ALL ... TALK ABOUT REUNION assumes, necessarily, that the one Church which Christ founded on earth has, in process of time, been split into a set of fragments - the Easterns, the Anglicans, the Wesleyans, and so on. Each of these will have preserved some part of Christian truth, some more than others. But since it is impossible now to determine which was right in the old dead controversies, we ought to sink our differences as far as possible (it is argued) and remake the Church out of its fragments once more. To us Catholics such language is meaningless; we have not so learned Christ. For us, the Church is nothing less than his Temple, his Bride, his own Body; and the idea that it could, by any conceivable historical circumstances, be split into fragments, is a blasphemy. The reunion of the Churches is to us not merely impossible, it is unthinkable. You cannot reunite what has never been divided. For the Catholic Church to take part in a reunion of the Churches would be a paradox, a contradiction in terms.
... (L)et us sympathize with their difficulties, let us give them credit for good intentions. By doing that, we shall perhaps help forward more than we know the day when Christians will really be reunited in obedience to the Holy See, and the martyrs will come to their own, and England will be our Lady's Dowry once again.
- Ronald A. Knox
1 comment:
Thank you for this post, its so true.
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