In recent months there has been controversy in the Catholic press casting doubt on the expediency of the ‘reunion’ or ecumenical work taking place within the Church, and promoted by the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians at the Vatican Council. It is said to be drying up the normal inflow of conversions, because some potential converts are encouraged to stay where they are in order to work for eventual unity between the Church and their own dissident communion. It has been asserted, though the authority for this does not appear widely based, that in Germany, for this reason, there is a calculated refusal on the part of some priests to accept prospective converts for instruction and reception. Whatever the truth may be in this matter the question is certainly being asked by a number of priests and lay people in this country whether this new apostolate is not encouraging a kind of indifferentism, in the minds of Catholics, concerning the uniqueness of the one true Church as the way of salvation for all men and so hindering individual conversions.

The question came up for discussion at the Heythrop Conference and, as far as I know, the general conclusion reached was that the work of attracting, instructing and receiving individual converts, and the work of mutual penetration and understanding between ourselves and other Christians, which is the aim of ecumenical encounter, are specifically different from each other in technique and approach, but in the long run compatible because they are complementary. Catholic ecumenism is a preparation of the ground, on a wide and corporate scale, for a conversion to truth, which will ultimately lead by God’s grace to unity in faith.