Religion: Best Seats in the House

Popes, like kings, have traditionally spoken of themselves in the first person plural—an arrogation that to many Protestants seems a sign of the issues that divide Catholicism from the rest of Christianity: the primacy of Rome, the doctrine of papal infallibility. When the non-Catholic Christian observers to the Second Vatican Council gathered in the Sistine Chapel for an audience with Pope John XXIII, they heard a rare and significant departure from form: the Pontiff pointedly referred to himself in the first person singular, and spoke with moving humility (see box). For the observers—some of them second-stringers appointed in the wary expectation that they would be mere bystanders—it was the high point of a week that showed clearly Pope John’s intention to treat them as guests of honor.

Many of the observers were met at the airports by Dutch Monsignor Jan Willebrands, assistant to Augustin Cardinal Bea, the elderly Jesuit Biblical scholar who heads the Vatican’s Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. They were assigned choice pensioni close to the Vatican (at Vatican expense) and the best seats in St. Peter’s at all sessions, including secret ones. Most impressive of all, the observers were given copies of the Schemata—the supersecret council agenda that has been seen by no one but the council fathers. “When I heard that they had the Schemata. I almost fell over,” said an American monsignor. Replied Anglican Canon Bernard C. Pawley matter-of-factly: “If we didn’t have the Schemata, how could we really understand what’s going on here?”

Representing 17 churches and religious organizations, the observers encompass all major Christian groups except the Greek Orthodox, the fundamentalist sects and the Baptists.* Their churches range from the Russian Orthodox, which considers itself part of the Catholic Church, to the Unitarian Universalist. which does not acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ. At his “family gathering” for the non-Catholics last week, Cardinal Bea asked the observers to “grant us complete confidence and tell us very frankly everything you dislike, to share with us your positive criticisms, your suggestions and your desires.”

The observers so far liked everything—and particularly the thoughtfulness of the Pope. “When he spoke to the observers, did he sit on a throne?” asked Congregationalist alternate delegate-observer, Dr. George H. Williams. “No. He sat on a chair just like the ones we were sitting on. Pope John isn’t setting himself up as someone above us. He is with us.” The new atmosphere in Rome is, according to Anglican Pawley, “a thaw in 400 years of icy noncooperation and hostility.”

* Although Dr. Joseph Jackson, president of the Negro National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc., accepted the personal invitation Pope John extended during an audience last year, the Baptist World Alliance decided not to send official observers.