Religion: The Eucharistic Congress

Eucharistic Congresses, the spectaculars of Roman Catholicism, have been held since 1881 in every corner of the earth (the last in Rio in 1955) to worship what German Theologian Theoderich Kampmann called “the still white majesty of the mystic bread” and thus to demonstrate Catholic internationalism and solidarity. Last week nearly half a million Catholics from all over the world met in Munich to celebrate the 37th World Eucharistic Congress. Among them: Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who arrived by helicopter, plus 21 cardinals, 500 bishops and thousands of priests.

The tradition of the congresses used to be a militant witness against Protestantism, but the mood of last week’s meeting was newly irenic. Evangelical Theologian Edmund Schlink of Heidelberg was invited to address one of the numerous study groups on “Ritual as Understood by Protestant Theology” and was enthusiastically applauded. Participants attended Mass in more than 100 churches, and in the Byzantine, Armenian, Maronite and Ethiopian rites as well as the Roman. In specially designated churches, confessions were heard in 17 languages.

The Communist countries did their best to see that no Catholic from the Soviet bloc went to Munich; the East German government banned all travel to West Germany for the week of the congress. But a small group of East Germans managed to get there by crossing to the West zone before the ban went into effect. Many were disappointed that the Pope failed to attend. Travel-hungry Pope John was reported to have at last decided that such a precedent-breaking foreign excursion would inevitably bring demands for more papal visitations. One feature of the conference was the celebration of the early Christian custom of agape, or love feast, in Munich parish homes and in its famed beer hall, the Hofbräuhaus, where some 900 people watched the papal legate, Gustavo Cardinal Testa, move smilingly among them, passing out hard rolls to be eaten with cold ham and roast veal accompanied by Palatinate wine.

On Friday, day of fasting and penitence, some 2,000 young Germans made an elevenmile pilgrimage to the onetime concentration camp at Dachau, where Munich’s Bishop Johannes Neuhaeusler, a former inmate, dedicated a chapel to Christ’s agony (a jarring note was the appearance of Hitler’s financial wizard, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who did a brief spell in Dachau himself).

In Munich’s cathedral 15,000 people heard New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman attack Communism as “a wild beast of the forest,” making “this the most dangerous summer since 1939.” Climax of the congress came Sunday, when more than a million people streamed for the final Mass into the vast Theresienwiese fair grounds, surrounding a high wooden altar. Direct from Rome they heard a radio message from John XXIII: “You and we perceive with great concern what dark clouds of danger hover over mankind and how heavily the peace of nations is threatened. Therefore let us pray together and with great fervor that Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace illumine the spirits of the leaders of the states.”