FINDING TIME TO DIE

One of those who came to Caux that summer was Dr Bernardus Kaelin, who had from 1947 till the previous year been Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order. He had come because during the previous winter he had seen the effect of Hoffnung in a number of Catholic schools in Switzerland. After several days he asked to be allowed to speak and issued his speech to the press. 'Moral Re-Armament', he began, 'can win all men because its standards are universally valid. It is not a religion nor a substitute for religion. It is not a sect. It has four mighty pillars upon which human living must be based. Every man must accept these ideas if he is honest with himself.'

Abbot Kaelin went on to say that 'Benedict also wants the four standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love' and 'enjoins the abbot and the monk really to shape their lives according to the guidance of God'. 'There are so many people who are very familiar with religion, but for whom it is unemployed capital,' he added. 'That is why it is such a great satisfaction to me that so many people in Moral Re-Armament live out their ideology seriously and consistently...During the serious world situation of the fifth and sixth centuries, Benedict taught through his life and his rule what nations must do in order to become and remain sound. So, by the eleventh century, he had become a founder of Western civilization. I mention this fact to encourage Moral Re-Armament today...It is a new way designed to forestall a false ideology.'3

Buchman having tea with Professor BH Streeter

Buchman warmed greatly to the Abbot's personality and vision. He saw in him many of the qualities he had loved in B. H. Streeter twenty-five years before. 'He is a great-hearted prelate, forthright and a fighter,' he wrote to Father Ling.4 Kaelin accompanied him to St Gallen when the Cantonal Government gave a dinner reception for him there in October, and later joined Buchman in Italy, after the ancestral town of the Buchmans, Bischofszell, had given Buchman a similar welcome.

With the exception of three weeks at Caux over Christmas, Buchman spent the next four months in Italy. He took the plays he had been using in Switzerland, Howard's The Hurricane and The Ladder, together with the film Men of Brazil, to Milan. The response was great, not least in the suburb of Sesto San Giovanni. Abbot Kaelin, like Streeter long before, was delighted at being received in the homes of Communist workers - old friends from previous Moral Re-Armament visits - and having the fresh joy of bringing individuals back to God and the Church. Receiving over Christmas a caution from the Holy Office he obediently stopped speaking in public about Moral Re-Armament, but in November travelled to Rome to tell his many friends, among them Cardinals Tisserant and Bea, of his experiences.

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Photo: Buchman having tea with Professor BH Streeter.
©Richard N. Haile FIBP FRPS/MRA Productions