The Need for Reform

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Every institution which exists more than one generation has a tradition. The word comes from paradosis, to hand down, to deliver, to pass on. There is nothing wrong with a tradition. The apostolic message falls within that category (2 Thess. 2:15). The harm comes when men pass along the modes, means and methods which they adopted or devised to implement the requirements of apostolic doctrine as being of equal importance and authority with the words of the Spirit.

     When this is done the discoveries of the passing generation become a strait-jacket for the next and the forms and customs which were effective in meeting the needs of yesteryear operate effectively against meeting the needs of the present. A standardized form of speech develops and becomes a familiar jargon, and regardless of the condition or circumstance the same grist must be ground by the creaking theological millwheel.

     It becomes a test of loyalty to attack certain things to prove one's fidelity, and it is likewise considered a matter of expediency to ignore certain contemporary issues that are dangerous to the status quo of the Establishment. The Roman Catholic Church is a good example of an ecclesiastical mammoth bogged down in a swamp of its own creation. But it has some courageous souls who are trying to pry the behemoth out of the primordial ooze.

     Among these is B. L. Wittenbrink, who is permanent secretary of the national Conference of Major Superiors of Men, representing every Catholic religious order. In a recent speech this reverend gentleman assailed the hierarchy for a preoccupation with such questions as shortening or not shortening the skirts of the sisters, while ignoring human needs and injustices. He cited such problems as mental illness, alcoholism and marital infidelity. He declared that the major problem was not lack of obedience to church authority. He said, "The crisis is in communications. Those on top--right to the very top--don't know all things. If they did they'd be God. Those at the bottom don't either. It is essential for the two element--top and bottom--to speak to each other."

     Having grown up in the Churches of Christ we know how to sympathize with our friends who are caught up in the web of red tape identified as Catholicism. In a world groaning beneath heavy burdens, and like a trapped animal snapping and tearing at its own flesh in sheer desperation, we are able to pass by on the other side wholly oblivious of the frightful agonies which affect human personalities.

     We are still reducing men to bulletin-board statistics, counting noses and making glowing reports of factional gains. While thousands are being enslaved by alcohol and dope, while hundreds are being driven relentlessly to suicide, while

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millions are pushed back into the teeming streets of the ghettoes, we meet in air-conditioned comfort and listen to pleasant sermons on the tragic sin of eating in the basement of the meetinghouse, or of allowing a woman to teach Bible stories to a class of little children, or of breaking the loaf before passing it.

     In a world where children are growing up in deprivation, dire poverty and the desperation born of hunger, and already slanted toward a career of criminality and vice, we feel satisfied to allow others to wipe away the filth and sweat and blood, while we fulfill the nobler calling of saving men from a mistaken opinion concerning the millennium or instrumental music. We are fulminating about the fatuous, parroting party platitudes and bombarding a sick and sad world with sheer bombast.

     Let us not sneer at the Catholic sect because of its traditions. Let us not laugh at its struggle to extricate itself from its medieval ties. Rather let us pray that God may raise up reformers among us with the bravery of some of those within the Roman pale. If we do not we may see Rome become free while Jerusalem remains bound and enslaved.