To follow up on my post of
F, 3-1-19, “The Times, They Are A-Changing,” and Albert Outler’s statement:
“The church has never done the right thing except under pressure from the
world…”
Despite being a Methodist,
church historian and theologian Albert Outler was an invited participant in
Vatican II, the Roman Catholic ecumenical council in the early 1960s, because
he was able to translate obscure Latin documents that were a mystery to others,
and he knew more Catholic church history than anyone else around. [1]
I was having lunch one day
with fellow theologian, David Shipley, then a professor at Methodist
Theological School in Ohio, and we fell to talking about Outler. He had been
one of my professors at Perkins School of Theology at SMU and had been a fellow
PhD candidate with Shipley at Yale.
Shipley said: “It was hard
to like Albert, because he was so smart, and he knew it. One day we were
studying together for exams. He read a whole page of St. Charles Borromeo in
Latin and then closed his eyes and recited it, word for word, off the backs of
his eyeballs.”
The Vatican Council wanted
Outler precisely because he was so smart, in Latin and lots of other languages,
and they didn’t care if he knew it. Besides, he was almost sixty at the time of
the Council, and he had mellowed from his graduate school days.
That Latin ability was one
of the reasons the Vatican Council wanted Outler. It’s hard to change if your
whole theology is based on the idea that you have always been right. Outler was
able to find precedents in church history to allow the RC Church to “change”
while claiming that it was what they believed all along. [2]
The Council was a pivotal event, for John
XXIII declared it was time to “open the window and let in some fresh air.”
Letting in fresh air was
the right thing for the Roman Catholic Church to do, and it was because of
pressure from a changing world. After his participation in that Council and his
life time study of the church, Outler made his statement, because, he realized,
God is not at work in the Bible or the church, but in the world. It is there,
in the world, that God makes the necessary changes. The church’s job is to
respond to the changes God makes in the world. As my friend, Herb Beuoy, always
said, “It’s our business to love people, and God’s business to change them.”
I remember walking by a
bakery in Moline, IL, in early July, several years ago. A beautiful cake was
displayed in the window. It showed a red, white, and blue Bible, open to John
3:16, with the words: “For God so loved the USA…”
Whenever we try to restrict
God’s action, God’s love, to a particular race or nation or gender or religion,
we are the ones on the outside, because God is at work in the whole
world.
The church’s first job is
to find out what God is doing in the world. Our second job is to go with it.
Our third job is to point it out.
God is at work in the world, not in the church. The church's job is to tell what God is doing in the world.
God is at work in the world, not in the church. The church's job is to tell what God is doing in the world.
John Robert McFarland
1] “Ecumenical” didn’t
mean what it generally does today, joining together disparate religions or
denominations, but just the entire Roman Catholic Church, with its various
orders, etc. coming together to decide on “a way forward.”
2] They also wanted Outler
because he was a convivial companion when the theologians met together after
hours at the Vatican’s “Bar Jonah” watering hole. He had lots of great stories
to tell the Catholics in Rome, and lots of great stories to tell about them
when he got home.
Okay, so I promised to
stop writing and preaching. As my YGLF [Young Gal Lutheran Friend], Rebecca
Ninke, says, “You’re really bad at quitting.”
Speaking of my YGLF, her
ten-year-old daughter, Kate Watson, wrote a picture book, called There’s No Wrong Way to Pray. I read it
for Children’s Moment in our worship service a week ago and was immediately besieged
by folks who want to buy copies for kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews
and neighbors. Here is the publisher’s link with all the information about it.
https://www.beamingbooks.com/shop/product/24209/There-No-Wrong-Way-to-Pray
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