Canterbury and Rome

Extract

A deep sense of responsibility urged us to write in our July issue some of the thoughts that filled our soul on the eve of the Lambeth Conference. We were of those who could see, and even profess to see a unique event in the assembly of two hundred and fifty Bishops in communion with the Sees of Canterbury and York. These Bishops, belonging to the two great English-speaking nations, could not discuss after-war problems in the spiritual sphere without wielding a power for good, which, like every other power, might be turned to evil even when used with good intent. It was part of their disarming truthfulness frankly to confess that they had no mandate even from their own Church to say the last word on any subject of spiritual reconstruction. This profession of self-diffidence did not discredit them in our eyes. Rather did it put them apart from that all too numerous group of spiritual reconstructionists whose self-confidence is their chief power for evil. We were therefore ready to listen to whatever issued from the counsels of a group of men whose self-diffidence recalled the prophetic words, “I am not the Christ.”