Last year, I had three flights to Europe-one to visit our Irish seminarians, and two for the Council. Air is the fastest modern mode of travel, but it leaves you with a montage of airports, seatbelts, and endless views of water and/or clouds. This time, I would cross the Atlantic in leisure, the way the Council Fathers went to the First Vatican in 1869-by ship.

I might have saved my time! Despite good company and good food, the five-day trip was dreary and overcast, with enough rain to keep everybody out of deck chairs, and enough roll-and-pitch to keep many out of the dining rooms, too. Our party of four had no particular problem on that score, but even Mass was difficult because the contents of the Chalice were unsteady. And once the Missal moved of its own accord from the epistle to the Gospel side-without a server! This is carrying liturgical participation pretty far, when even the Missal gets into the action.

Dr. Paul Tillich was the brightest light of the voyage. This eminent Protestant theologian, accompanied by his wife, was going to Zurich to deliver some lectures. We met at table, and were invited to meet again with them for more discussion on the Council. Then the professor and Mrs. Tillich accepted our invitation (Bishop Robert Tracy and I) to pursue our thoughts still further. I loaned him a copy of Hans Kueng’s latest book, “THE COUNCIL IN ACTION” which, with my underlining and marginal notes, provided the basis of our talks.

It would not be proper to report our conversations as a piece of correspondence, but it is quite in order to say that Dr. Tillich’s great admiration for Pope John has opened up a new respect for the Church’s determination to meet the demands of modern society. Like us, he shares a distrust for foggy concepts-words and ideas should be defined so that discussion can proceed fruitfully. The Church-“faith-spirit” all came in for scrutiny and dissection, the central problem of authority, of course, was discussed; this is at the heart of so much Catholic-Protestant tension.

Dr. Tillich has walked the difficult path between philosophy and theology for many years, first in pre-Hitler Germany, then at Union Theological Seminary in New York, later Harvard, and then the University of Chicago. He is a pupil of the great Protestant biblical scholar, Harnack; a teacher who has tried to bridge the gap between things and their terms; and a pioneer who has breathed much fresh air into Protestant religious discussion in the United States. Now he is watching the Council to see what direction the Catholic aggiornamento takes. In Paris, on learning of Pope Paul’s forward steps in regard to the Council he said devoutly-“May God bless them!” And we parted, with a pledge of mutual prayer.

PARIS, FRANCE-The Commission of the Liturgy has been called to Rome in advance of the opening date, but we still have time to observe a little of France and Germany. In Paris, the gigantic efforts of the late Cardinal Suhard seem to have repaired some of the gap between the clergy and the laity. DuGaulie, the Algerians,the Common Market, and the amazing diplomatics of South Vietnam are on everyone’s lips. I managed to bring up mention of Georgia’s chickens each time the Common Market was mentioned. The French reaction was skeptical as it was when I explained that Atlanta did not use police dogs and fire hoses on our citizens, and that our Catholic schools and hospitals were integrated without trouble. It is tragic what one headline or news photo can do to poison our images of each other.

Chartres, the diocese that goes back to the third century, and whose wonderful Cathedral goes back to the twelfth, has been the inspiration of such diverse people as Henry Adams, our own Yankee observer, and the thousands of Catholic youth who walk there from all over France. To use a cliché, it is a poem in stone, but such stone as rises up to scrape at heaven, and encloses stained glass that brings heaven down to earth. Here are the brilliant, warm-hued glass windows that tell of the tree of Jesse (the genealogy of Mary), and the Passion of Christ. For an obscure reason, my favorite item at Chartres has always been the Judgment scene in stone over one of the entrances, where the archangel holds the scales of justice, and an impish devil tips the scales against the poor culprit in the dock.

At Rome, we will be with some of the keen French bishops like the auxiliary of Paris, whose parish is almost entirely under Communist influence, and another whose excellent Latin used to explode into fireworks French when the Liturgy Commission meetings grew heated. France, “the eldest daughter of the Church,” wanders in and out of the old home with saints like the Cure d’Ars, St. Therese, St. Louis, and St. Vincent de Paul; and rebels like Renan and Loisey, the Gallicans and the Ajansenists. The Church here has much to teach us, and it has much to learn form us.

TRIER, GERMANY-In Germany it is different. There is a warmth, a homeliness, a grasp of the faith that has survived the Kulturkampf of Bismark, the postures of Kaiser Wilhelm, and the mental aberrations of Adolph Hitler. Yesterday we visited the Institute of Liturgy in Trier, where Msgr. Wagner presides-a dynamic center of publications, research and influence on the worship of God by the German people. And today, we visited the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach where Father Guardini and Abbot Heerswiggen began the great liturgical renewal of our times. These names, with Father Jungmann, S.J., give Germany the rightful claim to first among the nations to plant the seeds that have blossomed in Pope John’s AGGIORNAMENTO.

This morning, in the town of Ida-Oberstein, I offered Sunday Mass for the people of Sts. Peter and Paul parish. It was a MISSA COMMUNIS, halfway between a Low Mass and a High Mass. The congregation sang German hymns at the entrance, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Communion, and replied to my words in Latin, while the parish priest read almost the entire Mass from the pulpit in German. But few men received Holy Communion, and only a handful of women. When the German spirit of external participation is merged with the American spirit of sacramental participation, we will have what the Church wants, people, with Christ as our head, offering worship to the Heavenly Father, the holy people of God, marked by baptism, at work at worship. I tried to sum up these thoughts in my sermon which Pastor Adams carefully translated into German.

ATHENS, GEORGIA-Meanwhile, I cannot resist a story that I kept form the groundbreaking ceremonies of the new St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens (not Greece, but Georgia). It was the day before I left for the Council.

A young lad of eight had watched the ceremony carefully, and was much impressed. First, the archbishop took a shovel full of soil, then the sisters, then the Board of Advisors. When he returned home, he was questioned as to his whereabouts, He explained with wide-eyed wonder. “I was out there watching all those people on the hill. They were digging for a church-but they couldn’t find any!”

We are, in the Second Vatican Council, digging for a solution. May our future be more promising.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta