Let me begin with an assumption. I assume that I am speaking to an audience, every member of which has much in common with me. Above all we have before us a common end. We have a common desire that all believers in Jesus Christ our Lord, the true Son of the true God, should be one, even as He and the Father are one. We have all an ambition, and it is more than a mere Utopian dream, to restore in Christendom what we recognise as having been severed, ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one Spirit: as we are called in one hope of our calling.’

Nevertheless, before I begin to say anything positive at all, I am conscious that there is a fundamental difference of outlook between many who kindly listen to me here and my colleagues and myself. Though in words we may seem to reach the same goal, we start from different standpoints. It is a difference, not so much of theological definitions as of philosophical first principles. We may profess to believe the same truths, we may express them in the same terms, and even in the same actions, yet, because of the different foundations on which we build them, they have not for us the same substance, or value, or solidity. Many, whether consciously or not, will not easily accept the external evidences, the objective truths, which to us, as to all Catholics, appear conclusive and convincing. To them truth is more subjective, more a matter of personal judgment, and personal interpretation, than it is to us; to them it is something that comes rather from within a man himself than from without.