Ecumenical Leader to Retire
Diocesan Press Service. May 6, 1964 [XXI-11]
Dr. Roswell P. Barnes, pioneer of the ecumenical movement in the United States, announced his retirement as executive secretary of the World Council of Churches on April 22 at the United States conference for the WCC, held at Buck Hill Falls, Pa. A heart condition, he said, made the decision necessary.
In his speech Dr. Barnes outlined the handicaps faced by American churches in trying to carry the gospel to foreign countries, and traced the areas in which the ecumenical movement could progress.
Dr. Barnes, who will be 63 in July, is regarded as one of America's leading Church statesmen. He has been identified with the ecumenical movement since his student days, and has held the top U.S. staff position in the WCC since 1954.
He said that relations between the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches have developed fruitfully, without solving doctrinal problems however. Dr. Barnes attributed part of the new vigor of ecumenical movement to the "emergence of Roman Catholic friends who share its purpose." He warned that this new enthusiasm among Catholics would soon cool "if it is frustrated or inhibited by too strict protocol, and is too narrowly channeled into specialized agencies or commissions."
Dr. Barnes also said that it was necessary for the churches to influence the nation in order to avoid the hazards involved in the use of America's tremendous power.
He warned the West that it had lost moral prestige because it had used its scientific knowledge for destruction in two wars and that various questions about its values were being raised." He went on: "Why, with our high standard of living, are we so unhappy?... We profess to respect human beings yet we have a major national problem in trying to achieve equal rights for people of a minority race."