Church and Intercommunion: Some Considerations bearing on the Present Problem

Extract

In introducing this subject I recognise that some degree of objectivity and dispassionateness is prescribed by regard for the inter-Church membership of the society which I address. This limitation is not, however, to the disadvantage of the discussion any more than it is separable from the historical situation which lies behind the problem, and therefore I make no apology for soliciting the privilege of the occasion for the observations which I have to make on “Church and Intercommunion”. The subject is one which needs for its setting a really ecumenical atmosphere. What has become regular and normal on the platform of the Faith and Order Conference should not be out of place in the more intimate arena of the present or similar fellowships. The representatives of the Churches must think together the nature of the ecumenical problem. They must seek together the lines of a practicable solution. The theologians and philosophers of the Churches should take responsibility for the straightening out of our ideas in the very tangled situation which history has produced and which it presents for our unravelling. The World Ecumenical Conference has signalled for an advance in this direction, and a theology divorced from interest in the Unity of the Church is not any longer justifiable.