DEBATE ON THE CHURCH
decisions reached, this session will undoubtedly prove the most productive to date. The first item on the agenda is the completion of discussion on the document dealing with the nature, role and organisation of the Church. In his Monday address, the Pope said that this document was the most important one beifore the Fathers. "The hour has sounded in history", he said, "when the Church which expresses herself in us and front us receives structure and life must say of herself what Christ intended and willed her to be." It is now very clear that the Pope will not intervene in the Council's work and will leave it to the bishops themselves to make its decisions.
For the first time, representatives of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople are attending the Council as Observers.
They are the Archimandrite Rodopoulos, the Archpriest Romanidis, and the personal representative of the Patriarch, the Arohimandrite Andre Scrima, Rector of the Greek Orthodox Church in Rome.
They heard the Pope renew his appeal to the separated brethren and the deeply felt emotional passage in which he declared his love and concern for "Churches that are so far and yet so close to us."
They were, he said, "Churches for whom our heart is filled with longing. Churches who create the nostalgia of our sleepless nights. Churches of our tears and of our longing to do you the honour by our embrace in the sincere love of Christ."
Tuesday morning . saw the Fathers getting down briskly to business. They completed discussions on the seventh chapter of the Schema on the Church, a chapter which deals with the eschatological character of our vocation and of our relations with the saints in heaven.
It is chiefly concerned with what are called in theology the novissima, or last things death, judgment, heaven, hell and purgatory.
Introducing the chapter, Cardinal Browne of the Roman Curia, said it had been inserted at the express wish of Pope John. Of the 11 speakers, most accepted the chapter with reservations, though the first speaker, Cardinal Ruffini, attacked it as scripturally Madequate and incomplete. Abbot Butler of Downside criticised its lack of references to the Holy Spirit. There was, he said, only one mention of the third person of the Blessed Trinity in the chapter and this reference was calamitous since it suggested that, while worship was due to the Father and the Son, it was not due to the Holy Spirit.
He asked that the chapter should be modified to avoid this. and he also said that it treated inadequately of the mystical body and that this should be clarified.