The Roman Gathering [pp. 191-200]

The Roman Gathering.
that she has existed for ages, is to
deny not merely a fact in history,
but it is to deny the word of our
Lord; and to do that, is to deny alike
his holiness and his divinity. How
can the Catholic Church treat with
those who wish to make terms before
submitting to her authority, on the
basis of a positive untruth? Catholicity is not an inheritance, to be decided among many claimants, no one
of whom has any right to be or to be
regarded as the sole heir of the homestead; but it is an estate left by the
divine Lord of the manor, in charge
of the Prince of the Apostles and his
successors, on the express injunction
that it is to be kept one and undivivided, in trust for the benefit of the
faithful for all time. The estate has
been kept one and undivided, according to the title-deed; the injunction
has never been broken; notwithstanding all defections from the household,
the homestead of the Christian world
remains in the hands of the same
faithful succession to which it was
committed by our Lord himself. May
God grant that all the younger sons
who have gone astray, may return
with penitential alacrity t9 their Father's house!
The Catholic Church will not stop
in her progress, until she has converted the world to Christ; but she has
not denied, and will not deny, her
sacred trust and prerogative of catholicity for the sake even of adding
whole nations to her fold. Whoever
enters her fold must admit by that
act her claim to be the one, undivided, indivisible Church of Christ.
There can be no "branches of the
Catholic Church" which are not directly joined to the root and trunk of
catholicity. A severed branch is no
branch.
It is not the fault of the Catholic
Church that multitudes "who profess
and call themselves Christians" are
not members of her communion. She
affords the very largest liberty for
individual or associated action that
can be yielded without denying her
faith or her commission., The highest poetry and the severest logic may
kneel in brotherly harmony at her
altar. Gifts and talents the most diverse have been consecrated to her
service. The Catholic Church advanfcing, century after century, under
the banner of the cross and dove, to
the spiritual conquest of the world!
how far more sublime a spectacle it
is than that of some parts of Christendom, which are broken into little
independent bands of sectarian skirmishers, keeping up a kind of guerrilla warfare against "the world, the
flesh, and the devil," and each other.
There are inspiring tokens which
show the depth and breadth of the conviction, that the great schism of three
centuries ago has proved a terrible
mistake. Multitudes outside, of the
Catholic Church are inquiring with
earnest solicitude about the meaning
of catholic unity. The main course
of intellectual inquiry is, in both hemispheres, respecting the claims of the
Catholic Church. There are evident
signs that the chaos of Protestantism
is about to be broken up, and the wild
and dreary waste to bloom and glow
with Catholic beauty and order. God
grant that it may be so, and that not
only thousands of individuals may
know how precious a prize it is tokneel devoutly and sincerely before
the altar of God; but that even,
mighty nations may be convinced
what priceless gifts they have forfeited by three centuries of separation
from the source of all they have that
has been or is worth keeping.
In view of the fact that the revival
of catholic feeling enkindles also the
enmity of those who scan it, the gathering at Rome is not only an assurance before the world that the Ca
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