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                                                                              ╚January 4, 1963

Man of the Year:Pope John XXIII



    The Year of our Lord 1962 was a year of American resolve.
Russian orbiting, European union and Chinese war.

    In a tense yet hope-filled time, these were the events that
dominated conversation and invited history's scrutiny. But
history has a long eye, and it is quite possible that in her
vision 1962's most fateful rendezvous took place in the world's
most famous church -- having lived for years in men's hearts and
minds.

    That event was the beginning of a revolution in
Christianity, the ancient faith whose 900 million adherents make
it the world's largest religion. (Others: Islam, 430 million;
Hinduism, 335 million; Confucianism, 300 million; Buddhism, 153
million.) It began on Oct. 11 in Rome and was the work of the
man of the year, Pope John XXIII, who, by convening the
Ecumenical Council called Vatican II, set in motion ideas and
forces that will affect not merely Roman Catholics, not only
Christians, but the whole world's ever-expanding population long
after Cuba is once again libre and India is free of attack.

    So rare are councils -- there have been only 20 in the
nearly 2,000 years of Christian history -- that merely by
summoning Vatican II to "renew" the Roman Catholic Church Pope
John made the biggest individual imprint on the year. But
revolutions in Christianity are even rarer (the Reformation was
400 years ago), and John's historic mission is fired by a desire
to endow the Christian faith with "a new Pentecost," a new
spirit. It is aimed not only at bringing the mother church of
Christendom into closer touch with the modern world, but at
ending the division that has dissipated the Christian message
for four centuries.

    "The council may have an effect as profound as anything
since the days of Martin Luther," says Dr. Carroll L. Shuster
of Los Angeles, an executive of the Presbyterian Church. Boston
University's Professor Edwin Booth, a Methodist and church
historian, is so impressed by what Pope John has started that
he ranks him as "one of the truly great Popes of Roman Catholic
history."

    Outranked Concerns. By launching singlehanded a revolution
whose sweep and loftiness have caused it to outrank the secular
concerns of the year, Pope John created history in a different
dimension from that of the most dramatic headline of the year.
President Kennedy's victory over the Russian missile threat in
Cuba was both an embarrassing retreat for Khrushchev and a cold
war turning point; it showed that a resolute U.S. willing to
use its mighty arms, can maintain the initiative in the cold
war.

    There were other big decisions and stunning achievements.
In space, the U.S. creditably launched not only John Glenn but
Telstar and Mariner II, but it was a team of anonymous Russian
scientists who made the biggest space news by launching the
space twins, Nikolayev and Popovich, on record-breaking, three-
day tandem orbits of the earth.

    European unification, both economic and political, rolled
along with the dynamism of history (had Great Britain waited too
long?). It was symbolized most graphically as Charles de Gaulle
and Konrad Adenauer, the aged and doughty leader of the New
Europe, knelt together at Mass in Reims Cathedral, signifying
the burial of ancient antagonisms. On the other side of the
world, Communist China's inscrutable and ruthless leaders
launched an attack on neutralist India so seemingly pointless
that the big mystery is why they did it at all. The attack
embarrassed Russia and further widened the split within
Communism that has become an open ideological battle.

    Mistress of Life. Measured even against such portentous
events, the turning point that Christianity reached in 1962 is
already assured of a firm place in history, that "mistress of
life" to which Pope John occasionally refers. By launching a
reform whose goal is to make the Catholic Church sine macula et
ruga (without spot or wrinkle), John set out to adapt his
church's whole life and stance to the revolutionary changes in
science, economics, morals and politics that have swept the
modern world: to make it, in short, more Catholic and less
Roman. Stretching out the hand of friendship to non-Catholics
-- he calls them "separated brethren" -- he demostrated that the
walls that divide Christianity do not reach as high as heaven,
and made a start toward that distant and elusive goal, Christian
unity.

    As a consequence, John XXIII is the most popular Pope of
modern times -- and perhaps ever. Heading an institution so
highly organized that it has been called "the U.S. Steel of
churches," he has demonstrated such warmth, simplicity and charm
that he has won the hearts of Catholics, Protestants, and non-
Christians alike. "The Protestant Christian think that they now
have the best Pope they have had in centuries," comments German
Catholic Theologian Herbert Vorgrimler. The Pope's recent
illness raised a tide of concern around the world. "If we should
pray for anyone in the world today," says Protestant Theologian
Paul Tillich, "we should pray for Pope John. He is a good man."

    John is not only a person of luminous human qualities but
an intuitive judge of mankind's hopes and needs. At first
regarded as a transitional Pope who would only warm the chair
of Peter, he took over the Catholic Church in 1958 at an age
(nearly 77) when he was able to leap over the administrative
details and parochial interests of the papacy and confront the
world as "the universal shepherd." Unlike his predecessor, the
scholarly and aloof Pius XII, John lets his interest range far
beyond the Catholic fold to embrace the fundamental plight of
man in the modern world.

    Nobel Contest. Last week alone, John demonstrated in the
space of a few busy days the qualities that have made him
prefer, among all the impressive titles of the Roman Pontiff,
the simple designation servus servorum Dei -- servant of the
servants of God. After delivering a Christmas message in which
be rejoiced at the end of the Cuban crisis (he noted that his
pleas of peace at that time "were not words shouted into the
wind") and pleaded for Christian unity and for peace -- "of all
the earth's treasures, the most precious and most noteworthy"
-- he addressed the 50 ambassadors to the Holy See. "The
church," said John, "applauds man's growing mastery over the
forces of nature and rejoices in all present and future progress
which helps men better conceive the infinite grandeur of the
Creator." He also asked support for international bodies such
as the United Nations, and urged nations to join in "a nobel
contest" to explore space and solve economic and social
problems.

    On Christmas Day, John made the first visit outside the
Vatican since his illness -- to the Bambino Gesu Hospital for
children on nearby Janiculum Hill. There he spent 40 minutes
walking from ward to ward and speaking personally to almost
every child. He talked to them about his own illness. To the
doctors and children at Bambino Gesu, he said: "You see, I am
in perfect condition. Oh, I am not yet ready to run any races
or enter any contests, but in all I am feeling well."
Nonetheless, the feeling persisted in Rome that he is still far
from well, and John himself has spoken frequently in recent
weeks of the possibility of his imminent death. Only last week
he told a group of cardinals: "Our humble life, like the life
of everyone, is in the hands of God."

Revolt in St. Peter's
    However soon or late that humble life may end, the world
will not be able to ignore or forget the forces that Pope John
has unleashed. The importance of the council that he called is
already clear. By revealing in Catholicism the deep-seated
presence of a new spirit crying out for change and rejuvenation,
it shattered the Protestant view of the Catholic Church as a
monolithic and absolutist system. It also marked the tacit
recognition by the Catholic Church, for the first time, that
those who left it in the past may have had good cause. "Even the
most agnostic and atheistic people were cheered when they saw
those thoughtful people saying those thoughtful things," says
one Harvard scientist.

    Vatican II was the first council called neither to combat
heresy, pronounce new dogma nor marshal the church against
hostile forces. As the bishops came to Rome to deliberate, Pope
John encourages "holy liberty" in the expression if their views.
The bishops, who had long considered Rome the sole source of
power and authority in the Catholic world, gathered together for
the first time in their lives, discovered that they and not Rome
constituted the leadership of the church.

    Rome Has Spoken. In its anxiety to defend the doctrines
attacked four centuries ago by the Reformation, the Catholic
Church had often overemphasized its differences with
Protestantism, and had become increasingly dogmatic even about
matters that were open topics of discussion before the
Reformation -- the role of Mary in the church, the role of the
sacraments, the infallibility of the Pope. As it reached the
Atomic Age, the Catholic Church found itself in perhaps the most
powerful condition in history in terms of numbers, influence
and respect -- and yet too often still fighting the old battles
against Protestantism and "modernism."

    The men chiefly responsible for this negative posture
belong to the Roman Curia, the central administrative body of
the Catholic Church. Mostly aging Italians quite insulated from
the modern world, they have exerted vast influence and control
not only on the worldwide church but on the Pope himself. They
have usually been satisfied with the church the way it is, and
have looked upon any efforts to change it with deep hostility.

    This top-heavy, slow-moving and ultra-conservative body
controls all the seminaries that teach young priests, all the
church's missionary activities, all of its ecclesiastical and
liturgical legislation. Through the Holy Office, headed by
conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, the Curia has
frequently silenced or harassed Catholic intellectuals,
sometimes forbidding them to publish their works and then
forbidding them to say they have been forbidden. "Roma locuta
est; causa finita est" has been the Curia's traditional
pronouncement in deciding Catholic affairs around the world:
"Rome has spoken; the matter is settled."

    Now it is clear that the matter is by no means settled.
Catholic scholars are deeply involved in new Biblical studies
-- sometimes over the objections of the Holy Office -- that are
giving them new insights into the nature and form of revelation
and bringing them into intellectual cooperation with Protestant
scholars. Was there really a star of Bethlehem? Were there
really wise men from the East? Some scholars, in their efforts
to plumb the positive depths of meaning in the Scriptures with
tools of modern critical research, are willing to question these
revered ideas. A new generation of Catholic thinkers,
particularly in Europe, has been finding new approaches to
theology and, in the case of the late Paleontologist Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin and others, new meanings in science. It is
the genius of Pope John XXIII that he sensed that the time was
ripe for internal renewal in the church, and opened the way for
it.

    Too Many Bulges. It was a major accomplishment that the
Vatican Council ever got going at all. The Curia clearly did
not want it. One Curia man, according to a Vatican story, told
the Pope: "We can't possibly get a council ready by 1963." "All
right," said John, "We'll have it in 1962."

    When the Curia cardinals finally decided that John really
meant to have a council, they staffed the preparatory
commissions with Curia men and decided that the council would
be conducted entirely in Latin without simultaneous translation
-- this effectively cutting off many Latin-shy bishops from the
proceedings. In preparing the 69 proposals to be discussed at
the council (since reduced to 20), they followed their own
theologically conservative bent, frequently ignoring the
suggestions that the Pope had asked the world's bishops to
submit.

    Pope John let the Curia have its way. To Boston's Richard
Cardinal Cushing, he explained: "Sono nel sacco qui" -- "I'm in
a bag here." But when the council fathers arrived in Rome, they
began getting discreet telephone calls from Monsignor Loris
Capovilla, the Pope's private secretary, subtly disassociating
the pope from the Curia. The progressives among the bishops
correctly deduced that John wanted a wholesale reform, but they
did not at first realize their own strength. Gradually,
encouraged by the knowledge that the world was watching, they
became emboldened. "We heard men dare to say things we'd
privately been thinking for a long time ourselves," a U.S.
bishop said. Britain's Archbishop T.D. Roberts remonstrated that
the conservative Ernesto Cardinal Rufiin could "get up in St.
Peter's and say that Christs' bride, the Church, is already
without spot or wrinkle -- but I say she's still got bulges in
all the wrong places."

    Against Old Ideas. The first council session, discussed
five subjects, ranging from church unity to mass media, but the
key battles were fought over three important schemata, or
proposals:

 --  The Form of Worship. By a vote of 1,922 to 11, the council
fathers approved liturgical reforms that, among other things,
enable the world's bishops to decide for themselves whether they
wish parts of the Mass to be said in the language of their own
countries. The vote goes much deeper than ceremonials; it is
somewhat like the U.S. State Department's allowing its embassies
to decide foreign policy. A power historically held by the Curia
-- the right to change the liturgy -- now goes in some degree
to national, linguistic or continental bishops' conferences.
The way is thus opened to a decentralization bound eventually
to extend into such areas as missionary activity and control of
seminaries. Atlanta's Archbishop Paul Hallinan called the shift
"a vote against old ideas. This first chapter really paves the
way for everything else."

 --  The Sources of Revelation. In the crucial debate on the
sources of revelation, the schema prepared by Cardinal Ottaviani
uncompromisingly emphasized the separateness of the two sources
recognized by the Catholic Church -- Scripture and tradition.
(Theologically, tradition is the body of doctrine attributed to
Christ or his Apostles but handed down orally rather than as
Biblical revelation.) But Protestants recognize only one source
-- Scripture -- and the progressives of the council, seeing no
point in stressing Catholic-Protest differences, wanted to
present Scripture and tradition as two channels in the same
stream. For nearly two weeks the debate raged on. Finally, 1,368
council fathers voted to shelve the Ottaviani document -- but
the vote was still short of the needed two-thirds majority. Pope
John, watching the proceedings in his apartment over closed-
circuit TV, ruled that there was no point in continuing to
discuss a document that so many bishops disapproved of. He
halted debate and sent the proposal to be rewritten by a new
committee co-chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani and Augustin Cardinal
Bea, Jesuit head of the newly created Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity and the leader of the council progressives. Said
Canadian Father Gregory Baum, a council theologian: "This day
will go down in history as the end of the Counter Reformation."
Said the Pope: "Now begins my council."

 --  The Nature of the Church. When the time came to discuss
Cardinal Ottaviani's draft proposal on the nature of the modern
church, the progressives were ready. Ottaviani had tried to get
the bishops to end the council's first session with a pious
discussion of the Virgin Mary, but the council decided instead
to press on to consider the nature of the church before
adjourning. The purpose of the progressives was to get any
objections on record and thus provide guidance that could be
used in rewriting the schema after adjournment. There proved to
be many objections to the Ottaviani draft, which was a stand-
pat restatement of monarchical church authority. Bishop Emile
Josef De Smedt of Bruges, Belgium, rose to speak: "Shouldn't
this schema be purged of its triumphalism, its clericalism, its
juridicism? This exercise in minor logic is unworthy of Mother
Church." When he sat down, Bishop De Smedt received the loudest
applause of the council. At council's end, the document was sent
back for rewriting, thus opening the way for more tolerant
Catholic positions on church-state relations, religious freedom,
and the tempering of hierarchical authority by giving the laity
a bigger role in the church.

    Bishop Seduced? During the deliberations, the conservative
and their backers continually sniped at the new spirit shown by
the world's bishops. Holy Office Consulter Antonio Piolanti,
Rector Magnificus of the Lateran University, warned that "there
are rationalist theologians going about Rome seducing innocent
foreign bishops," and ominously told one of his classes:
"Remember, the Pope can be deposed if he falls into heresy." In
the preparatory stage, Cardinal Ottaviani had rejected any help
from the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. Said an
Ottaviani aide: "We don't need you. We judge you." Rome's right-
wing priests joined in with frequent attacks on the direction
of the council.

    But at the end of the council session, Pope John was
obviously pleased; the council, he said, enabled him "to
hear the voice of the whole Catholic world." To make sure that
the next session would go faster, he set up a new secretariat
under his Secretary of State Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, to carry
on council deliberations until the council fathers reconvene on
Sept. 8. To each bishop he arranged to send all proposals during
the recess, in a sort of continuous council by mail order. As
for the disagreements that the council had produced, John
dismissed them by saying, "We're not friars singing in a choir."

Pope John: Intuitive Being
    Though Pope John has proved a happy surprise to both the
Catholic Church and the world, his life is full of signposts
that clearly mark his life and growth. He is an intuitive being
who can pierce to the heart of a matter without taking the
circuitous route of deeper and more discursive minds. The
rhythmic natural influences of his first years on the farm at
Sotto il Monte formed him for all time. A few weeks ago, asked by
some bishops what he wanted to do after the council, John
replied: "Spend a day tilling the fields with my brothers."
Neither an intellectual nor a highly trained theologian, he does
not think in concepts but in terms of fundamental human
experiences. In a varied and unusual career, he has absorbed and
synthesized these experiences to an extraordinary degree.

    Unlike most Popes, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli has spent most
of his life living away from the restrictive influences of Rome,
He has come to respect and be respected by people of many
beliefs. After a year of teaching patrology (the study of early
church fathers) at the Pontifical Lateran Seminary in Rome as
a young priest, he was removed because the Romani did not
consider him quite safe -- he was proposing such unthinkable
ideas as that mixed marriages might be allowed in certain
circumstances. He languished as a letter copier in the Oriental
Congregation until the Holy See discovered that it needed an
apostolic visitor to remote Bulgaria (1925-34). From there he
went for ten years to 98%-Moslem Turkey, and was transferred
from exile to troubled France near the end of World War II only
because the Holy See did not want to spare a top man for that
messy post. But the French were charmed by Roncalli's humility
and abilities as a raconteur -- as well as by his reputation as
"a heavy fork" -- and in 1953 Pius XII gave him a red hat and
the metropolitan see of Venice.

    Everywhere, John has always made a point of meeting and
fraternizing with non-Catholics and "anyone who does not call
himself a Christian but who really is so because he does good."
While in Turkey, John helped rescue and provide for Jews
escaping from Nazi Germany, and in France after the war he
recoiled in horror when he saw films of Jewish bodies piled high
at Buchenwald and Auschwitz: "How can this be? The mystical body
of Christ!" When a group of Jews visited him after he became
Pope he walked up to them and simply repeated the Biblical
greeting, "I am Joseph, your brother."

    Host to Rulers. In the papacy, John asked to be known not
as a diplomatic, political or learned Pope, but as "the good
shepherd defending truth and goodness." He sailed out of the
Vatican -- to orphanages, jails, schools, churches -- 139 times.
He dispensed with such customs as that of barring visitors from
St. Peter's dome while the Pope is walking in the garden below.
Said John: "Why shouldn't they look? I'm not doing anything
scandalous." He pronounced himself embarrassed at being
addressed as "Holiness" or "Holy Father," and admitted that he
could not get used to thinking of himself in the plural. "Don't
interrupt me -- I mean us!' he once joked. He even granted a
papal audience to a traveling circus, and fondly patted a lion
cub named Dolly. "You must behave here, " ordered John. "We are
used only to the calm lion of St. Mark."

    John welcomed more rulers (32) than any other pope, and
received some historic papal guests: the first Greek Orthodox
sovereign to visit the Pope since the days of the last Byzantine
emperor, the first Archbishop of Canterbury since the 14th
century, the first chief prelate of the U.S. Episcopal Church,
the first Moderator of the Scottish Kirk, the first Shinto high
priest. When Jacqueline Kennedy came to visit, John asked his
secretary how to address her. Replied the secretary: "'Mrs.
Kennedy,' or just 'Madame,' since she is of French origin and
has lived in France." Waiting in his private library. the Pope
mumbled: "Mrs. Kennedy, Madame; Madame, Mrs. Kennedy." Then the
doors opened on the U.S. First Lady and he stood up, extended
his arms and cried: "Jacqueline!"

    The Pope's frequent pleas for peace are more sympathetic
and convincing than those of any of his predecessors as he has
urged nations to "hear the anguished cry which from every part
of the earth, from the  young innocents to the old, rises toward
heaven: 'Peace! Peace!'" Even Nikita Khrushchev was moved. He
praised the Pope's pleas for peace, sent him a greeting on his
80th birthday. Many in the Vatican thought the Pope should
ignore it, but John sat down and wrote a reply: "Thank you for
the thought. And I will pray for the people of Russia."

Christianity: "An Irrelevancy"?
    Pope John's view of today's world owes little to the long-
cherished Augustinian conception of it as divided into the City
of God and the City of Man. To John, the church is not an
exclusive club with its own narrow rules but a mother who must
follow man into the mud as well as the sky. "It is the church
that must bring Christ to the world," he said in a recent radio
message. That is a never-ending task, to be attempted at a time
when the world presents far more formidable obstacles to
Christianity than the paganism of the Greeks and Romans ever
did.

    The great majority of Protestant and Catholic clergymen and
theologians -- as well as many non-Christians -- agree that
Christianity is much stronger today than it was when World War
II ended. Their reason is not the postwar "religious revival"
(which many of them distrust as superficial) or the numerical
strength of Christianity. It is that the Christian Church has
finally recognized and faced the problems that have cut off much
of its communication with the modern world. Says Notre Dame's
President Theodore Hesburgh: "We better understand the job that
is before us. The challenge is to make religion relevant to real
life."

    Melting Together. Christianity can justly claim to have
relevance to impart. It offers a unified view of the world that
has attracted men for centuries, and answers questions of love,
life and death as few other religions do. Says Theologian
Vorgrimler, "Real religion requires that God come close to man
-- and there Christianity has the most radical answers, by
teaching that God has become man himself. This is a melting
together of God and the world." German Marxist Philosopher Ernst
Bloch admits: "Christianity is still a light shining in the
darkness, and the light is stronger now."

    Yet many Christians believe, with Catholic University's
Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, that in practice "religion is just
an irrelevancy in the lives of many people -- the great
majority." Gloomy Christian theologians are fond of speaking of
a post-Christian age -- the Christian Church estranged from
modern society. "We need a theology of the 20th, or even the
21st century," says Dominican Dominique Dubarle, professor at
the Institut Catholique de Paris.

     Modern man's world offers alluring alternatives to the
Christian way of life. He is captivated by his own technical and
scientific accomplishments, devoted to the enjoyment of his
plentiful goods, self-sufficiently distrustful of the
supernatural. "The greatest enemy of Christianity," says
Philosopher Mortimer Adler, "is man's self-confidence. The more
power he has, the less religious he becomes." Much of the power
has been given to him by science, which has made its launching
pads and atomic reactors the age's equivalent of medieval
cathedrals.

    Theology of Space. Christian theologians insist that there
is no basic conflict between religion and science -- and a lot
of scientists agree. They are convinced that if the Christian
faith managed to assimilate Darwin there are few other
scientific discoveries it cannot handle. Science's function is
to describe the nature and phenomena of life -- and leave the
description of its purpose to religion. Says the University of
California's Nobel-prizewinning Chemist Willard Libby: "Science
and religion are not in conflict, nor are they in full
cooperation. They are fulfilling very different needs."

    In conflict or not, science is clearly something that the
Christian faith must deal with more knowingly. While vastly
expanding man's horizons, science has lowered man in the scale
of existence and tacitly called into question the Christian
teaching of his unique relationship with God. "Scientific
history," says Oxford's Regius Professor of Modern History Hugh
Trevor-Roper, "has succeeded in removing man from the center of
the universe." More than anything else, a sort of messianic
confidence in science's ability to lead man into the future is
at the core of a widespread skepticism about religion -- a
skepticism that would reduce Christianity to the level of a mere
system of ethics.

    Moreover, many scientists believe that scientific advances
in years to come -- the creation of real life in laboratories,
the control of heredity -- will challenge some basic Christian
principles. If life is discovered on another planet, what
relationship will it have with Christ? Harvard Astronomer Harlow
Shapley believes that in the universe there are at least 100
million earthlike planets suitable for life. Christian
theologians -- who hold that Christ came only to redeem men on
earth -- have already begun to grapple with this problem, but
Philosopher Adler feels that they have not fully grasped its
import. "What Christianity needs today," he says, "is a theology
of outer space."

    Accommodation? Christianity still has a lot of earthly
problems to dispose of first, but it is at least finding new
approached to them. Though Christianity has suffered severe
persecutions at Communist hands, many Christian theologians now
feel that an accommodation with Communism is possible and
desireable. Such an accommodation, in their view, would oppose
atheistic materialism and Communism's blatant infringements upon
human dignity, but would accept Communism's collectivism as not
basically in conflict with Christian teaching. Says Princeton
Theological Seminary Professor Hugh Kerr: "From a professional,
theological view, this accommodation is possible."

    Pope John, though he has roundly condemned "the mistakes,
greed and violence" of the Soviet rulers, is known to feel that
the 1962 brand of Communism is no worse than a lot of other
problems the church has faced in the past. The Vatican's new
attitude has already resulted in preliminary negotiations to
open diplomatic relations with some Communists countries. In
order to get Soviet permission for Russian Orthodox observers
to attend the Vatican Council, the Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity assured the Russian patriarchate that no anti-
Communist statements would be made at the council.

    Consecrated Materialism. To most Christian theologians,
Communism is less of a threat than the philosophy of which it
is the highest embodiment: materialism. "The aggressive virtues
of ambition, success, prestige are getting ahead of the
Christian virtues of the Beatitudes," says Samuel Miller, dean
of Harvard's Divinity School. But materialism is at least as old
as the Biblical dance around the golden calf, and more and more
theologians believe that the way to combat it is to "consecrate"
it.

    Jesuit Theologian Avery Dulles says that "materialism could
almost be reckoned as an asset. People, if they are more
prosperous, have more openness, which is more favorable for the
apostolate." Philosopher-Missionary Albert Schweitzer has long
believed that materialism and spirituality are not mutually
exclusive. "Beyond materialism it is often possible to find
great spiritual forces at work," he said some years ago. In U.S.
aid to underdeveloped countries, the Peace Corps, huge U.S.
charitable foundations and the free education of foreign
students, theologians see the idealistic uses to which
prosperity can be put.

    The good life, however, often muffles the hard impact of
the Christian message, and church leaders complain that
Christians frequently make their churches into something
resembling comfortable and conformist country clubs. Says Dr.
Jaroslav Pellikan of Yale Divinity School: "They're busy, busy,
busy with church activities in which you don't even hear about
God." Christianity is also menaced, believes the World Council
of Churches' Willem Visser 't Hooft, by syncretism: a general
religiosity that mixes all religions -- Islam, Judaism, Hinduism
-- "into an unholy Irish stew." If one believes in revelations
through Christ, it is impossible to become part of a religious
cocktail where the ingredients get lost."

    For all his prosperity and technical progress, modern man
is absorbed more and more in a society that makes less and less
sense to him. Frequently, his life has no meaning, no sense of
direction or fulfillment. Yet the Christian Church often
addresses itself to a vague "peace of mind," failing to
understand the tension and anxiety of a changing world and the
need to say something cogent about them. "Without the aid of
religion, the world is like the prodigal son going off and
getting more and more weary and miserable," says English Jesuit
Martin D'Arcy. "I believe man is in extremity. There is
loneliness and death everywhere, and here is this life-giving
philosophy which we must bring to them."

    That challenge sums up the duty of the Christian faith to
forget the quarrels of the past and work at presenting the
ancient Christian message of redemption in a clearer and more
modern light. No one believes that the Christian churches will
join together in this century. But Pope John's actions have
begun a reconciliation that is bound to make the Christian
message a more unified and vital force. It is already obvious
in the unusual sight of Protestant pastors and Catholic priests
exchanging pulpits in Holland, of Catholic priests at the
consecration of Episcopal bishops in Dallas and Boston, of a
gathering of 150 priests and minsters in St. Louis to discuss
reform and reunion. It was most dramatically illustrated by the
honored places held at the Ecumenical Council by non-Catholic
observers who only recently were regarded by their hosts as
heretics and schismatics.

    Always an Optimist. To a Christianity deeply bothered by
the world's condition, Pope John XXIII has brought something
more than a simple feeling of good will: a renewed sense of the
optimism at the heart of the Christian message, "We are much too
pessimistic and not joyful enough," complains Swiss Theologian
Karl Barth, who calls for a "theology of freedom that looks
ahead and strives forward" to suit the nearly apocalyptic
seriousness of our time." Says Pope John: "Men have come and
gone, but I always remained an optimist, because that is my
nature, even when I hear near me deep concern over the fate of
mankind."

    To the world at large, John has given what neither science
nor diplomat can provide: a sense of its unity as the human
family. That sense is at the core of the Christian tradition,
whose God lives in history and invites the family of man to help
him form it. If the invitation goes begging in a world besieged
by tension and seduced by its own accomplishments, Christianity
must share the blame. Pope John believes that man should be saved
where he is, not where he ought to be. By bringing Christianity
to a new conformation with the world and salving the wounds that
have torn it for centuries, the Pope has helped vastly to
recapture the Christian sense of family.

    For in a time of apocalyptic seriousness, man has realized
more than ever that he does not live by bread alone.

    Nor by guns.