Rabbi, Catholic Scholar Debate Role of Church in Secular Age at Catholic School

An American rabbi and one of Europe’s leading young Catholic scholars engaged in a dialogue on the role of religion in a secular age at the St. Meinrad School of Theology here this week. The participants are Dr. Arthur Hertzberg, lecturer in history at Columbia University and Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Englewood, N.J., and Father Johannes Baptist Metz, Professor of Fundamental Theology and Dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Muenster. Father Metz came to the United States to take part in the colloquium which is sponsored by the St. Meinrad School and the American Jewish Committee. It began on March 24 and closed today.

Rabbi Hertzberg and Father Metz agreed that religion has a definite role to play in a secularized, pluralistic world. Rabbi Hertzberg said that “if God is larger than church or synagogue, then something of what He wants is present in secular ideologies.” Father Metz declared that “while the technological planners work on one level” to achieve peace, social justice and protection for the oppressed, “the role of the church is to act as a responsible critic.”