Father Palmieri concludes his study with these words:  “An impartial study of many years’ duration has fully convinced us that the union of the dissident churches can be brought about only under the leadership of the Catholic Church.  Outside of Rome there is a principle of dissolution which breaks up and disintegrates the most solid organisms and which will cause the breaking up even of the Orthodox Churches.  It is therefore in the supreme interest of Christianity that the Catholic Church addresses its appeals for union to the dissident Churches, and it will never cease to exercise this, its noble mission.  Its efforts have been crowned with success several times, and I am convinced that that day will come in which by means of prayer and action the aspiration of Christ’s Vicar for union will be realized.”

Our non-Catholic reader may say that the position we take tends to strengthen that exclusiveness, that narrowness, that aloofness with which he has always charged the Church of Rome.  But we would ask our dissenting brethren, can it be otherwise?  Truth is indivisible and unchangeable.  Were the unity of the Church Universal to exist only in the Church of the future we would have to conclude that there was a time when the Church of Christ did not exist on earth.  This would be absurd and would destroy Christianity in its very foundation.  The true Church of Christ has a right to claim the monopoly of Christianity.  The Church which, through a so-called spirit of broad-mindedness, accepts the conflicting claims of the various dissident bodies, and is ready to merge its entity with other denominations, immediately, de facto, invalidates its claim to be “The Church of Christ.”  For, its position involves a contradiction and is in itself a self-condemnation.

Yet, the Catholic Church cannot feel indifferent toward this general and supreme effort of the various fragments of Christendom towards unity.  Confidently she waits for the hour when all will return to her as to the only centre and source of permanent unity.  Yet, we would say with the Bishop of Northampton, “If we may not compromise the very object of this remarkable movement towards unity by accepting the pressing invitations of our separated brethren to make common cause with them, neither can we rest content to be mere spectators of their perplexities like those who watch from the shore the efforts of distressed seamen to make their port.”  Let us hope that Divine Providence, always gentle and strong in its dealings with human liberty, will hasten the day when there will be but “One Fold and One Pastor.”  In the meantime the efforts made to constitute unity of Christianity outside of its true centre will prove as futile as ploughing the sands of the desert.

[1] The withdrawal of the Northern Presbyterian and Northern Baptists and the failure of the financial drive have imperilled the existence of this ambitious project.  Is it not a case of repeating with the Psalmist:  “Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it?”—­Ps. 126.