It is a sequel to the Catholicism of the Church that the unity of her members has not necessitated their uniformity; racial cultures have been strengthened by the acceptance of a common faith, and English like French or Irish or Italian types are still most distinctively national when most deeply Catholic. The history of the great religious orders affords a parallel, for the common end to which they are directed, the common faith that has created them and the bond of priesthood, have yet enabled them to maintain a full individuality. The greatest of their saints are those who most incarnate the particular spirit of each order. For they have found their perfection in the fulfilment of God’s will, and God's will has been fulfilled in their obedience, an obedience to tradition as well as to command, an acceptance of custom as well as of written law. Each of the greater religious orders has therefore possessed its own school of spirituality. For “spirituality” is but a clumsy term for the conscious following of a way to God.

Yet it would seem puerile to discuss which order and which tradition in spirituality is the more perfect in the concrete. Each retains the possibility of corruption and each will mirror in its finite contrasted achievement the infinite unity of God, since each will be perfect in so far as it participates in the divine and yet remain inevitably separate in so far as it is participant; “quod in Deo est simpliciter et uniformiter in creaturis est multipliciter et divisim.”