By Mary Lackie

Bishops and their people should try to seek divine truth in the light of the changing circumstances of modern life, Methodist Bishop William R. Cannon said.

The former dean of Candler School of Theology at Emory University discussed the role of the bishop, ecumenical changes, and his friendship with Archbishop Hallinan during an interview with the Bulletin last week.

Bishop Cannon was recently elected a bishop of the United Methodist Church at the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference. Bishop Cannon, the first bachelor elected a bishop in the jurisdiction since 1808, has been assigned to the Raleigh, NC area. He will leave Atlanta at the end of the month.

The 52-year-old theologian discussed his views of the bishop as servant, as one who must try to seek the needs of the people and meet those needs. Bishop Cannon said, “The office should not be one of circumstance and pomp, where people try to conform to the will of the bishop. But, the bishop and people alike should try to seek divine truth in the light of the circumstances in which we now live.”

“As bishop, I will try to help the preachers with their ministry and seek to be of benefit to the laity. The laity has a strong role in our conferences, an equal role with the clergy. I think this fulfills the conditions of the early Church,” he said.

This summer, Bishop Cannon was assigned by the World Methodist Council as theologian to interpret the United Methodist Church to the Word Council of Churches meeting in Uppsala, Sweden. He said, “The strength of the WCC meeting was that it addressed itself to world problems.”

While he was dean of Candler School of Theology, Bishop Cannon was named official observer at the fourth and fifth sessions of Vatican II. It was through his active participation in the ecumenical movement that he became friends with Archbishop Hallinan and Leo Cardinal Suenens, archbishop of Malines-Brussels and primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium.

The friendships continued when the leaders returned from the council. “When the Archbishop came home, we invited him to Emory where he gave a report on the sessions of the council. He was a great man because he had a truly Catholic mind. He saw the universal Church and saw it in a universal light,” Bishop Cannon said.

The bishop addressed the first Lay Congress in the Archdiocese of Atlanta at the invitation of Archbishop Hallinan. He noted a change in the ecumenical atmosphere in Atlanta after Vatican II, and attributed it in part to the ‘openness’ of Archbishop Hallinan.

“Before the council, there were social activities between other faiths, but not the deep religious concern where we began to work together on projects in areas of church services, social problems, study and conversation. Now these activities are taking place in all parts of the city,” the bishop said.

Bishop Cannon, who has been called Emory’s ecumenical dean said, “Many of the walls of separation are a result of not knowing one another or one another’s traditions. I have advocated bringing a Catholic seminary to the Emory campus. The benefits would be immeasurable. We would have an exchange on more than one level -- students would benefit from informal dialogues and the two student bodies could share on a more formal level through an exchange of teachers.”

As a leader in the ecumenical movement, Dean Cannon invited Cardinal Suenens to address the Ministers’ Week at Emory University in 1967. Cardinal Suenens was the first high official of the Catholic Church to be awarded an honorary degree by Emory University.

Bishop Cannon commented, “I asked the Cardinal if he would come, and he said he would be glad. Cardinal Suenens’ theology is pastorally oriented, but I would think there is no one in the hierarchy who has a better grasp of the total problems in the Church today. I think he would make a wonderful pope.”

The bishop will return to Europe in September as one of nine Methodist representatives who will participated with nine Roman Catholic representatives on the subject of Christian Unity. He said, “I look forward to seeing Cardinal Suenens while I am in Europe.”

The author of seven books and numerous articles including reports on the session of the Council and ecumenism, Bishop Cannon spent ten summers traveling through Turkey, Greece, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Aegean, to every place mentioned in the New Testament that was visited by the Apostle Paul. The result of his research was the book, “Journeys After St. Paul,” published in 1963.

Bishop Cannon was able to quote with ease earlier encyclicals by Popes Pius IX, X, and XI. “Many of these encyclicals have been modified by later encyclicals which placed a different emphasis in the light of changing times. For example, I do not think many people today would take seriously the encyclical of Pope Pius IX’s ‘Syallabus of Errors.” I think Catholics should not be needlessly disconsolate about the recent encyclical of Pope Paul VI. An encyclical is a pastoral letter, and in time, it may be modified.”