NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) — Unlike efforts at national unity in the United States, church unity does not depend on “bringing people’s diversity into something of an artificial harmony that seeks to minimize the uniqueness and distinctiveness of people,” Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta said May 7 at a national meeting on cultural diversity.

“The Catholic Church on the contrary focuses upon what we all share in common, which is our faith and our oneness in Christ,” the archbishop said in his homily at a Mass for participants in the Catholic Cultural Diversity Network Convocation.

“To be a Catholic, one need not abandon one’s individuality,” he added. “In fact, the Catholic Church is more perfectly herself when all of her children display that rich diversity that God has fashioned into the very heart of humanity. We are most Catholic when we reflect our oneness of faith and worship that is achieved in response to our rich mixture of human variety through the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

Speaking in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, Archbishop Gregory said that because both the church and the United States are made up of “so many people of different races and cultures, each representing various economic conditions, diverse sociological categories and ethnic groups,” some are tempted to “draw too close a parallel of our national political struggle for unity in this great country with the challenges that have always faced our Catholic Church.”