be a winsome speech in conservative Protestant territory.
Following the meeting, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, head of the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, said he believes "the next few years will be an interesting and challenging time for ecumenism." The cardinal, long-time advocate of ecumenical relations, noted, "we have reached a point where response and reception" of ecumenical agreements is now a "key factor."
Willebrands said it is now clear that such pastoral concerns as care for people involved in mixed marriages should impel the churches towards one another.