Gustave Weigel |
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An American
priest at Vatican Council II was the relevant Rev. Gustave Weigel,
a major contributor to the affirmation that religion is ecumenicity.
It properly unites "the inhabited world" in its confrontation
with the perils of both poverty and power. In his Catholic Primer
on the Ecumenical Movement, Dr. Weigel noted that this movement
is undoubtedly the most striking ecclesiological event since the
16th century Reformation.
Fr. Weigel published both an introductory book originally prepared
for Catholic high school students on various non-Catholic Churches
in North America, as well as a scholarly Survey of Protestant
Theology in Our Time. This work is not regarded as weakening
the Catholic position, for Weigel swiftly states that, "The
inevitable authoritarianism of Catholicism makes communication with
anti-authoritarians difficult for the Catholic." No less sharp
is his declaration of ecclesiastical allegiance, for he says: "From
the Catholic view there is no church except the Catholic Church."
Such honest bluntness is an aid to the dialogue in which Weigel
was engaged across the barbed wires of Christian faith. If anyone
doubts the practical relevance of such conversation, he might ponder
the fact that in the brief obituary concerning Gustave Weigel in
Time, the leading sentence is "Played a major role in
the 1960 Kennedy campaign stating that the church would not interfere
with a Catholic president." One might also note that in 1962,
Yale awarded him the first honorary degree it had ever given to
a priest because he had broken through the Reformation wall and
pioneered in Catholic-Protestant dialogue.
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