I grant that there are many who do not see the matter so. Nor is that their fault alone. When dark clouds of prejudice and misunderstanding obscure the fair image of our Church, we Catholics often must admit our guilt: “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” It is due in no small measure to our imperfections and frailties and sins that those dark clouds arise and conceal the countenance of the Bride of Christ. When God allowed great sections of the Church, containing an abundance of most noble and valuable elements, to separate from us, He punished not them only, but also us Catholics ourselves. And this punishment, this penal permission of God, should, like all His permissions, cause us to look into ourselves and impel us to repentance. It should be an imperative “Do penance.” The Spirit of Jesus is incarnate in the Church; we should all impress that Spirit on ourselves, and especially the spirit of love and brotherliness,[8] of loyalty and truth. And then it cannot be but that God, though after long wanderings and difficult inward crises of the western soul, will graciously grant that we may all unite again, that our inward union with Jesus may become an outward fellowship also, that we may be one flock under one shepherd. Then will be fulfilled the sacred prayer which Jesus offered to His Father on the eve of His death: “And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me. That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn. xvii, 20, 21).

Endnotes

1.      cf. F. Kattenbusch, “Die Vorzugsstellung des Petrus und der Charakter der Urgemeinde,” Festgabe fur Karl Muller 1922, p. 341.

2.      ibid, p. 335.

3.      “Sitz.-Ber.der Preuss. Akad. der Wiss.,” 1921, p. 1 xxx.

4.      Op. cit., p. 61.

5.      ibid., p. 49.

6.      Bolliger, “Markus, Der Bearbeiter des Mt.-Evangeliums,” 1902, p. 86.

7.      Op. cit., p. 334, ff.

8.      Such is St. Augustine’s admonition: Habete igitur pacem, fratres. Si vultis ad illam trahere ceteros, primi illam habete, primi illam tenete (Sermo CCCLVII, 3).

Chapter VII: The Communion of Saints

“Now there are many members yet one body” (1 Cor. xii, 20).