Catholic Apologetics Online

Questions and answers on Catholicism and Protestantism

Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia

Choose a topic from Vol 3:

Reunion Conferences

258. Would you be in favor of one State Church, compelling all religious bodies to unite?

Such a plan for bringing all religious bodies into one faith and one Church could not possibly be accepted. Christ died for all men without exception. No State Church, therefore, could be the true Church of Christ. A State Church would be essentially national. People belonging to other States and Nations would feel that it was not for them. Christ is not for this nation or that; He is for men of all nations. All true followers of Christ, therefore, should be united in one great Church which is not national, but international. There is such a Church-the Catholic Church. If men really wish for unity, the remedy is there before them. Let them return to the Catholic Church.

259. Why does the Roman Church refuse to take part in the World Congresses of other Churches for the securing of unity?

Because she can never sanction by her participation Congresses which admit that the unity of the Church has been lost, and that it must be found again; and which hope to attain unity by a compromising policy of give and take. The unity promised by Christ has been retained by the Catholic Church. That Church believes that she is but the custodian of the religion of Christ, and she has not the right to make any compromises, to pare down and whittle away His doctrines in order to placate those who refuse to accept them in all their fullness. It would be useless to attend a Congress working on the idea that "we are all wrong, and must put our heads together to see how we can put ourselves right." The acceptance of such a principle would mean that the Catholic Church must unsay her infallibility. Did she do so, she would no longer be the Catholic Church at all. Yet Congresses of non-Catholic denominations would welcome her participation only on the understanding that she admits herself to be as fallible as themselves. It cannot be done.

260. Did not negotiations for the reunion of Anglicanism and Catholicism take place during the Malines Conversations?

The Malines Conversations were an unofficial discussion of the subject between Lord Halifax and several leading Anglican clergymen on the one hand, and Cardinal Mercier with several French theologians on the other. The Conversations were for the sake of inquiring as to whether any common basis could be found upon which an attempt at union could be inaugurated.

261. Why did those Conversations fail?

Because the participants were trying to find a way to reconcile the irreconcilable. Moreover, the Anglican Delegates presented only the High Church views to Cardinal Mercier and the French theologians, giving them a wrong outlook on the Anglican Church as a whole. Low Church Anglican papers throughout England denounced the Anglo-Catholic Delegates for misrepresenting Anglican doctrine, denied their right to speak on behalf of the Church of England, accused them of being "Romanizers," and declared that they would never submit to any undoing of the work of the Protestant Reformation. With such chaos reigning in the Anglican Church the Conversations could not but fail. Unity in Anglicanism itself is absolutely necessary before it can even discuss the question of possible unity with the Catholic Church.

262. As an Anglican I was bitterly disappointed with the result.

If you believe that the Church of England ought to be in communion with Rome, and is not, how can you justify yourself in remaining where you ought not to be, and in refusing to take that step personally which the corporate Anglican Church cannot and will not take?

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