The Ever Informative, Ever Delightful Project Canterbury
Offers us this wonderful piece. I particularly relish the passage highlighted.
Oh, and note the date. Any other such wonderful pieces that should have been written even so much as a year later are lost to the web for upwards of twenty years thanks to the strangulating piece of idiotic copyright law foisted on the public by the protectors of Mickey Mouse. (Yes, I'll keep mentioning it, as it irritates me beyond all reason that this perversion of obvious intent is permitted--and it is damaging.
The Eucharist as the Center of Unity By Ralph Adams Cram
A paper read at an Eucharistic Conference in All Saints,' Ashmont, Oct. 12, 1923.
American Church Quarterly volume 14, 1923
pp 265-276AMIDST the manifold terrors and portents of a dissolving social system, now in the vortex of signs and wonders that declare the unhonoured ending of the era of peculiar civilizations we ourselves have known, that another of unknown character and quantity may take its place, there are indeed many signs of hope, forecasts of a better future than perhaps we deserve, and amongst them none is more heartening than the consciousness that arrives at last that the disunion of Christendom is an evil thing, evilly engendered; that it lies close at the root of current (calamities, and that--humanly speaking--only through speedy reunion may anything of value be saved from the wreck and the world enticed into paths that may lead, not to final calamity and a new era of Dark Ages, but to vital regeneration and a true renaissance. By force of events the truth is fast being borne in upon us that, so great is the need, so monstrous the courses we have boastfully followed for so many generations, nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of Catholic reunion; neither inherited prejudice nor personal predilection, neither pride however justified, nor self-interest however poignant and commanding. It is not for us to say "the fault lies elsewhere, let another take the first step." We cannot hold back on some technical point of dogma, some detail of discipline, crying ''non possumus" when in our souls we mean "non placet." Schism is so grave a sin, continued disunion so acute a peril, that we are bound in honour to waive anything, everything, except the final and solemn monitions of conscience, and even here, when conscience seems to call most clearly, I conceive it to be our duty very scrupulously to search within ourselves that we may test the call and be positively assured that it is not conditioned by undertones of pride, stubbornness and self-interest. The time that, is left us is not very great; there is weakening and failure of organic religion all along the line, hidden from common sight by the dazzle of conferences and congresses and the sporadic fires of local activities. These indeed are, and we thank God for them, but meanwhile sixty-five per cent of the people of these United States ignore religion altogether, while in government, in industry and commerce, in education, in social life, religion. bulks less and less and degeneration steadily continues. We have tried sectarianism and manifold isolations; we have rejected the one, visible, organic Church of Catholicity for the vision of a mystical Church Invisible of Protestant theory, and the results are pressing upon us, the fruits ripe for the fall. What shall stand in the way of repentance and amendment? Is there any sacrifice one would not make, is there any humiliation one would not endure, if so we could make an end, and bring fulfilment to the prayer ''that they all may be one?''
