The Church of Rome and Reunion

Extract

No one will deny that in the last twenty years since the Second Vatican Council there has been a wonderful growth in the ecumenical movement among Christians. Not only has the whole climate changed in the relation of the Christian churches to one another, but formal agreement has been reached with Anglicans, Lutherans and reformed churches on such formerly controversial subjects as the Eucharist and the Ministry. But there still remains one insuperable obstacle to Christian unity, which no amount of discussion has so far been able to overcome, and that is the claim of the Roman Church to the ‘universal jurisdiction’ and the ‘infallibility’ of the Pope. Is there no way out of this dilemma or is the Ecumenical movement doomed finally to break down at this point?

An answer to this problem has been offered in a recent book published in India, which proposes a solution from the Roman point of view on strictly orthodox lines. Its author is a Spanish Jesuit, Luis Bermejo, who is a professor of theology, formerly dean of the faculty of theology, at the Papal Seminary at Poona. His book consists of a series of articles contributed to theological reviews, which make a careful, scholarly survey of the historical grounds for these doctrines. His contention is that only a strictly historical method can answer the question of the validity of these doctrines. In the past it has been only too easy to read into the evidence of the New Testament and the Fathers the developed doctrine of a later age.