Catholic to Give First Sunday Sermon As Price Broadens Use of Mem Church

The Rev. John Courtney Murray, S.J., will deliver the sermon in Memorial Church this Sunday. It will be the first time in the 35-year history of the church that a Roman Catholic has preached at a Sunday service during the regular academic year.

The Rev. Charles Price, Minister to the University, said yesterday that he hoped Murray's sermon would not be an isolated instance of a Roman Catholic preaching at Memorial Church. Price said he hoped to see a gradual increase of Catholic participation in Mem Church.

"To the extent that Roman Catholics can cooperate in a non--denominational ecumenical enterprise," Price explained, "they must be included in our work."

Price emphasized that worship at Mem Church has been and will remain non-denominational. "People do not come here to worship as Episcopaleons of Presbyterians," he said. "Worship here is non-partisan."

Murray will not conduct a Catholic service Sunday, Price noted. "I like to think of Mem Church as a place where a man can preach with no consciousness of the denominational tradition out of which he comes," he added.

There is plenty of room for representation of denominational points of view in panels and discussions of various kinds, Price said. Although Mem Church has not sponsored many of these activities in the past, he indicated this might change.

Price called the opening up of Mem Church partly "an expression of the increasing move at Harvard to bring Roman Catholic scholarship into fruitful exchange with Protestant theological thought."

That exchange is already in full swing at the Divinity School, he said. The establishment of the first chair of Catholic theological studies in 1958 and the ecumenism of the Catholic Church after the Vatican Council have resulted in a sharp increase of Catholic students and Catholic studies.

It is the Vatican Council which has made Murray's appearance in Mem Church possible. Before the Council's endorsement of ecumenism, the prevailing custom of Roman Catholics was not to take part in services in Protestant churches, Price said.

Once upon a Time

At one time, Harvard's Protestant tradition would have prevented Catholics from preaching in Mem Church, but not in recent times, Price said. He responded to Catholic ecumenism almost immediately by inviting Catholics to participate in summer services and week-day services over the past two or three years.

The title of Murray's sermon is "Age of Renewal." Price said he will speak about the Vatican's Council impetus to renew the Christian church at large. Murray, a professor of theology at Woodstock College, was a prominent participant in the Ecumenical Council Vatican II.