There
is no "beginning again" in these things. In neither case will going
apart out of existing organizations secure our ends. Out of what is, we
have to develop what has to be. To work for the Reformation of the
Catholic Church is an integral part of the duty of a believer.
It is curious how misleading a word can be. We speak of a certain phase
in the history of Christianity as the Reformation, and that word
effectually conceals from most people the simple indisputable fact that
there has been no Reformation. There was an attempt at a Reformation in
the Catholic Church, and through a variety of causes it failed. It
detached great masses from the Catholic Church and left that
organization impoverished intellectually and spiritually, but it
achieved no reconstruction at all. It achieved no reconstruction because
the movement as a whole lacked an adequate grasp of one fundamentally
necessary idea, the idea of Catholicity. It fell into particularism and
failed. It set up a vast process of fragmentation among Christian
associations. It drove huge fissures through the once common platform.
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