Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 4:
I think that is true among those non-Catholics who retain an interest in religion. Catholics, of course, have never ceased to deplore the existence of separated, divided and independent non-Catholic denominations.
I'm afraid that is an exaggeration. Some Protestants still adopt that attitude; but it is possible that those who do are diminishing in number.
You are not more desirous of that than are we Catholics ourselves! That all who profess to be Christians are not united in one single visible Church, professing the same beliefs, sharing in the same worship, and observing the same discipline, is a flat contradiction of the will of Christ! And this lack of unity leads to confusion and wasted energy, creating superable obstacles in the field of education, in social influence, in the foreign missions, and in many other spheres. No one who loves Christ and has any understanding of the position could view this problem with indifference.
The one fold under one shepherd will be a reality when all professing Christians who are not Catholics accept the provision our Lord Himself made for His Church, joining the Catholic Church and acknowledging the Pope as Christ's visible representative on earth and supreme head of the Church in this world. That would mean a real, and not merely a pretended unity of Christians in one and the same Church; and I agree that it is time that all professing Christians who do not belong to it seriously considered such a return to the Catholic Church the Protestant reformers should never have left.
That should not have had to be discovered. The Catholic Church, certainly, has realized that all along.
The Lambeth Conferences may have made many Anglicans and members of other Protestant Churches conscious that there ought to be only one united visible Christian Church. But it is too much to say that the Lambeth Conferences brought these ideas to the attention of the "Christian world." The Catholic Church, with its over 425,000,000 members, comprises more than half of all professing Christians. And that Church has ever exemplified the ideal of unity, and insisted upon the obligation of all who would be Christians to belong to that unity. It is folly to speak as if the Catholic Church did not so much as exist.
If they still functioned with their own identity as Methodists, Congress gationalists, Baptists and Presbyterians, they would not be a united Church. They would be just as they are now, merely agreeing to say that they were one Church without being one Church. Also they would not be at all like the different Religious Orders within the Catholic Church. For all the members of the different Religious Orders in the Catholic Church are equally Catholics. All hold the same doctrines; all accept the same essential liturgical worship; all are subject to the supreme authority of the Pope.
That implies that he thinks there ought to be one constitutional Church. But I agree with him that the Protestant denominations are far from ready to unite even among themselves in such a way.
In other words, they did not get beyond calling themselves one Church without being one Church at all.
That scarcely fits in with the statement that a union formed by two great Protestant Churches was arthritic precisely because they did not attain itisl to any real uniformity, each trying to have too much of its own way! It is not very consistent to complain that the Protestant Churches are not one constitutional Church, yet to denounce the Catholic Church for being one constitutional Church.
There is no prospect of such unity. In 1931 Sergius, Patriarch of Moscow, wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople: "We on our side cannot give up our belief that only our Orthodox Church, found in its completeness in the East, is the Church of Christ. The uniting with our Church of some other body we can conceive of only by the analogy of the saving of the drowning. It would be strange if the drowning, before accepting help from the ship, should begin to put forward some sort of conditions. This would be a clear evidence of the fact that he either does not wish or does not realize the hopelessness of his position...Chasing after an illusory unity with Anglicans might threaten us with the destruction of unity within the Orthodox Church itself. We decline, therefore, participation in the matter of union with Anglicans." Those words do not indicate any prospects of union between Russian Orthodoxy and Anglicanism.
It would be incorrect to speak in such a way. Over one hundred different non-Catholic Churches have agreed to form amongst themselves a "World Council." We cannot speak of these Churches as branches of the Christian Church as though they already belonged to one Church. They themselves deplore the fact that they do not, and urge the necessity of getting back to a unity which will make them "the Christian Church" instead of remaining divided and conflicting "Churches." One cannot have it both ways, admitting that they are not one united Church, and then speaking of them as if they were!
It is a kind of Committee with members drawn from most of the Protestant Churches, and from some, not all, of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. It was established in 1938 at Utrecht, in Holland. Its purpose is to promote common action in fields in which the member Churches are already agreed; and to try to see how such differences as still exist between them can be overcome, so that eventually there will be "only one Christian Church." Although the Catholic Church has never been affiliated with this "World Council of Churches," the members themselves realize that there can never be one only Church without Catholics belonging to it. They therefore declare that their ultimate hope is a unity which will include the Catholic Church. Their problem is to discover terms of reunion which will be acceptable to the Catholic Church, and to persuade Protestant and Greek Orthodox peoples in turn to accept those terms. I cannot see any prospect of such a hope ever being realized.
No. It expressly disclaims any such power of legislation. And that is a sure sign that its member Churches are separate and distinct bodies, not members of one and the same Church. In the Council they may agree to cooperate in common action on some things, as England and America cooperated during World War II. But they remain as distinct and separate Churches as England and America are distinct and separate nations.
The "World Evangelical Alliance" is an older body than the "World Council of Churches" and it stands for the defense and propagation of strictly Protestant principles as opposed to Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teachings. Its outlook is that Catholics and members of the Eastern Orthodox Churches must be converted to Protestantism, and its one fear is that the "World Council of Churches" should make concessions at the expense of Protestantism to placate Catholics and the various Orthodox Churches. Its attitude merely stresses the difficulty the "World Council of Churches" will have in trying to persuade convinced Protestants to accept any moves towards reunion with the Catholic Church at all.
To a certain extent you are right in that. For the first Protestant reformers thought it a good thing to set up new and conflicting denominations, whilst many modern Protestants, by advocating reunion, admit that such divisions among Christians are bad and should never have arisen. But you cannot condemn the "betrayal" of the first Protestant reformers unless you first justify the conduct of those first Protestant reformers. For if they were mistaken, then they were the betrayers of true Christianity and to undo their mistake is the best thing that could be.
That is the way they thought, but the vast majority of Protestants have grown out of such ideas. It would be strange if, in 400 years, education and reason showed no signs of prevailing over prejudices based far more on heated and violent ill-feeling than on intelligence. However, there are some, even many, not yet emancipated from the narrowness and bigotry of past centuries.
I'm afraid your question is based on a misunderstanding of the position. Protestants promoting reunion movements regularly complain of the lack of encouragement they receive from Rome. That does not look like Rome leading them up any garden path! Again, commenting on the Instruction issued by the Vatican in 1950 concerning relations between Catholics and other Christian bodies, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury said that the Vatican's insistence that in all discussions stress must be placed on points of disagreement rather than on points of agreement discourages rather than encourages such discussions. Rome is not interested in making converts just for the sake of adding to her numbers. She does, of course, desire non-Catholics to become Catholics; but that is for their sake, not for her own sake. And it can only be in so far as they themselves, with the help of God's grace, have become sincerely convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion. If you yourself attained to that conviction, you would want to become a Catholic; but you are far from that yet, of course.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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