Pro Unione Web Site - Full Text JWG 3rd Report App. I

Index > Interconfessional Dialogues > JWG > Third Official Rep. | CONT. > App. I - III

   INTRODUCTION - select
   APPENDIX I: REPORT ON ACTIVITIES
      (I. THE FAITH AND WORSHIP OF THE CHURCHES) - select
   II. MISSION AND UNITY - select
III. The Laity
   IV. SOCIAL SERVICE AND SERVICE TO HUMANITY - select
   V. NATIONAL AND LOCAL COUNCILS OF CHURCHES - select
   APPENDIX II: COMMON WITNESS AND PROSELYTISM - select
   I. COMMON WITNESS - select
   II. PROSELYTISM AND RELATIONS BETWEEN CHURCHES - select
   CONCLUSION - select
   APPENDIX III: STUDY DOCUMENT ON CATHOLICITY ... - select

  PART ONE - select
  PART TWO - select
  Appendix I - select
  Appendix II - select

Appendix III - select
Appendix IV - select
Appendix V - select
Appendix VI - select
Appendix VII - select

Contributors - select

FULL TEXT

III. THE LAITY

Since the second official report of the Joint Working Group was published, the Third World Congress of the Laity was held in Rome in 1967. Its preparation occasioned several joint consultations and cooperation with a view to giving the Congress as ecumenical a character as possible. The churches and Christian confessions, as well as the World Council of Churches, were invited to send consultants. These were in sufficient numbers to have some influence on the discussions of the Congress. The World Council of Churches was consulted in the planning of the program. One of the closing addresses was entrusted to a consultant and it has already been suggested that in future the Congress might be made into a joint enterprise.

a) Relations between the Division of Ecumenical Action and the Laity Council

When the Laity Council was constituted in Rome in 1967, the Joint Working Group suggested that its partner in the World Council of Churches should be the Division of Ecumenical Action. This proposed collaboration was approved by the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala and by the Laity Council at its first meeting. Several joint consultations followed and the Laity Council sent representatives to meetings of the Committee of the Division of Ecumenical Action.

It is mainly in the field of studies that this collaboration has been developed. The Laity Council was associated with the study "Towards A New Style of Living," drafted in preparation for the Uppsala Assembly, and has also collaborated in the present program of the Division of Ecumenical Action on "Participation in Change," which is a follow-up to the Uppsala Section VI report "Towards New Styles of Living." The Division of Ecumenical Action will likewise be participating in the symposium which the Laity Council is planning on " Dialogue within the Church." Other fields of joint study have still to be explored.

At its meeting in May 1970, the Joint Working Group invited the Division of Ecumenical Action and the Laity Council to look together at the possible areas of ecumenical collaboration between lay people and also at the problems and concerns of young people. The information obtained in this way will be valuable for current studies on possible forms of cooperation between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches.

The Division of Ecumenical Action sent observer consultants to the preparatory meetings planning the Pan-African-Madagascan Laity Congress which is to be held in Yaoundé in August 1971.

b) Women's Ecumenical Work

The establishment of the Laity Council made it possible to put ecumenical cooperation between women on a more permanent basis. In 1968 the small, and more or less unofficial, group formed to continue the work of the 1967 Taizé Conference was replaced by the Women's Ecumenical Liaison Group. This group has a provisional mandate to operate experimentally until 1972. So for it has met three times. One of its decisions has been to undertake a study on "The Image of Woman in the Mass Media."