Switzerland's Karl Barth, the greatest living Protestant theologian, could hardly be accused of being soft on Rome. "I cannot hear the voice of the Good Shepherd as coming from this Chair of Peter," he once said. But in the current issue of the quarterly Ecumenical Review, published by the World Council of Churches, Theologian Barth declares that Protestantism is in danger of being overtaken by the pervasive changes that are in process in Roman Catholicism, as evidenced by the Vatican Council (which is scheduled to reconvene Sept. 29).
Barth argues that Protestants have paid too much attention to the "conversational...