Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

228 Corporate Re-union.
when there were not both schisms and heresies,
and if therefore the existence of the latter could
impair the Unity of the Catholic Church, there
never would have been a Catholic Church on
earth, and the profession in the Apostles Creed
"I believe in the Holy Catholic Church" would
have been but the utterance of a falsehood.
On the other hand heresies and schisms cannot
form a portion of the Catholic Church, for if
so they would cease to be what they are
heresies and schisms. The Catholic Church, or
the Kingdom of Heaven, is compared by our
LORD to a tree, very small at first, but which
in its after-growth was to fill the whole earth.
Now when the violence of the tempest, or any
other cause, severed from this goodly tree any
of its branches, the tree itself remained what it
was before a tree but maimed in its pro
portions. The severed branch would lose its
connexion with the tree, but the tree itself would
neither lose its life nor its original properties.
No Catholic, therefore, in advocating the Cor
porate Re-union of any divided branch of
Christians with the parent stock, ever dreams of
restoring Unity to the Catholic Church, for she
has never lost it, but he does believe that such
a Re-union would restore Catholicity to any such
divided branch.
Again the Catholic advocate of Corporate
Re-union is sometimes accused of a wish to