The Catholic Bond
SIR,-The issue of unity is becoming a dominant one for those parts of the world which are Christian and those peoples who are not afraid to carry out their responsibilities towards Christian civilisation.
The principle of unity has a universal application and an inescapable significance, therefore, for every individual and the societies and nations to which they belong. In advocating "a reasoned movement towards national unity and harmony in a spirit of genuine brotherhood" Pope Pius XII said in a famous Christmas message: "Peoples whose spiritual character is sufficiently healthy and fertile can produce and give to the world heralds and instruments of democracy who live in such conditions and are able to put ahem into practice. But where such men are lacking others will take their place, only to make politics an arena for their ambition, a race-course where the prize is profit for themselves, for their class, or for their caste; and in the pursuit of particular and sectional interests the true common good is lost to sight and imperilled."
In its social and political aspect the movement towards unity in Ireland is simply an acknowledgment and an affirmation of the fact that the bond which unites us in the most fundamental way possible is that supernatural principle of unity which is defined in the Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi.
As a people we are probably the most basically united and homogeneous community in existence. Our 'unity is, above all, a spiritual unity, i.e., Christian unity. Let us beware of any "realism" which either fails or refuses to recognise the reality of this unity and the obligations it imposes on US.
The realism we need is that which seeks to express the spirit of the principle of unity of our social, economic, political and cultural life, as we do in our religious life.
Attempts on the part of commentators and writers to discredit this kind of unity; to confuse it with the amalgamation of political parties; or to substitute for it a secular "unity" will not succeed. Our political future will, please God, be shaped by those young Irish men and women who arc devoting themselves to the study, the propagation and the implementation of the social teaching of the Church.
Bull Clancy,
Chairman, The Unity Movement