October 18, 2000

In the forest shrine, the meat of two rams and a goat cook in great cauldrons suspended from wooden frames. Cloth belts stained with the blood of these sacrificial animals hang from the trees. Higher up, the branches are festooned with votive offerings—items of clothing brought by people who claim to have been cured during earlier ritual sacrifices. This is a scene not from the distant European past but from Russia’s Mari El Republic today. Located along the Volga River some 400 miles east of Moscow, Mari El has solid indigenous populations of Muslims and Buddhists.

During the early 1950s, the Century’s editors could hardly be classified as strategists in the war for civil rights, but they tried their hand at analysis and expressed sympathetic support for both the commanders and the ground troops. As Supreme Court decisions moved toward desegregation, editors urged “Christian forces” to assume their responsibility in assuring a peaceful transition toward compliance. They noted that “the court wisely postponed” any directive as to how and when segregation must be completely ended in the southern states.

The Protestant responses to the “Declaration on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church” recently issued by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Office for the Doctrine of the Faith (ODF) have been mostly pained surprise, sometimes anger. Leaders in other world religions had a similar reaction. Even Catholics were taken aback by what seemed like a regressive document.