In debates on the Orphan Home issue brother Guy N. Woods has argued that the Orphan Home is merely "the home restored" to the children who have lost their natural homes, and that the board of directors stand "en loco parentis" (in place of the parents), or "equivalent" to the parents. Since the directors stand in place of the parents and equivalent to them, should they not have the responsibilities of the parents, i. e., caring for their own?

In a recent letter sent to the church in Harrison from the Medina Children's Home, Medina, Texas, we are informed of the NEW ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION of that home. The boards of directors of that home are twenty-seven men of the state of Texas. These twenty-seven men are said to be the equivalent of the parents of the children of this home, as per Woods argument. But the letter states that there are only fifty-seven boys and girls in the home. Simple arithmetic shows this is scarcely more than two children per board member. Is each of those directors financially unable to care for two children? Many brethren are caring for three, four, five or six children, and that without asking for "fifth Sunday" contributions from churches across the land. When twenty-seven fathers cannot care for fifty-seven children the condition is desperate. I am not personally acquainted with any of the board of directors of the Medina Home, but I doubt that any of them is desperate, unless it be their desperate need of scriptural authority for church support of the Orphan Homes.

ROMAN CATHOLIC ECUMENISM

The archbishop of Cuenca, Ecuador, has excommunicated by public order all Roman Catholics who were sending their children to the Lutheran school . . .. Discussions over more freedom for Protestants in Spain have been stymied by the insistence of priests the Protestants must still be barred from making converts. Bishop Pedro Cantero Cuadrado, known as a liberal, has warned that "Spain is neither mentally nor psychologically prepared for the exercise of religious liberty to the extent regarded as normal and even indispendable in other countries." . . .. "The Roman Catholic Church would be gravely misunderstood if it should be concluded that her present ecumenical adventuresomeness and openness meant that she was prepared to re-examine any of her fixed dogmatic positions. What the Church is prepared to do is to take the responsibility for a more imaginative and contemporary presentation of fixed positions." -- Augustin Cardinal Bea, president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, at Harvard University, March 1963. (The above selections come via CHURCH AND STATE, December, 1963.)

Truth Magazine VIII: 11, p. 1a August 1964