Religious union

“ A union of the Protestants, Jews, Spiritualists, Free Religionists, Infidels, Atheists, Turners, Free Germans, and of all non-Catholics, without regard to creed, race or color, on a basis of universal civil and religious liberty, with a judicious policy, and a corresponding system of measures, will prove adequate to the emergency. ”

“ There had to be complete freedom to divide before there could be a union that would not deny freedom.
Third, separation of church and state and recognition of the voluntary character of religion threw directly upon the members of churches the whole responsibility for supporting the churches and promoting their work by voluntary contributions. The 40 Christian discovery and conquest of America was to be organized and financed on a voluntary basis. ”

“ The Baptists, too, secured a footing in the new communities and labored effectively in creating religious ties between the old and the new sections of the country. In religion as in politics the people of the West were responsive to emotional appeals. ”

“ Is the world, then, come to this!—that social diplomatists should sever the State from the Church, or domineer over Christian society? Is nature to separate from grace, and set up a dynasty for itself? No, no; Quis separabit? The holy alliance of Church and State constitutes the union of the soul and body—the life and vigor of Christian society! ”

“ Do we habitually remember how it offends our Lord to see divisions in the Christian Church, nations nominally Christian armed to the teeth against one another, class against class and individual against individual in fierce and relentless competition, jealousies among clergy and church-workers, communicants who forget that the sacrament of union with Christ is the sacrament of union also with their fellow-men?
Christians are to be makers of Christ’s peace. Something we can all do to reconcile individuals, families, classes, churches, nations. ”

“ Common interests may seem to unite them from time to time, but there can be no true, permanent union except where the spirit and the faith are dominating forces. But where is such a bond of unity except in the Catholic Church? Mother Church folds her arms about all her children and questions not their color or their race. ”

“ To leave that civil society, in which the different sects of religion are now-a-days compelled to live in peace and side by side, and to enter religious society itself, the Christian Church of our days:—what is its actual position with respect to these grand questions which it has to discuss with the spirit of human liberty and audacity? ”

“ But as amidst all diversities of government and customs it is the duty of States to remember and maintain their common brotherhood and abstain from tyranny, oppression, and war, so it is the duty of Churches, however separate in creed or form of government, to maintain and exhibit their unity. If the sects of the Church will frankly and cordially recognise one another as parts of the same whole, if they will exhibit their relationship by combining in good works, by an interchange of ecclesiastical civilities, by aiding one another when aid is needed, this is, I conceive, real union. ”

“ It is hard for us now to realize how continuous and almost universal had been the belief that the welfare of the state was bound up with religious uniformity. For more than a thousand years, and throughout Christendom, practically everybody except little bands of heretics and rebels believed that the institutional unity of the church was essential to the security of the state and the stability of the social order, and that it was the state’s duty to enforce this unity. ”

“ The Gospel of Jesus Christ unfolds them, and the Priesthood are the true exponents of that Gospel; in fact, what we have here—the government of God restored again to the earth. We have here a people who are not ashamed to acknowledge God, who are not ashamed to acknowledge his law and his power, who are not ashamed to acknowledge his authority, nor afraid to submit to his laws.
How extensive has this union to be? and who understands anything about correct principles—how to put in order things that are wrong, and straighten up the crooked paths? ”

“ Finally, and most important, we must recognize that no other institution can take the place of the Christian church as a source of those ideals of life which give religious sanction to loyalty to the common good—to the community—rather than to self or particular interests. ”

“ It is possible to have a Church which shall make it its purpose to educate the whole man—spirit, soul, and body; and not merely the spirit; to present the human being to God perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
It is possible to have a Church which shall combine union and freedom. The Roman Church, aiming at union, and neglecting freedom, has a union which is no real union; which is an outward shell of conformity, without inward unity of heart and thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To every social gathering around the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance in the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual adaptation of laws, customs, morality, and institutions! ”

“ We need our moral force, our Catholic spirit, our sense of equality with our neighbors, in order to accomplish much of the good that is before us in both the social and the religious sphere. It will help this spirit of noble independence to become familiar with the history of our church in this country and of its unique achievements. ”

“ If you realize the true nature of this prayer which you have often prayed, when President Young, or any of the authorities of this Church would tell you to do anything, it would be done. When this is so, there will be that kind of union we have a right to look for and expect; then the will of God will be done with us as it is done by the angels in heaven; and whenever this kingdom shall extend over all the earth, the will of God will be done over all the earth as it is done in heaven; and there will be one government, one law, one spirit of truth, of light, and of intelligence. ”

“ And since the Church alone has, through the grace of God, received the means necessary to realize such end, she has her fixed laws, special spheres of action, and a certain method, fixed and conformable to her nature, of governing Christian peoples. But the exercise of such governing power is difficult, and leaves room for numberless conflicts, inasmuch as the Church rules peoples scattered through every portion of the earth, differing in race and customs, who, living under the sway of the laws of their respective countries, owe obedience alike to the civil and religious authorities. ”

“ We Christians are often taunted with our differences, and we are assured that many will support any scheme that makes for union and peace between the different elements of the Christian world. Here is a scheme which will tend to bring Christians together, and to induce that mutual respect and toleration which must be the foundation of a closer union. ”

“ It is organized religion that here makes its claim to fealty, as organized liberty, organized justice do, in man's communal life. There is a joint and general consent in the masses of men with similar experience united into the Church, with respect to the religious way of life, similar to that of such masses united into a government with respect to secular things. ”

“ How far that part of the system of supporting religion in America, which appeals to the pride and public spirit of the citizens, in erecting and maintaining religious institutions on a respectable footing, in towns, cities, and villages, and among rival sects—and in this manner operating as a species of constraint—is worthy to be called voluntary, we pretend not to say. ”

“ This kind of unity without liberty, or compulsory religious unity conceived as an instrument of social control and as essential to political stability, was the expression of a social philosophy which was carried over from medieval Roman Catholic Europe to the modern European nations, both Catholic and Protestant. The idea of unity as an important characteristic of the church did not need to be invented 16 or even discovered in modern times. ”

“ Many modern notions of Christian unity seem to proceed on the same line. The assent to a certain credal basis, the meeting in great Catholic conventions, the exchange of pulpits—these seem to exhaust the conceptions of large numbers, and to satisfy their ideal. But surely there is a bond of union deeper, holier, more vital and more blessed than any of these, which shyly reveals itself, now and again, in one or more of them, but is independent of all, and when all of them are wanting, still constitutes us one. ”

“ It must also be recognized that until the two great branches of the Christian Church—Catholicism and Protestantism—learn to cooperate in their service to the community, the religious forces of America cannot present a united front in rendering the service that belongs peculiarly to them. ”

“ Thus we see for the first time in history bodies of men and women banded together, irrespective of nationality and social rank, for the purpose of religious observances, and religion becoming recognized as the affair of the individual rather than of the state, while each member of the association was directly interested in its extension. ”

“ Side by side also with the great political communities, and sheltered within them by the common law and drawn together by a stronger than political brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the practice of the new forms of worship which came in with foreign commerce, and for the expression in a common worship of the religious feelings which the public religion did not satisfy. ”

“ The Evangelical and the Roman Catholic Churches, as well as all other religious societies, may administer and regulate their affairs in perfect freedom. All religious societies may continue in the possession and enjoyment of their institutions, foundations, and funds destined for worship, instruction, and charity. ”

“ Now, association has been at all times one of the favorite principles of Catholicity, which, by proclaiming unity in faith, proclaims unity in all things. If we examine the religious institutions characteristic of Europe in its darkest period of ignorance, corruption, and social dissolution, we observe that the monks of the west were not content with sanctifying themselves; from the first they influenced society. Society had need of strong efforts to preserve its life in the terrible crisis through which it had to pass. ”

“ There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who form the Church to which the writer belongs than that they should be enabled to live at peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. ”

“ An effort in 1865 to bring the right and left wings of the body into a closer confederation with a more pronounced profession of Christianity led to the formation of a Free Religious Association on the broad basis of the love of truth and goodness. ”

“ This idea is necessarily common to all who profess to hold Catholic principles in the Anglican communion. The profession of the doctrine of unity in one, visible, Catholic Church, of itself qualifies the isolation of any body of Christians from the great Christian family, as an anomalous and irregular condition. A return to unity or union of some kind must necessarily become an object of desire and effort. ”

“ What a splendid and perdurable creation is not the glorious union of Church and State—a church regulated by fixed rules of divine origin, deriving influence and beauty from its connection with the secular government ”

“ In efforts to promote the spirit of Christian union, it is always advised that we look for the things that we hold in common—the things that make us Christians, rather than those which make us of this or that church party. In seeking to advance national good feeling, may we not wisely pursue something of the same course? ”

“ To obtain completely the benefits proposed from this union of civil and ecclesiastical authority, all the members of the same community should be members also of the same church; variety of sects having a natural tendency both to weaken the influence of public religion, and to give disturbance to the public peace. ”

“ That they who ought to have the most confident faith in the spiritual forces of the Church, and whose own experience affords ample proof that that faith would not be misplaced, should cling the most tenaciously to the union with the State, with all its painful and compromising conditions, is surely a strange phenomenon. ”

“ The coexistence of such states demanded in its turn the general acceptance of certain common moral ties and standards among a group of neighboring peoples; and such a tie was furnished by the religious bond with which Catholic Christianity united the peoples of Western Europe—a bond whereby the disorder and anarchy of the early Middle Ages was converted into a vehicle of political and social education. The members of the Christian body had much to fear from their fellow-Christians, but they also had much to gain. ”

“ As the feeling of union became stronger, so did the necessity for common worship of the gods, and the state-cult came into being primarily as the repetition on behalf of the community as a whole of the worship which its members performed separately in their households or as joint-worshippers in the fields. ”