CHURCH REUNION

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3761, 1 March 1928, Page 1

CHURCH REUNION

ROMAN CATHOLIC ATTITUDE,

SERMON BY DIL LISTON. The attitude taken by the Roman .Catholic Church toward the question of reunion was outlined by Bishop Liston in the course of a sermon at St. Benedict’s Church, Auckland, last Sunday morning. Dr. Liston said Roman Catholics gladly recognised that many who did not belong to the Church visibly belonged to its soul, because they lived faithful to the light of conscience. “Yet the fact remains,” tho bishop said, “that Christ wished His Church to be a family, a society, visibly one for all the world, the man in the street to see, and seeing, to say: ‘That is the work of God, and He who made it, Christ, must be God.’ “The conditions which the Roman Catholic Church holds essential for the reunion of Christendom are set forth in an encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII.’s to the bishops of the Church (June 29, 1896). The Pope used the apostolic charity of honest speech and plain dealing and the London Times spoke of his statement as dignified, temperate and charitable.”

The union of the several Christian communities could be brought about not by compromise or amalgamation or federation, but* by prayer and the acceptance off tho full teaching of Christ. The Divine Teacher had left only one body of truths and commands, and there could be only one meaning in them. Reunion meant submission to Him and His teaching. This in turn meant acceptance of and obedience to the Roman Catholic Church in spiritual matters. For Roman Catholics believed —and they could not claim to be the Church of Christ if they did not believe —that the Roman Catholic Church alone was made by Christ, did His work and spoke unerringly for Him and by His authority. “Reunion for us means a return to the constitutional union that existed before the break-up of \Yesern Christendom in the sixteenth century,” declared the bishop. “Until then, every nation of Western, Christendom accepted the authority of the See of Peter and there was a constitutional, corporate, visible union between the Church’s visible head, the Pope, and its members. The Roman Catholic Church is free to admit changes and modifications in her own discipline, liturgy and legislation, but the Pope holds his place by divine appointment, and recognition of that is essential. Granted these three conditions the Roman Catholic Church will leave nothing undone to make smooth the return path to Christ’s one fold.