Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

“Christianity is the universal solvent, in which all opposites are required to give up their previous affinities, no matter how old and stubborn, and flow together in a new combination, pervaded with harmony only and light at every point.” (1)

“The Church is one and universal. Her unity is essential to her existence. Particular Christians, and particular congregations, and particular religious denominations, can be true to themselves, only as they stand in the full, free sense of this thought, and make it the object of their calling to fulfil [sic.] its requisitions.” (2)

“Unity does not exclude the idea of difference and multiplicity. Indeed, it is only by means of these, that it can ever appear under an actual concrete form.” (2)

“It is the duty of all then, to consider and lay to heart the evil that is comprehended in the actual disunion and division, which now prevail in the Catholic Church, I say Catholic Church; because the one Spirit of Christ is supposed to pervade the whole body, notwithstanding this vast defect, binding it together through all parts of the world with the force of a common life.” (10)

“The church ought to be visibly one and catholic, as she is one and catholic in her inward life; and the want of such unity, as it appears in the present state of the protestant world, with its rampant sectarianism and individualism, ‘is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation,’ until of God’s mercy the sore reproach be rolled away.” (10)

“The union of the Church in any case, is not to be established by stratagem or force. To be valid, it must be free, the spontaneous product of Christian knowledge and Christian love.” (13)

“Then it is the duty of the church… to observe and improve all opportunities, by which it is made possible in any measure from time to time, to advance in a visible way the interest of catholic unity.” (15)