[…]
To begin with, it is not our task to do the work of the churches. No one need look to us for a “firm dogmatic basis”. What I inferred in the article from which he quoted was that the churches, even including the Roman church, were unsatisfactory. […]
* […] We do not need to be a church to do that; for there is an authority as universal as the Church and above it, a witness to truth, which those who who have never heard of the Church have as certainly as the saints themselves, that is, the individual conscience. What we have to do, all of us, is to act by the light of conscience, and there is nothing better that we can do than that. […] And conscience is in all men, it is that which makes them men, so that no matter where or when they live, or how deep ignorance theirs may be, there is always enough light to enable them to know what to do.
*
[…]
We do not depend upon the churches to be able to say that. We expect them, however, to say it themselves. Unless they do, we do not need them.
Article Informations
The Editor in Person, “Do We Need Churches?”, New Britain, March 14, 1934, 512