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Show AIM TO UNITE GREEK, ROMAN AND ANGLICAN "I ' i Hopes Groundless So Long As There Exists No Bond to Unite What Was Put i Asunder By Man. j (Written for The Iiitennouniaiii Catholic. : The attitude of the Ritualists, in adcpitus ; . ', f everything Catholic, from the most sublime my-- j - : tery of the Blessed Eucharist down t. the eHudb-s j ' :. and holy water, eau'-ed not only a stir in religious j matters in Kuirlaiul. bui grave fears were mter- : ed'i tained by many that the movement woidd ulii-n . . ' mately bring ail members of the- new creed wit inn: h-' the pale of the Catholic chun-h. Many of the pr- ! M meters desired a reunion of the Roman, ('reek and; ' Cl' Anglican churches. This strengthened the belief. ti- All hopes, however, were groundless, because i there was no bond to unite or knit together what was put asunder by man. The Greek ehureh was , - ' a revolt against the authority of the Holy So-' . . $ and was brought about by Photius. The Anglican u; church was the sain.', phi- ihe denial of mnny "c C Cathclie truths and the rejection of the ssera- cv K raeu1. Both were branches severed from Cath- die unitv. and to become iii.-orpoi'ated again in one r'" i body all' that, win needed wa- siibmi-sion t.. the ; vo t spiritual authority of the Viear of Christ. To ilu- ' condition, which i- e ential. n-ither of the lopped- : S k o-ff branches would submit. Why! H-cause -i.!,--ration would mean to retraet the primary cause U. ; that led up to the Greek -.-hi-m and the Reform-.- - J tion, vi.. nride. or . oppo.-ition to authority which hr. . thev consider an enslavement of the mind, and too p-I humiliating to. yield to its demand-. The -tale may id J ; exact the obedienee of its citizens to its laws, or to j parents of their children till they reach their nia- n- ; jority. and there is no humiliation hi the submit n. siom The authority to command, in both eases. ; comes from God. Equally so the authority claimeu T and exercised by the Catholic church for nine teen ' n-hundred n-hundred vears was the legacy which Christ, left her wheiihe said: '"He that heareth you, heareta - . mi..- -Ho tliat will not bear thf Church, let hnu , be as a heathen or a publican." ;" . The Catholic church claims this diwi.e author- r f ity. The Greek church, which is a political ma- V ; chine used to preserve the unity of the Czar's empire, em-pire, makes no claim to teach or spread its erica : . outside the confines of the empire. It has no fen- oral councils to define the Christian faith. Sine.; the davs of Photius it has been sterile. The Ritual- g.f ists. who are confessedly fallible, and proclaim lb.it all churches have erred, can have no claim to bo divinely authorized to teach. The infinite variety f of all other shades of belief is an avowal of the rc-linouishment rc-linouishment of authority to teach. A Only the Catholic church, then, claims and as- J sorts that she is divinely commissioned and au- thorized to teach air nations. But, it may be. asked, does ..the claim make her title goodi Xot necessarily, but the claim and its exercise from the dawn' of Christianity down through the cen- turies create a strong presumption in its favor, ; whilst exigencies demand it" They who disclaim authority to teach Christian truths can give no certaintv that what they teach is truth, and when j pressed must sumit t, oecause uil- m-imvi uih . nor pretend to have any divine authority) that their view are simply guessing at what, might b the truth. r The Bible, which contains Gods laws, cannot .'. be the divine authority. Without some divine au- . thority to interpret its meaning, its plainest and j simplest passages have become so elastic, to the. minds of "private" interpreters, that, they take , J from the same text every shade of belief and eon- . ( tradictory opinions. The laws of the land enacted ; . . for the protection and benefit of society would be ; . useless without a court to interpret these same . laws. Was God less wise or far-seeing when Ho ' sent His Son to redeem the human race and es- . tablish the Christian religion to attain His end, 1(j ! than was human society 2 .-'! It is a fallacy which common sense and the ?x-. J perienee of three and a half centuries condemn, , ,v'jj that the Bible interpreted by each individual i J the same as the Bible itself. It was not so in ?! the synagogue, nor did Christ ordain it to be such. I f Then, as all churches " outside of the Catholic f x church disclaim Divine Authority, and she alone 1 claims it and exercises it, it follows that there i no bond for a union between either the Ritualists or Greek Schismatics and the Catholic church. A reunion is hopeless, because the claims of the ..J Catholic church to divine authority are beyond j the mental reach of all who oppose her claims.. 1 j All admit that the Catholic church in every ago ! f claimed to be divinely authorized to teach. 1 hat was the' groundwork of all the opposition which j "j she had to contend against. Acting on the knowl- edge that she possessed this divine attribute of j authority, did she not condemn the Ayrians. the I Xestorians, Eutychians, and numberless other here- j sies during the past twenty centuries. In all her I General Councils, from the first, held at Jerusa- M lem, to the last, held at the Vatican, the Church Si in defining faith and morals has exercised and ' f. proclaimed this great prerogative of divine author- . r ity- - . They who deny that the authority is divine. f will find it difficult to explain its teaching from a ; human standpoint. Could any human authority p; compel Christians to believe for twenty centuries j that Christ was really and wholly present in the r Blessed Eucharist, or compel them to submit to ! the great humiliation of confessing their -sins be- j fore they could receive the Bread of Life. That ! such beliefs and-practices have come down front ; - the beginning of the Christian era is so historically certain that Ritualists have now incorporated them into their creed. Would they do this if the author- ' j ity through which these were defined were human? ' The say so of the present king of England and of tho Archbishop of Canterbury, that if it was eon- ; (Continued on Pago Four. - i t !: AIM TO UNITE GREEK, ROMAN AND ANGLICAN j (Continued from Faze One.) substantiation or impersonation it would not (lis- ; turb their present belief in Transubstantiation. Why? Because they consider the authority winch defined the latter to be divine, -whilst that of King" Edward and his Metropolitan are merely human. Yet submission to that authority, -which has always al-ways existed and still exists, is the cause of all J heresies and the disunion of Christendom. It is not a question of reunion, but of submission. submis-sion. To disobey or disrespect divine authority, in ? rclipious, is like anarchy in civil, overnment3. Without authority, which must be divine, to do 4 j fiite what must be believed, creeds change rapidly, so much- so that many of the religious truths of ten or twenty yeare ago arc now loooked upon as errors. Yet truth, we know, is unchangeable. F. D. " |