One important issue that confronts the third Session of the Vatican Council is the question of religious freedom. With the recent publication of a number of the speeches made at the second Session we are able to follow something of the lines along which the discussion is likely to proceed, and to understand something of the issues at stake, issues of great significance to the ecumenical movement. The matter arises in fact from the Schema on ecumenism with which the Council was concerned at the end of the second Session. That Schema comprised five chapters—on the principles of Catholic ecumenism, on the practical applications of ecumenism, on the separated Christians, on the Jews, and on religious liberty. Bishop Schmedt of Bruges introducing the fifth chapter expressed his hope that ‘it will be possible to complete the discussion and the approbation of this very brief, but very important decree before the end of this second session’. ‘The whole world’ he said ‘is waiting for this decree. The voice of the Church on religious liberty is being waited for in universities, in national and international organisations, in Christian and non-Christian communities, in the newspapers and in public opinion— and it is being waited for with urgent expectation’. His hope was not in fact fulfilled, and though this was to many disappointing it is surely better that in so difficult and controverted a matter the final decisions should be seen to have emerged from slow and mature reflection rather than by what might have appeared a snap-decision reached under the pressure of a guillotine procedure.

The importance of the decree to the ecumenical movement was well put by Pete Le Guillou, O.P., in a conference given at Rome at the time of the discussions.

The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dead. It was buried in January of this year, just ten years old. For its epitaph some would write ‘A Great Experiment That Failed’; others, nearer the truth, ‘The Unwanted Partnership.’

Economically the Federation was a great success. Each of the constituent territories—Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland— benefited much in its own way. Southern Rhodesia enjoyed a remarkable boom, years of extraordinary expansion in industry, commerce and immigrant population, the most striking memorial of which is the present skyline of Salisbury with its soaring buildings. In Northern Rhodesia too there was rapid development and the Copper Belt lived through years of fantastic prosperity. Even Nyasaland, the poor relation, experienced substantial if less spectacular gain. Now all that is over.

Expansion has given way to contraction. This is especially marked in Southern Rhodesia, which is now suffering from an economic recession, unemployment, shortage of overseas investment and a large exodus of valuable white settlers. Worse still, there is great political uncertainty and civil unrest breaking out intermittendy into violence, which occasions more and more Draconian laws.

There are two ways of reinstituting the diaconate: having full-time deacons without any other occupation and having part-time ones whose main job is something else. Gradations between the two are also possible. The full-time deacon may, if necessary, do a certain amount of other work, whereas the part-time one may fulfil his duties say just in the mornings, or only in his spare time (evenings or weekends). Neither type, however, would be satisfactory by itself. There is a danger that the part-time deacon would lack the necessary firmness of purpose without the example of a full-time one, and that his attitude to the work could degenerate into a take-it-or-leave-it casualness. On the other hand, the church would be unable to manage with full-time deacons only, for economic reasons. It would be impossible to supply them to small mission stations, to the many churches in Latin America which lack a priest, or to the small diaspora areas on the continent. In these cases the only feasible thing is to have a local man as part-time deacon. A full-time one has to be guaranteed an income, while someone working part-time in an honorary capacity would compensate for this outlay, as in his case there would simply be the cost of his training. As part-time deacons men would be considered whose occupations were readily compatible with this work: teachers, social workers, lay preachers who give religious instruction at schools, etc. But the choice of part-time deacons should not be limited to men of these professions. There are men in every walk of life who are suitable for this work. Now that the worker-priests have been suppressed, could not the church make use of the worker-deacon, as a representative of the hierarchy in the world of labour