From Our Own Correspondent ROME CARDINAL BEA made his tory as guest at a luncheon given by the Stampa Estera, Rome's Foreign Press Association. This was the first time that a Cardinal had lunched officially with the press in Rome. They met in the association's new club rooms, and the Cardinal was the first guest of honour. He was received by Mr. Barrett McGurn, Rome correspondent of the New York Herald -Tri bune.
The event closely followed the first move for a stronger link between Church and Press made by Pope John when he gave a special audience for foreign correspondents and their families on his 80th birthday last year.
Three of the Cardinal's main points: 1. "All those who have been baptised, and who, in good faith, accept and live in the faith in which they were born and brought up receive, in virtue of their belonging to Christ, the aid necessary for a true religious life. and are on the road to salvation in virtue of this fundamental belonging to the Church of Christ."
2 Union of the worl d's
900,000,000 Christians is required " not only by religious reasons but also by purely human reasons . . . Imagine. and try to measure, what it would signify for humanity if all Christians would press forward completely united on questions of nuclear war, disarmament, and peace."
3. All Christian Churches desiring to send observers to the Council will receive invitations. Five sessions of the Secretariat for Christian Unity have considered the position of the Jewish people, and had formulated a proposal new being studied by the Central Preparatory Commission.
Invitations to other monotheistic but non-Christian Churches had been considered, but it had been decided that these did not have any motive for wishing to follow especially closely the work of the Council.