Religion—Has It the Key to Unity?

THERE are so many books on psychology, one might say tons of them, yet what help have they been? Judging by the mess the world is in they might just as well not have been written.” Thus complained a well-read Moslem, living in Brooklyn, to the witness of Jehovah that was visiting him. And how right he is!

It is strange that so obvious a deduction should elude so many persons. Blinded by the fallacious theory of their idol, Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, they think that all that is necessary to solve man’s problems is knowledge per se; that, and getting rid of religion. Indicative of how wrong their idol was is the fact that never before has man had so much knowledge regarding sex and yet never has he been more in bondage to it than in our day.

What psychologists are only recently beginning to appreciate is that the Bible’s stress on love is sound; that love is indispensable to successful and harmonious living and that love is the opposite of selfishness in any form, including sex for passion’s sake.

Who can furnish this key of love that will unite mankind? Can religion? Yes, says William B. O’Brien, priest of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. His church “is the only living force capable of harnessing the divisive, rending energies of mankind. Here are the refreshing waters to quench man’s thirst for unity and brotherhood—all men drawn within the family of [Christ’s] church.”—New York Times, June 10, 1957.

If O’Brien’s church has the key for uniting men and bringing about brotherhood why does Catholic politician time and again throw mud at Catholic politician? Why does Catholic labor strike against Catholic capital? Why do millions of Catholics seek to destroy one another, as in World War II, if their church, and she only, is able to harness the divisive energies of mankind?

Of course, the Catholic Church is not the only one in Christendom against which this charge can be raised. She is only here used as an example because of the claim of one of her spokesmen. Any religion unable to unite its devotees cannot have the key for uniting mankind. Is there a religion that by its fruits gives evidence of having that key? Yes, there is. The peace and harmony within the New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses gives proof that its religion has that key.