The Lambeth Conference and the World Council of the Churches at Amsterdam, held this summer, have brought the question of Christian Unity once again into the forefront of consciousness, even for Catholics. Now that they are over and their results made public it seems worth while to consider from the Catholic standpoint what value their efforts are likely to have in fostering a Christian Unity which is founded upon Truth. For us in England this will mean primarily a consideration of Anglicanism, for it is very evident, even from a superficial observation of the growing desire for unity among non-Catholic Christians, that the Church of England plays a dominant part in its development and will determine to a great extent the forms it will take in the future. What is happening in the Church of England therefore is a matter of capital importance if we wish to assess the value, in terms of truth, of the work being done by the œcumenical movement.

This brings us to a fundamental question not always squarely faced by Catholics. Does it matter what happens in the Church of England or in any of the Christian bodies which owe their origin to the Reformation? What is our attitude to these bodies as organisations? Is it of the slightest importance, as far as truth and true unity are concerned, which direction they take, or what arrangements they make among themselves for furthering their own coherence?

The view of the majority of Catholics would probably be that it matters not at all.

Once he has crossed the Channel the continental very quickly discovers that the Church of England is quite unlike the protestant communities he knows in France or Belgium. Instead of bare conventicles he finds churches—very often fine ones, with altar, cross, statues, even red lamps in the sanctuary and confessionals. The liturgical vestments are similar to our own. Some of the services offer the same general characteristics. There are religious communities which are curiously like our monasteries both in their rule and in the piety, earnestness and influence for good of their members. If he is lucky the enquiring visitor may come into contact with members of the Anglican church quite close to his faith or come across theological works in which the vocabulary, the terms of reference and the subjects treated are familiar to him.

The hurried traveller will even be able to go back with the conviction that the things which separate us from the Anglicans are few. There is papal infallibility but this has doubtless been badly explained to them and since its definition the Popes have exercised it so little that Catholic theologians are not even all agreed as to its exact exercise. The Anglicans use an English liturgy? But there are many languages other than Latin in the Church of Rome. In short, he thinks, there are chiefly stupid misunderstandings and obstinacies. From this point to thinking that Be union is easy there is only one step, a step which is sometimes crossed and which is the cause of generous overtures doomed to failure.

The ‘Conversion of England’ presents itself to us both as a problem and a mystery, but for one reason or another we become so preoccupied with the problem that we overlook the mystery. Yet our very handling of the problem is bound to be influenced by our awareness of the mystery. It must be confessed also that the problem has hitherto received only intermittent attention, and that nothing like a strategy of conversion has yet been evolved. It is my contention that our tendency to date has been to view the question as a matter of immediate practical concern demanding immediate action; and there seems moreover to be a belief abroad that this is a problem which will yield like any other to persistence and the correct technique—backed always by the grace of God. Certainly we should be active if only intermittently, but have we any reason for believing that our usual methods of tackling this immense problem are likely to lead to improved results? I would submit that the inevitable sense of frustration which follows on our efforts is due to an insufficient consideration of the truth that the problem is not only a problem, but also a profound mystery. In its general lines the conversion of a great nation involves the mystery of God’s Providence, and his permission of evil. The classical justification for the existence of moral evil is that God draws from the evil a greater good; and when we look for the justification of the evil of heresy we can see in the history of the Church how it has resulted in the articulation and clarification of Christian truth.

In its general lines the conversion of a great nation involves the mystery of God’s Providence, and his permission of evil. The classical justification for the existence of moral evil is that God draws from the evil a greater good; and when we look for the justification of the evil of heresy we can see in the history of the Church how it has resulted in the articulation and clarification of Christian truth.

With the death of Bernanos, France lost more than a novelist. His was the authentic voice of a tradition that is older than a nation and which will surely outlast it. It is true that he wrote novels, and they were supreme in their perception of human destiny, incomparable in eloquence and passion. But the form of them was an instrument, not an end, and the professional critic may readily discover an indifference, even a contempt, for the nicely-ordered ingenuities of fiction. Bernanos was a prophet for whom the novel, or indeed prose as such, happened to be a trumpet to which his own generation might be enticed to listen. He believed in God and he believed in God’s hand at work in the affairs of men. For him the only ultimate truth was the plenitude of divine life, and he looked with an unfaltering vision on a world in which that life was usually ignored, sometimes acknowledged, but which in every case was the arena of a conflict that can end only with the Last Judgment of all. The popular success of the Journal d ‘un Curd de Campagne made a central idea of Bernanos’s familiar to readers to whom Sous le Soleil de Satan or Monsieur Ouine might seem intolerable, unreadable, remote. The huge weight that hangs on moral choice became increasingly for Bernanos a truth to be revealed not merely in the high moments of human tragedy but constantly, at every turn of the head, at every neutral gesture.