The Unity of the Church

The question of the reintegration of Christendom has been brought before the public of this country recently by an article and a series of letters in The Times, and before the whole world by the Holy Father's address on Christmas Eve. I hope that some of the following remarks may help to explain to non-Catholics why it is that we Catholics do not seem to be able to join in whole-heartedly with some of the attempts that are made from time to time to effect that reintegration by a process of corporate reunion of the separated Christian bodies; although we are at least as anxious as any other body to see reunion achieved. And we believe that we hold from God the key to reunion.There is a homesickness for visible unity in the Christian world today, thank God. The crisis of our civilization, the growth of secularism, the menace of conscious deliberate organized antiChristian forces have no doubt in part occasioned this heightened sense that Christians must unite in face of common perils. And again, the serious disadvantages (to use no stronger language) that attend upon Christian missionary effort, both at home and abroad, through the mutual contradictions and competition of the various Christian communions, are perhaps more vividly realised at present than at most times in the past three hundred years. But surely the driving force of what I may call the reunion movement is something deeper, more native to Christianity as such, than even these grave practical considerations. Surely the dynamism of the movement, or movements, comes from a growing conviction that disunity can only be justified by a virtual denial of something that is of the very essence of Christianity, that it would mean contradicting the intention of God Incarnate. Did he not himself remind us that a kingdom or a house divided against itself cannot stand

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