People sometimes honk and give a thumbs-up when they pass me on the highway. They might think my personalized licensed plate, UNITAS, makes me a fellow fan of the legendary NFL quarterback. Perhaps I need to plaster a sticker above it: Latin for “Unity”
In any case, unitas is heavy on my mind today as we begin the Octave for Church Unity, begun under Pope St. Pius X in 1909. It has devolved into an annual opportunity for kumbaya handholding in the modern Church, but oh! how the old prayers stir one’s soul. I’m unable to find an online version of the original prayers, politically incorrect by today’s standards, but you can find them in this month’s Benedictus, available by subscription from Sophia Institute Press.
Imagine praying these words to Our Lady, Help of Christians, in the typical Novus Ordo setting:
“To thee we entrust our firm purpose of never joining assembles of heretics. Do thou, all holy, offer to thy Divine Son our resolutions, and obtain from Him the graces necessary for us to keep them unto the end.”
Choreographed by modernists, the Church’s quest for unity has become a process of finding common ground upon which we can “dialogue”, “include” and “accompany” rather than serving as beacons of Truth for the One True Faith. We place our lights under bushels and call it ecumenism. A perfect example is found in this report in The Catholic Missourian, which prompted me to write Stumbling toward Unity at Catholic365.
Incidentally, Johnny Unitas was a Roman Catholic with the middle name of Constantine and a faith-inspiring life. If people like my license plate because of that, I won’t mind at all.
showmecatholics.org 