After Four Hundred Years

It is a characteristic feature of this time of transition in which we are living that the subject of Christian Unity is being discussed almost universally. Catholic and nonCatholic can write of it and proffer suggestions without arousing too serious an outburst of protest. For Methodists and Presbyterians the matter has passed from the stage of discussion to the goal of accomplished fact. Anglicanism with an eye to the future rather than the past is entering a new phase of comprehensiveness by proclaiming itself as a bridge providentially built to span the gulf between Catholicism and Protestantism. Of necessity Catholics remain materially unaffected by the movement, conscious as they are of the complete Unity of the Church in which they are visibly incorporate; nevertheless there remains a wide margin where we can express our views and opinions with regard to Christian Unity and the means of attaining it. Many of us take our views ready-made upon this subject from the Catholic Press, and save ourselves the trouble of thinking any further about it. It is so splendid to be told that we Catholics, standing secure behind the battlements, can look down with happy serenity upon the struggling disorder of warring sects below. If the warring sects cease to struggle, and achieve a formula of unity, what is our reaction? The ‘battlement feeling’ makes us perhaps uneasy because the non-Catholic bodies are not quite playing the game: they should be continuing the struggle, so that we could happily continue to draw the moral

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