far each Eastern Church, logically, believes itself to be the one true Church; its adversaries are schismatics,[1] all who deny its doctrine are heretics.[2] But with the growth of a wider consciousness of Christendom this position becomes impossible. One tiny minority existing in one district only cannot really go on in the comforting conviction that it alone is the whole Church of God on earth. So there must grow the consciousness of a really Catholic Church, of a vast union of faithful throughout the world, with which their fathers were once in union. Of course the Orthodox claim to be this one Church; but they, too, in spite of their numbers, exist only locally. If there is anywhere one united, visible, universal body of the faithful of Christ, it can only be the Catholic body. Our hope is that the consciousness of the Catholic ideal will show the Easterns that once they were part of this body, that they are not now, that they could be again. Circumstances will moderate the national ideal[3] and strengthen the Catholic ideal.
As for the national ideal, two considerations should cancel its danger. First, they may understand that nationalism and religion belong to different orders. They may hope for national independence, plot against the Turk, work for separate kingdoms. All that has nothing to do with the Church of Christ. His kingdom is not of this world. The Magyar and the Czech have the strongest possible national feeling; but it does not affect their religion, nor prevent their union in that other kingdom which is not concerned with politics. And then, even in religion, the Uniates combine the national and Catholic ideals perfectly. A Uniate is a citizen of the universal Church, he shares her common life, as did his fathers before these unhappy schisms began. But
- ↑ They all set up bishops for the true faithful, in total disregard of rival hierarchies.
- ↑ That is, a Monophysite will not call other Monophysites either heretics or schismatics. An Armenian will admit Copts and Jacobites to be correct. But he thinks Nestorians heretics, and vice versa. All these smaller Churches think Catholics and Orthodox to be heretics and schismatics, all try, rather feebly, to make converts from other Churches.
- ↑ Namely, their growing real national independence will make it less necessary to hold to ecclesiastical independence, and will diminish their ardent national patriotism. It is always the small, weak, persecuted nation which is most aggressively patriotic, in self-defence.
