ien to religion, it is division. If there
is a thing specially native to religion it is peace and union. Hence the
original attraction towards unity in Rome, and hence the great charm when
that unity is once attained_." The sharp contrast between the actual
restlessness and uncertainty of the dissident Churches, and the calm
assurance and self-possession of the Catholic Church, is not that an
abiding proof of the security of the Catholic position?

Father Palmieri, O.S.A., Ph.D., D.D., who has made the problem of
Christian Unity a life-study, made, in a recent article, these pertinent
remarks: "The reunion of Christianity in the Catholic sense is not a
Babel-like confusion of different sects which oppose creed to creed,
which proclaim their absolute indifference in the doctrinal field, which
take the individual reason as a judge of Christian revelation or
Christian discipline. It would be an absurdity to suppose for a moment
that Catholicism or Catholic Theology would propose this hybrid confusion
of concepts and human caprices under the name of unity. For Catholicism
and Catholic Theology, the reunion of Christianity is the return of
dissident Churches and of the non-Catholic sects to Christian unity, to
the one Church of Jesus Christ, which not only teaches this unity
theoretically but also puts it into practice, in its doctrine, in its
government, in its dogmatic and moral teaching, in its principles of
authority. By logical sequence the Church of Jesus is one. This unity
is not broken by political barriers, by ethnic divisions, by opposing
national aspirations. To tend therefore toward Christian unity signifies
to tend toward the only Church of Jesus Christ, and to effect this unity
is the same as to adhere to it."

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 da