|3.50 

..TCMITW 



The Church's Mission 
in the World 

By LOUIS and ANDRE RET IF 

TRANSLATED BY REGINALD F. TREVETT 

The Church must answer the especial chal- 
lenge of each new age or it will not continue 
to flourish. And nowhere is this more true 
than when it attempts to fulfill the words of 
Christ: "Go therefore and teach all nations." 
Fathers Andre and Louis Retif here re-define 
the nature of the modern challenge and the 
new responses of the Church. 

No longer can missionaries follow Western 
colonists into mission lands. Too often have 
the newly emergent nations of the world 
identified the missioners with an alien cul- 
ture. And in rejecting the old imperialism, 
they have tended to reject Christianity as well. 

The modern missionary must belong to the 
particular world he is to evangelize. Proto- 
types appear in the persons of Teilhard de 
Ghardin and Charles de Foucatild. Father 

(continued on hack flap) 
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Retif 

The church f s mission in the 

world 



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Retif $3*50 

The church f s mission in the 
world 




DATE DUE 



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'CGHOlK 



5y HENRI DANIEL-ROPS of the Academic Frangaise 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 
IN THE WORLD 

By LOUIS and ANDRE RETIF 

Translated from the French by REGINALD F. TREVETT 



HAWTHORN BOOKS PUBLISHERS New York 



Copyright 1962 by Hawthorn Books, Inc., 70 Fifth Avenue, New 
York City 11. Copyright under International and Pan-American Copy- 
right Conventions. Philippines Copyright 1962 by Hawthorn Books, 
Inc. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, 
or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief 
quotations in a review. This book was manufactured in the United 
States of America and published simultaneously in Canada by McClel- 
land & Stewart, Ltd., 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 16. It was originally 
published in France under the title Pour une feglise en <6tat de Mission, 
Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1961. The Library of Congress has 
catalogued the Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism under 
card number 58-14327. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 
for this volume: 62-11414. The Catholic University of America has 
catalogued this volume based qn the Lynn-Peterson Alternative 
Classification for Catholic Books: BQT184.T9v.102/BQT 322.R43. 
Suggested decimal classification: 261. 



First Edition, April, 1962 

NTfflL OBSTAT 

Daniel Duivesteijn, S.T.D. 
Censor Deputatus 

IMPRIMATUR 

E. Morrogh Bernard 

Vicarius Generalis 
Westmonasterii, die xxm JANUARH MCMLXH 



The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet 
is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that 
those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents 
opinions, or statements expressed. wuai, 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 7 
PART I: THE WORLD'S NEW AGE 

I. SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF 

MIGRATION 19 

Technology and Man 20 

Civilization and Migration 23 

II. MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN 

AWARENESS 28 
The Dimensions of Contemporary Conscious- 
ness 30 
Stages and States of Awareness 32 
The Values of the Modern World and the 

Christian Faith 35 
The Fundamental Values of Work and of Inter- 
national Life 38 

PART II: AN EXCEPTIONAL MISSIONARY SITUATION 

III. THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPO- 
RARY MOVEMENTS 45 

A World Standing on Its Own Feet 46 

Religious Revivals and Nationalism 49 

Our Handicaps 53 

Countries in Course of Development 57 

The World of Science and Technology 59 

The World of Workers Is a Missionary Field 62 

IV. DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND 
ATHEISM 66 

Dechristianization and Non-Christianization 67 



The Desacralization of Our Institutions 73 
Atheism as a Factor in Civilization 78 
The Religious Meaning of the Marxist Phe- 
nomenon 82 

PART III: A NEW MISSIONARY ERA 

V. THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 89 

The Mission and Catholicity 93 
A Turning-Point in the Church's Missionary 

Task 95 

The Foreign and the Home Missions 97 

The Problems of Foreign Missions 99 

VI. THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME 

MISSION 102 
Towards a Pastoral Method Adapted to Our 

Times 110 

Missionary Parishes 111 
The Liturgical Movement and Missionary 

Effort 115 

Operation "Charity" and the Mission 116 

The Cafl to Missionary Work 118 

CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 123 

The Third Revolution 126 

The Struggle in the Church 129 
The Living Organisms of the Church: Priests 

and Laity 133 

A New World Needs a New Mission 136 
Towards a Priesthood Which Can Face the 

Challenge of Our Time 138 

A Cgllegiate Episcopate 143 

Towards the Mission: The Preliminaries 144 

A New Type of Apostle: "The Premissionary" 146 
The Premission in the Future: the Advent of 

the Nations 152 

Beyond the Diagnosis of the Sociologists 154 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 



INTRODUCTION 



We cannot do better than begin with two quotations from the 
late Cardinal Suhard: 

Today the Church asks two things of us: broad-minded 
thinking and rapid thinking. Broad-minded: our thought is to 
be as wide as the world. Do not be content to follow others, 
take the lead. Do not be only disciples, be masters. It is not 
enough to imitate, you must be inventors. But if you are to do 
this, and here I use all the emphasis I can, you must think 
quickly. The times are gone when culture was distilled drop 
by drop in the alchemist's cell or in the peaceful libraries 
of the cloister. We have discovered speed, but it has broken 
away from us and now we have to run after it. We have 
started a movement nd we do not know when nor where 
it will stop. The only thing we are sure of is that it becomes 
faster and faster and that its dimensions alone take our breath 
away (Semaine des Intellectuals Catholiques, 1948). 

Do not be afraid of becoming less Christian the more human 
you are. Each new conquest over the world is a province 
you are annexing to the universal domain of Christ the King. 
The pope's orders are clear: The Church cannot shut herself 
away and remain inert in the confines of her places of worship 
and so abandon the mission entrusted to her by Divine Provi- 
dence, the formation of the whole man. 

We must go to it, we must get to work. Do not stand idle 
amid the ruins. We know what we have to do. We must 
not only be present in the world. We must work for its 
progress. I charge you then: go forward, work to build a new 
world. Whether it is to be Christian or not depends on you 
(Pastoral Letter, Essor ou declin de I'Eglise). 

These appeals are now more than ever those of the whole 
Church and they are enough to justify this book by a parish 
priest and a student of the missions on the present state of 



8 INTRODUCTION 

the work of evangelization. Further, the fact that an Ecumeni- 
cal Council is to meet and that it should be a landmark in 
the history of the Church undoubtedly gives this attempt at a 
diagnosis a particularly relevant character. 

The exceptional speed of historical development forces us 
to recognize that today more than ever, in the Church and 
outside her, men's minds in general lag behind their insti- 
tutions and their institutions lag behind the problems of the 
day. This twofold time lag gives the Church today a double 
task. She has to encourage an evolution in the minds of 
Christians as they face the missionary situation in the modern 
world, and she has to provide with speed eccleciastical insti- 
tutions adapted to the needs of the time. To use Cardinal 
Suhard's words, she has to "organize herself on a missionary 
basis". 

A quick glance at the changing aspect of the contemporary 
world will make it possible to approach the vast problem of 
the present missionary prospects of the Church. All we can 
do here however is to provide a rough sketch of their general 
outline. 

The characteristic feature of the evolution of mankind to- 
day would seem to be its increasing momentum and its 
world-wide dimensions. The six last decades have produced 
more upheavals than the six preceding centuries, and no 
doubt the next ten years will provide us with numerous 
surprises. 1 

Man can travel faster than the speed of sound. The pilot- 
less teleguided or autoguided plane does away with the 

:L Jf we wish to have a better idea of this increased momentum in 
the evolution of thought and technology, we have only to realize that 
any average man who died only thirty years ago knew nothing of 
what is conveyed to us by a list of words as familiar and as varied as: 
jet plane, radar, sound barrier, jeep, prefabricated house, refrigerator, 
guided missiles, nylon, triplex glass, bulldozer, electric typewriter, 
cinemascope, colour television, micro-groove, frequency modulation, 
musique concrete, transistor, automatic coupling, penicillin, frozen 
vegetables, washing machine, atomic bomb, etc. 



INTRODUCTION 9 

hazard of human failings in this journey through space. The 
era of artificial satellites has now begun and the way is open 
for rivalry between the nations in the conquest of inter- 
planetary space, while the radiotelescope, as one astronomer 
maintains, will soon be able to reach the furthest limits of 
the universe, and the electronic microscope with its two wave- 
lengths makes possible a magnification of 26 million times 
and a photograph of the atom. The sea has been explored to 
a depth of 10,000 metres, and the Nautilus uses atomic energy 
to sail under the waters of the ocean and the ice of the Pole. 
Man is winning his race against time and space in his daily 
life, automation is about to revolutionize to a considerable 
extent the conditions of work, although it is not possible to 
foresee its repercussions on the lives of the workers. 2 One 
mechanic driving a bulldozer makes it do the work of three 
hundred labourers. Calculating machines and electronic brains 
are constantly perfected and are already able to perform 
operations which yesterday's calculators would never have 
believed possible. 

Over the past 150 years technical progress has increasingly 
shaken to its foundations the framework of the Western 
world and it promises an era of staggering upheavals in the 
future. There exists no theoretical limit to human power. 
Even death may be challenged. Technology has taken the 
place of biological evolution. 

"The world", said Einstein to Abbe Pierre, "is being shaken 
by three explosions: atomic, biological and psychological." 

The first of these may only be in its initial stages, never- 
theless it has had a profoundly disturbing effect on the con- 
ditions of human life. The second also gives man a terrible 
power; he can use it but he does not know what its repercus- 
sions are. Biological discoveries affect the most secret and the 

2 In the U.S.A., fourteen automatic machines produce ninety per 
cent of the production of electric bulbs, television and radio valves, 
and each machine is supervised by one man. 



10 INTRODUCTION 

most carefully protected vital forces. 3 The third (the explora- 
tion of the unconscious, the development of the techniques 
of social psychology, the perfecting of drags that have a 
chemical action on the physical bases of the human psyche) 
offers promises of deliverance and threats of enslavement of 
primordial importance at a time when psychic problems are 
becoming increasingly grave. 

Fr Dubarle, after the first flights made by artificial satel- 
lites, declared: "Science has completed its own revolution. It 
is now revolutionizing man/' He intended in this way to point 
out the active link between science and the daily life of man- 
kind on a world-wide scale. 

The entirely new fact in our time is the increasing effect on 
everybody of a power which up till now affected only limited 
sectors of the human race. Everybody is now plunged so to 
speak in a bath of technology and science Science there- 
fore is of universal relevance to man, it takes root in his life, 
is his servant; but it also modifies society, mental attitudes, 
mass psychology, men's way of life. 

We cannot close our eyes to the fact that this evolution 
with its ever-increasing speed, reaching every part of the 
world, thanks in particular to modern communications and 
such sound and visual techniques as radio and television, 
will alter the whole human condition. As a result of this new 

3 Surgery has an immense future before it. We have already read in 
the newspapers of the operation for "blue" babies, the methods for 
reviving the beating of the heart, painless childbirth, deep freeze, 
plastic surgery, leucotomy, the artificial lung, the grafting of the ear- 
drum, surgery without the use of the lancet which is replaced by con- 
verging beams of highly charged ultrasonic waves. 

Scientists such as Jean Rostand provide us with hints of develop- 
ments that could not even have been imagined twenty years ago: 
"In the near future, our own children will be material for experiment. 
Their sex will be' predetermined; by the use of supplementary hor- 
mones they will be given a physical and moral personality We 

may well be near the day when children will be born without a father. 
. . . There is reason for man to be enthusiastic and proud of himself, 
we are justified in adopting a completely optimistic view, the future 
will be full of wonders. Unlimited progress lies ahead." 



INTRODUCTION 11 

situation there is a broadening of personal life and a general 
level of existence which could not have been even imagined 
only thirty years ago. 

True, this wealth of knowledge is far from being the 
common property of all .the nations: the standard of living 
offered by industrial techniques is far from being universally 
achieved. But it is nevertheless a fact that the popularization 
of scientific knowledge is making the masses, whether in 
France or in Russia, familiar with a new way of thinking 
and understanding. Science and technology bring pictures 
and music, news and catchwords into the home where they 
impregnate and transform man's thinking and his existence. 
The policy of the heads of State in Iraq, Ghana and Ethiopia, 
etc., also aims at giving their peoples a standard of life 
which will be the outcome of a technological civilization 
henceforth universal. 

This progress of mankind towards world unity and the 
mastery of the universe is not without its quota of difficulties 
and sufferings. This crisis in the process of growth is unprece- 
dented in history and has been described many times during 
the past few years: 

Our world is threatened by a crisis whose dimensions seem 
to escape those who have the power to take great decisions 
either for good or ill. The unleashed power of the atom has 
changed everything except our ways of thinking and we are 
slipping towards unprecedented catastrophes. If mankind is to 
survive, a new kind of thought is essential. 

This solemn warning of Einstein's in April, 1954, is echoed 
by Pius XII in his 1956 Christmas message. Reminding us 
of the contradictions in human nature he said: 

A flagrant contradiction weighs down upon the human race 
in the twentieth century and is like a wound to its pride. 
On the one hand there is this confidence in modern man as 
the author and the spectator of a superabundance of riches, 
and freed from poverty and insecurity. On the other hand, 
there is the bitter reality of the long years of war and of ruin 
together with the fear to which it gives rise. . . . Will modern 



12 INTRODUCTION 

man succeed in resolving, and first and foremost in his own 
depths, the agonizing contradiction of which he is both the 
author and the victim? 

Yet in spite of the uncertainties which weigh down upon 
man's evolution, and even through the vicissitudes of a 
crisis in Ms growth, the movement which urges man onward is 
irreversible and universal. The progress of technology is 
hastening the process of unification between the nations and 
a general levelling of ways of life. The nations are already 
linked in an international organization which safeguards the 
independence of each of its members, and they seem to be 
anxious to form supra-national groups even if this means 
a partial surrender of their own autonomy. 

But what is taking shape as a result of this obscure inter- 
penetration? How are we today to descry the characteristics 
of the man of the future; the channels into which man's 
energies will flow once they are freed by the automatization 
of work and social relationships; the cultural demands of the 
"age of leisure" which lies over our horizon? The most we 
can do is to glimpse some of the main outlines. Thus Canon 
Laloup during the twenty-ninth Semaine de Missiologie de 
Louvain attempted to define the humanism of tomorrow: 

For a long time to come the exact sciences will continue 
to be the fine point of the world's intellectual culture. It is, 
however, unlikely that their diffusion will itself do away with 
the pseudo-philosophical pretensions in them which have been 
only too well known. Gradually in our Western countries, they 
are becoming recognized as a useful instrument of knowledge 
and not as a general explanation of the universe and of man- 
kind. In the ancient civilizations of Asia, to take another 
example, they will encounter (and they already do so) mystical 
and philosophical conceptions which do not take at all kindly 
to exaggerated scientific claims and to positivism. The cul- 
tured Indian and Chinese will be slower to fall for the, temp- 
tation offered by "science, the ultimate key to all mysteries". 

No one knows what the human race, now in the process of 
a profound transformation, will eventually be like but, if we 



INTRODUCTION 13 

are accurately to assess the religious, phenomenon in the 
twentieth century, we must bear in mind the possible course 
of the race's evolution in the constantly changing context of 
our times. 

This- awareness of the unity of the race is developing in 
the historical context of a widespread disbelief, so that the 
unity in the process of formation appears as a challenge to 
the catholicity of the Church. 

The movement towards unification in the institutions and 
mentality of the modern world involves a refusal of God and 
denies that the Church has a mission to reconcile men with 
each other in the name of Jesus Christ. It claims that without 
God's help it will build the new Tower of Babel which will 
crown man's work, and that man will owe his salvation to no 
one but himself. 

The world-wide character of contemporary paganism thus 
denies the universality of the Church in both the sociological 
and the geographical spheres, as we shall see in the following 
chapters. According to Adrien Dansette, Catholicism is losing 
some of its Catholicity and the religious potential of mankind 
now meets a massive and blunt refusal on the part of the 
proletariat and the young nationalist movements overseas. 

If we are to understand the Church's answer to the challenge 
from the nations, we must first restate the nature of the 
Church's Catholicity. "This gospel of the kingdom must first 
be preached all over the world, so that all nations may hear 
the truth" (Matt. 24. 14, cf. Mark 13. 10 and 14. 15; Matt. 27. 
19; Acts 1.8). 

This universal work of the Church began at Pentecost as 
a mission entrusted by Christ on his own authority to the 
first apostles, so that the Good News might be brought to the 
whole world. 4 And at the first Council Peter declared that 

*The manifestation of the Church's universality has always been 
linked with the historical development of a human race growing 
gradually more aware of itself, but Catholicity, as a mark of the 
Church, is a gift of God and belongs to the realm of faith. We must 



14 INTRODUCTION 

God had not treated the Gentiles differently from the Jews 
since he had given the Holy Spirit to the former as well as 
to the children of the chosen people (Acts 15. 7-9). 

"You are to be my witnesses ... to the ends of the earth." 
And St Paul travelled resolutely to the Mediterranean limits 
of the then known world. It is not without significance that the 
Acts of the Apostles ends with his death in Rome. From 
Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, to pagan Rome the Gospel 
was preached during the first Christian generation and the 
mission was in full process of fulfilment. Paul could write 
with legitimate pride to the Romans: "But, tell me, did the 
news never come to them? Why, yes; the utterance fills every 
land, the message reaches the ends of the world" (Rom. 
10. 18). 

"You, therefore, must go out, making disciples of all 
nations" (Matt. 28. 19). At each period of history the Church 
is thus commanded as the Body of Christ to perform the 
essential task of evangelizing the non-Christian world so that 
the salvation already wrought by Jesus Christ but not yet fully 
manifested may be brought to all men. 

"No more Jew or Gentile, no more slave and freeman, no 
more male and female; you are all one person in Jesus Christ" 
(Gal. 3. 28). Christ alone, by freeing men from sin, achieves 
the universal solidarity of a human race called to enter the 
family of the Father himself. This is why the Church has a 
duty to go to all mankind and to affect the whole personality 
of every man. She is to be the Church of every nation and of 
every race. Her Catholicity is both geographical and interior. 
Baptism is Christ's grip upon all that is human and he takes 
it to himself for the glory of the Holy Trinity. Throughout 
her history the Church, faithful to her essential mission, has 
gone forth, as we shall see, to meet the non-Christian peoples 
and to preach Jesus Christ to them. But her missionary pro- 

never confuse these two levels any more than we do the evolution 
of mankind and that of God's people, the evolution which leads a 
divided human race to become conscious of its unity and that which 
is concerned with the increase of God's kingdom. 



INTRODUCTION 15 

ject in the face of very varied historical circumstances has not 
always been crowned with the same success. 

Today a new world with a deeply rooted character of its 
own meets this missionary project with an unqualified refusal. 
The traditionally Catholic powers of the West have lost their 
political leadership in the secular sphere at the time when the 
evolution of increasingly efficient technical inventions has 
brought into existence a community of peoples on a world- 
wide scale. The universal awakening of nationalist aspirations 
in the underdeveloped countries has disturbed the balance of 
power among the nations. Paganism is on the increase in 
every continent. It finds its allies either in rational material- 
ism or in a practical materialism which has a corrosive effect 
on those minorities which have remained Christian. 

There is therefore a religious crisis which affects not only 
Catholicism but the religions of the world as a whole, while 
the masses of every country in the process of expansion show 
a growing interest in Marxism which they consider far more 
effective. On the other hand, among the elites who have 
been led to reassess traditional values, there is an obvious 
religious reawakening, their faith is undergoing a process of 
purification, there is a return to its living sources, a deepen- 
ing understanding of Revelation. Fr Maydieu calls this "the 
spiritual 'mutation' of the world". The Church borne along 
by a world in the process of unification finds herself of neces- 
sity obliged more than ever to examine her own "Catholic" 
vocation, 5 to treat her missionary work with the utmost 
seriousness. 

5 "The first opportunity is perhaps offered by the kind of compul- 
sion we experience as a global world evolves and expands. It forces 
us to face the hard facts of the purely relative historical and geo- 
graphical character of the institutions and of the neutrality which I 
have previously described as Constantinian. The way the world is 
moving obliges the Church to be catholic in the literal sense of the 
word. The very word 'catholic' is recovering its original sense of 
'universal' instead of remaining confined within the 'Catholic-Protes- 
tanf pair of opposites. The latter is still valid but today its import- 
ance is outweighed by the urgent need for the Church to be universal" 
(Fr Chenu, O.P.). 



16 INTRODUCTION 

There are signs that this preoccupation with the missions 
is present in the contemporary Church. Among the most 
significant events affecting the Catholicity of the Church, we 
may point out the encyclical Fidel Donum and the Ecu- 
menical Council. 

Pius XII's encyclical Fidel Donum, while calling attention 
to the evangelization of Africa, reminded the bishops of the 
reality of the apostolic succession and of their collegiate 
responsibility in communion with the Vicar of Christ for the 
Christianization of the world. "Although each bishop is the 
pastor properly speaking only of that portion of the flock 
entrusted to his care, yet in his capacity as a legitimate suc- 
cessor of the apostles by divine institution, he is responsible 
for the apostolic mission of the Church." 

The Ecumenical Council summoned by John XXIII has 
been called the most important religious event of modern 
times. This at least is the opinion of those who see beyond 
the interest that will be aroused by the 2,800 bishops of the 
whole world assembled together, and who know what im- 
mense hope may be awakened in the human race by a Church 
which, as John XXIII himself has said, will be revealed to 
men in all her splendour. The Council is a challenge to us 
all, so true is it that, in the final analysis, its ultimate effect 
depends on an upsurge of faith in all believers. 

At the heart of this question, in this interplanetary age, 
there is at stake the discovery of how the Church, in a world 
in the full flood of an industrial revolution and in the pride of 
its discoveries in the field of nature and in the universe itself, 
will preach the Good News of that salvation whose Alpha 
and Omega is Jesus Christ. 



PARTI 



THE WORLD'S NEW AGE 



CHAPTER I 



SOCIALIZATION AND 

THE PHENOMENON 

OF MIGRATION 



Before we return to the typically missionary situation existing 
today, we must attempt to grasp the character of the new 
cultural world both in its institutions and its awareness. We 
shall confine ourselves to the phenomena of socialization and 
migration as characteristic of a period in which changes are 
taking place at an increasing speed. 

The industrial era speeds up a process of socialization 
whose effects on human personality are considerable. 1 Socia- 
lization must not be confused with collectivism in the eco- 
nomic sphere or with political socialism. By socialization we 
mean the general movement of the human race fulfilling its 
potentialities by means of corporate organizations such as 
family movements, distributive companies, institutions and 
the State. 

Whether for the purposes of organizing and defending a 
trade or profession, for the encouragement of culture and of 
adequate leisure, whether the group in question offers a free 
choice (associations, trade unions) or is obligatory (member- 

1 "The socialization to which mankind seems summoned does not 
in any sense mean the end of the era of the human person upon the 
earth but rather its beginning" (Teilhard de Chardin, UAvenir de 
I'homme, p. 75). 



20 SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 

ship of a national insurance scheme), this process of socializa- 
tion encloses the individual in a social net which presses 
round him on all sides and creates a new kind of man. The 
specific achievement of socialization, when it is not diverted 
from its course for the profit of usurping totalitarian regimes, 
is that it encourages individuals and groups to become part 
of these corporate organizations. Socialization presents its 
dangers but also its opportunities. We all realize the doubtful 
character of a socialization which can either debase or develop 
human personality. The death camps, the degrading character 
of working conditions, are evidence of the blow dealt in our 
times at the dignity of the person in the name of so-called 
collective purposes. On the other hand, there exists a common 
front in which all the nations join, against hunger, slums and 
catastrophes. Education and health have become the responsi- 
bility of the public, children and old people are protected, 
there is an attempt to organize peace, and the standard of 
living is on the up-grade: all this witnesses to the fact that in 
not a few countries there is progress in the sphere of collec- 
tive life and at the same time greater attention is paid to the 
needs of the individual person. 

In the early days of the technological era, society was no more 
than the organization of individual security in a context of 
social insecurity. Everything was for the advantage of the 
individual who nevertheless found himself too often left to 
his own resources. 

Now that the technological era is established, society 
tends towards social security, but there is a sense in which 
individual security is threatened. Social security, a good thing 
in itself, is not without risks for the human person. We pro- 
pose to give a few examples of the power of technology over 
man and of the ways in which it may hinder the development 
of the person. 

TECHNOLOGY AND MAN 

The audio-visual techniques as vehicles of news dissemi- 
nation, culture and entertainment, influence men's minds 



SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 21 

without in most cases educating their awareness. A "picture" 
civilization is gradually ousting a "book" civilization. Man 
today sees the world in a different light from the man of 
yesterday. His way of thinking and judging, his inner vision 
of men and of events are imperceptibly undergoing a process 
of change which cannot fail to alter his code of behaviour. 

The cinema, a cultural instrument with immense possi- 
bilities, is a machine which manufactures dreams and disposes 
the mind to accept magical, mythological and illusory views 
on life. 

The weekly magazines for light reading are far more widely 
read than the political or religious weeklies in the ratio of 
8 to 1. The newspaper is the daily pabulum of millions who 
have no standard of judgement other than its prejudices. 
Many of them think as they cast their eyes down its pages: 
"My paper has the same ideas as I have", when it would be 
more accurate to say: "My ideas are those of my paper." 
When we know how some daily papers are put together, how 
cleverly, for instance, an editorial board which owns two 
dailies weighs out its news to suit a right-wing or a left-wing 
body of readers, when we know the commercial interests 
involved and the various influences brought to bear, how can 
we fail to fear that a few newspaper magnates may enslave 
men's personalities? 

In this world of daily life, one image drives away another, 
the day before yesterday's paper is already out of date, and 
today's picture makes us impatient to see tomorrow's. The 
whole of life is swept along at an increasing speed and be- 
comes an unending scenario, a state of nervous tension, a 
state of saturation and of anxiety at one and the same time. 

Television and radio, by increasing our sources of informa- 
tion and culture, strengthen in the home the forces that are 
brought to bear on us outside it: propaganda, escapism and 
idol-worship of all kinds as well as a sense of solidarity with 
the race as a whole. When pictures are the death of read- 
ing, when radio 'interferes with communications between the 



22 SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 

members of the family, when noise drives out meditation, then 
man is threatened in the inmost centre of his being. 

Publicity "no longer manufactures products to meet men's 
needs, but needs to provide an outlet for products" (R. La- 
croix). As Vance Packard says, we no longer buy oranges but 
"vitality". Buying a car is buying prestige (that is why, accord- 
ing to a psychiatric survey, so many Americans buy a new 
and more powerful car every two years). Life insurance, 
according to the specialists of the R.M. (Recherches des 
Mobiles, that is, motivation research) is an answer to the 
"furious desire to become immortal and so to manage one's 
family after one's death". "The 60,000,000 American women 
who go every week to the Supermarkets are 'helped' in their 
purchases (and their 'superfluous purchases') by psycholo- 
gists and psychiatrists employed by the catering industry" 
(V. Packard). In this connection, here is an interesting detail: 
the fluttering of housewives' eyelashes in front of the windows 
of stores where everything is sold at the same price, has been 
filmed and counted. The customers who are most affected go 
into a kind of trance which is the first stage of hypnosis. 

Publicity as the folklore of industrial civilization calls for 
discrimination and reservations. 

Hire purchase has developed considerably. Frenchmen 
make use of it in ten per cent of their purchases (the figure 
in the U.S.A. is sixty per cent). The refrigerator, the television, 
the small car, the knitting machine are made available by 
house-to-house canvassers who are as skilful as they are 
persistent. The word "debt" is no longer used, instead we 
have "deferred payments", "hire-purchase", "an opportunity 
to own property" or "payment by instalments". The recurring 
dates for payment make illness and unemployment an addi- 
tional hazard. 

The simplification of the series of operations required in 
manufacture by means of automation and electronic machin- 
ery, the increased productivity resulting from the perfecting 
of synthetic materials and organic raw materials foreshadows 



SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 23 

a radical transformation of industry, an era of leisure and 
culture. 

Our world is evolving towards a more universal and more 
deep-seated socialization. The individual is encircled, supported 
and guided not only by economic and political organizations 
but by a whole network of customs, ways of life and ad hoc 
or legal institutions. The advantages accruing from this state 
of affairs are undeniable both in the economic and social 
sphere and in the realm of culture (Letter of the Vatican Secre- 
tariat of State to the Semaines Societies, held at Grenoble, 
July 1960). 

Catholic Action in the various sectors of society, by empha- 
sizing the need for christianizing these organizations, has 
taken up a position which makes it possible for the Church 
to be on the spot as this contemporary process of socialization 
begins. But Christians as a whole are far from being aware 
of the issues raised by this social context in which man is 
involved for better or for worse. 



CIVILIZATION AND MIGRATION 

It has been said that the major trial of the men of our time 
is migration. 2 

It is true at least that the speed with which institutions 
are changing, the break with the way of life of the past, the 
scale of migration, the movement from the country to the 
town, the ever-expanding tentacles of industrial agglomera- 
tions, the number of people displaced by wars between 
nations, the sense of loss experienced by those who are to 

2 The characteristic mark of this migration is change and discon- 
tinuity. The danger inherent in contemporary migration is that we 
may become less aware of our relations with our neighbours and of 
the values involved in our daily round and in the secret places of 
our lives in proportion as we become more aware of the new dis- 
coveries on our planet, of the conquest of its space, of our relation- 
ship with those who live at a great distance from us. All these experi- 
ences fill us with an adolescent sense of wonder (R. Delavignette, 
Birama). 



24 SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 

a greater or lesser extent uprooted, are the elements of this 
vast universe which developing technology is creating as the 
framework of our lives. 

Emigration continues almost without interruption. In 
France alone a total of 150,000 foreigners from 80 different 
countries, under the urge of hope or fear, come each year 
to join the 2,000,000 foreigners already settled on our terri- 
tory. Four hundred thousand of them are refugees. Whether 
they are from Barcelona, Naples or Sarajevo, whether they 
are Armenians, Chinese, Hungarians, Germans or Africans, 
whether they ask for naturalization or not, whether they settle 
permanently or for a long period, they are a mass of workers 
and students who bear the marks of their uprooted life and 
who are more or less able to adapt themselves to their new 
surroundings. 

But this emigration of displaced groups throughout the 
world is one aspect of a more fundamental phenomenon 
which enlarges the sphere in which the process of dehumaniza- 
tion is at work. 

And this is the urbanization of the world. Urbanization is 
a phenomenon of recent date and is the consequence of the 
concentration of industry and of the movement from the 
country to the town. 

While in the 150 years from 1800 to 1950, the population of 
Paris increased from 500,000 to 3,000,000, that is, in the ratio 
of 6 to 1; while the population of Brussels passed from 60,000 
to 880,000 (ratio 13 to 1), Buenos Aires jumped from 40,000 to 
3,200,000 an increase of 8000 per cent and Sao Paulo in the 
same period multiplied its population by 148 (15,000 to 
2,300,000). The whole of Latin America has been caught up in 
this movement A profound transformation has been taking 
place in this area over the past five years. The South American 
continent has changed suddenly from a rural to an urban and 
industrial type of life. Hence a threefold movement: the great 
masses of the rural population are emigrating to the urban 
centres, the individual has to adapt himself to new trades, and 
new classes are in process of formation or those which already 



SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 25 

existed are being injected with new and dynamic elements (Mgr 
Latrain: Terre d'angoisse et d'esperance: L'Amerique latine). 

In our country nothing is more significant than the pre- 
carious position of the countryman emigrating to the large 
town. The town, so it would seem, is able to satisfy all the 
legitimate needs of men who want security, relaxation and 
culture. It offers them work, housing, technical schools for 
their children, sport, cinemas, theatres, television. But if 
they find themselves without friends and without money, they 
will experience the worst form of uprooting, they will have 
to endure a loneliness which borders on pathological anxiety, 
and they gain the impression that nobody wants them. In 
addition to these results of the movement from the country 
to the town, there is another form of uprooting due some- 
times to the conditions of work and often enough to the 
shortage of housing in a given town, in one area of it as 
compared with another, in one suburb in contrast to another. 

As he stands on the threshold of a realm he is forbidden 
to enter, man, like a child of poor parents before a shop 
front full of Christmas toys, may mutter: "This is not for me." 
And when he enters this world of ever-increasing speed, he 
discovers that he is not suited to its way of life or its habits 
of thought. The great anonymous City, the symbol of the all- 
pervading technological organization of the world, like a 
giant, pitilessly crushes his country habits, his ancestral be- 
liefs and even makes him a stranger to himself. Those who 
claim that they are most fitted for this migratory form of 
civilization, men whose forbears have lived for generations in 
the towns, often show signs of diminishing vitality and it is 
among them that neuroses flourish. 

Finally, sociologists in their analysis of the phenomenon of 
present-day migration even go so far as to describe every 
city dweller as a migrant because of this influx of people 
from the country, the continual moving in and out, the up- 
rooted character of the modern City, and the perpetual social 



26 SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 

instability, all of which are inseparable from these changes of 
residence, work and types of trade. 

The effect on man of what have been called "the great 
housing blocks", the symptoms of uprootedness and the sense 
of loss found among people who have to live in mass centres 
of population, form the subject of a large number of studies 
by sociologists who are interested in the profound psycho- 
logical and social repercussions of life in large blocks of 
flats. Recent town-planning has attempted to avoid the more 
inhuman aspects of the earlier buildings by providing sound- 
proof rooms, playgrounds for the children, grass verges, 
police regulations against noise, smoke and certain sorts of 
promiscuity. 

Finally, we must take into account the contrary movement 
towards the transformation of rural industrialized areas. In 
cases such as those of a car factory, of an electronics establish- 
ment, of the sinking of oil-wells, of atomic energy plants or 
nuclear power stations, adaptation is difficult both for the 
country people and for those from the town. In the country, 
modern methods of cultivation which involve both a greater 
control over production and a policy of regulation and stock- 
piling, of sales and export, have already had immense reper- 
cussions on the mentality of the countryman. The fanner 
who has adopted modern methods loses his inferiority com- 
plex in relation to the towns. Individualism gives way to a 
spirit of cooperation and the peasant feels that he, like other 
men, is becoming a man of the twentieth century. 

The symbol of this gigantic migration of twentieth-century 
man may well be the new capital of Brazil, Brasilia, that pilot 
scheme of town-planning. Here we have the capital city of the 
year 2000. This desert city will act as the jumping-off ground 
for the conquest of Brazil by the Brazilians. The bold yet 
practical ideas utilized in its planning, its new style of archi- 
tecture with its curved lines, its streets at different levels and 
so without crossings, its immense green spaces, indicate that 
the man of tomorrow will seek to find himself in an endless 



SOCIALIZATION AND THE PHENOMENON OF MIGRATION 27 

succession of change, in the search for a Promised Land. If 
his path goes through the desert, his present exodus is none- 
theless the sign of a forward march which it is the duty of the 
Church to lead just as Moses long ago led his people towards 
the land of Canaan. 



CHAPTER II 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS 

AND CHRISTIAN 

AWARENESS 



Faith can only be an act of consciousness and evangelization 
has to be described in terms of personal relationship with 
our Lord. Men's consciousness is not a territory we have 
to colonize. The evangelist's first move is to meet the person 
he is evangelizing at the level of the latter's consciousness, 
to place himself and the person to whom he is talking in the 
presence of the consciousness of Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ 
Is the meeting place at which men enter into communication 
with each other. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is 
the Message that has been delivered and the secret that has 
been entrusted to mankind. 

The most Christian consciousness is that which is entirely 
at the disposal of Jesus Christ in the service of Jesus Christ, 
in union with Christ's will to save the world of today. And, 
strictly speaking, it is within man's consciousness, at the 
heart of the mystery of man, that the true realm of unbelief is 
found. 

It is obvious that it is not enough to call oneself a Catholic 
in order to have a Catholic consciousness. It is at the level 
of consciousness and not on mere hearsay evidence that we 
are called upon to identify the action of Christ. One man 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 29 

may proudly tell us that he Is a believer whereas he is merely 
superstitious. Another calls himself an unbeliever when he is 
really only anticlerical. Labels require to be scrutinized. The 
faith of some men has been devalued to a greater extent than 
they admit while that of others has a stronger religious con- 
tent than they think. It is to the religious consciousness that 
we must look for it is the true criterion of faith and makes 
it possible to estimate what the religious future of a nation 
will be. 

Yet this development of a Catholic consciousness in the 
Church proceeds in different ways according to the intentions 
of the Holy Spirit, who is the sole foundation of spiritual 
unity. Under his inspiration, the christianization of the vari- 
ous zones of consciousness continues, from the level of the 
family to that of political life, from the social level to that 
of economics. One man may have a religious consciousness 
in regard to family life and yet have no sense of the political 
implications of his faith. Many employers of labour are 
Christians in their family circle but are not concerned in the 
slightest with their social responsibilities. Many Christians 
today are lacking in any trained civic sense. 

The growth of faith is linked in part to the development of 
an awareness which gradually awakens to the new horizons 
discovered by modem life. A given ethnic group, for example, 
may have a very clear awareness of family life but little 
regarding economics and politics. In this context, we cannot 
fail to recognize the importance of secular institutions for the 
insertion of our faith into certain aspects of life. And in a 
world in which three men out of every four have no know- 
ledge of Jesus Christ, the Catholic consciousness is not coinci- 
dent with the consciousness of the modern world as it has 
been shaped during the course of history. It is important that 
our Catholic consciousness should be brought to face the 
typical awareness of modern man, who is himself the heir 
of the past consciousness of man as history has formed it. 



30 MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 

THE DIMENSIONS OF CONTEMPORARY 
CONSCIOUSNESS 

Modern man, having discovered his power over nature, 
wants to transform it according to his own pleasure and ,to 
subdue it to his own reason. By the same token, he looks 
on himself as a species of mechanism, as a purely material 
entity, and he repudiates even the very idea of transcendence 
and of the absolute. 

There results a tension in his awareness which borders 
on pathological anxiety. As he contemplates the extraordi- 
nary speed of progress, modern man experiences a sense of 
exile at the ontological level, a terror of his own mastery of 
the universe, a pathological anxiety whose most superficial 
manifestation is provided by the neuroses, a lack of the 
sense of God which reaches its climax in atheism as a 
phenomenon of our civilization, as an attitude which rejects 
God. In this respect, it can be said that the framework of 
consciousness is giving way in the presence of the vast prob- 
lems which demand attention in the spheres of economics, 
politics, social, cultural and religious life. 

We are only too ready to say, and we hear others say, that 
our problems are beyond human solution. It would be far 
better to say that, in a sense, our problems are at last capable 
of human solution. If we adopt the first attitude, we show that 
we have not adapted ourselves to the fact of that present-day 
universalism which, in any case, is a stage in the normal 
progress of a human race so built that it is destined to become 
one single unity. As long as our awareness is not adapted to 
this world-wide solidarity, man will remain in anguish. But 
the world-wide unity of modern consciousness has its own 
history which is the outward manifestation of the behaviour 
patterns and the discoveries of men at the deepest levels of 
their being. 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 31 

Down to the Middle Ages, a kind of universal conscious- 
ness had developed with the religious unity of Christendom 
as its centre. This universal consciousness broke down when 
the race became aware of geographical unity and, two cen- 
turies later, of historical unity. It was the period of the great 
discoveries, of missions to distant lands, and it was the period 
of the Reformation. 

Protestantism became the signal for a protest against the 
Church's claim to be the religious form of unity as God had 
willed it to be. Hence the speedy emancipation of the secular 
awareness of unity. But Protestantism itself was outdistanced 
by this protest. Mankind of its own accord is now bringing 
to fruition within its own soul a self-awareness which asserts 
itself all the more powerfully in that it separates itself from 
a religious unity which is the subject of controversy. Religion 
is no longer taken for granted. This new human consciousness 
takes man as a starting point and as a common denominator. 
Man becomes master of his own fate all the more easily in 
that the natural religious sense is undermined and considered 
as an illusion. On the other hand, new and more decisive 
relationships between mankind and God have the direct effect 
of bringing man's awareness for the first time face to face 
with the religious question. 

These few, very inadequate, observations do however make 
it possible to have some idea of the kind of contemporary 
awareness which the Church meets today as she engages in a 
dialogue which is difficult but whose issues are clear. We are 
better able to understand the meaning of the challenge offered 
to the Catholicity of the Church, by contemporary conscious- 
ness which, world-wide as it is, declares its faith in the sal- 
vation of man by man. Yet the way remains open, as we 
shall see, for this fellowship in human destiny, so dear to 
man's heart, to find its way to that salvation in Jesus Christ 
which ever remains God's answers to man's questions in 
every age. 



32 ' MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 

STAGES AND STATES OF AWARENESS 

Awareness cannot be an abstraction. There are as many 
types of human awareness as there are inhabitants on the 
globe. But if we are to distinguish these types of awareness, 
and this is an essential prelude to evangelization, we must 
give to reality a degree of attention which we are not always 
inclined to bear. We have too many a priori or bookish 
notions, we trust to impressions rather than to a knowledge 
of reality in the true light of faith. 

The distinction between types of awareness leads to the 
assessment of states of consciousness and to the encourage- 
ment of what we shall call stages of awareness. 

There is a whole series of states of consciousness, begin- 
ning with an awareness that is consciously Christian (and 
which makes present the person of Jesus Christ living in it 
and in other people) down to the consciousness that is atheist 
by nature. 

There is an awareness which is truly religious yet lacking 
means of giving expression to its religious life. This is the 
case with ordinary people in general. Their awareness is out 
of its element, even in its own operations, because religious 
terminology is beyond the reach of the popular mind. In 
very many cases the existence of Christ is obscured in men's 
awareness by an early education that has been sociological 
rather than real. Greater emphasis has been laid on the 
Church than on Christ, the catechism has had more influence 
on judgement than the one unique personality of Jesus Christ. 
People who have had this sort of upbringing will be left 
defenceless by any external upheaval in the pattern of their 
lives, if, for example, they are unable to go to Mass, or if 
circumstances change some exterior element in their existence 
which they have considered absolutely permanent. Religious 
awareness can thus become more or less debased. 

But the preaching of the Gospel leads us to distinguish 
states of consciousness that are still more degraded and in 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 33 

which religion finds no echo at all. This -is a contemporary 
phenomenon of the greatest significance. Before an educator 
sets about training a religious awareness he must always ask 
himself whether it already exists. We often come into contact 
with people whose consciousness is completely secular and 
devoid of all religious content. There is nothing in them be- 
yond a civic and secular state of mind. In our great European 
cities, these men's awareness is more truly defined as debased, 
as violated by the demands of life and the conditions in 
which this life is lived. Above all, we find ourselves in contact 
with a collective consciousness which tones down and Tele- 
gates to the background whatever is concerned with the indi- 
vidual alone. It is a collectivism on the march and it creates 
a communal consciousness. 

This collective consciousness is no longer shaped by the 
demands of what is known as the "natural" law but by com- 
munal demands, by the "law of environment". And this 
environment is no longer merely pagan and so containing a 
certain number of religious values which, though distorted, 
are genuine enough. No, this environment is positively and 
consciously atheist. It excludes from the outset all religious 
values; and this "law of environment" as it becomes increas- 
ingly atheist, increasingly influences even those who still 
practise their religion. In actual fact, they no longer think as 
Christians, they no longer react as Christians, even though 
they continue to observe a certain number of social customs 
that are called Christian. 

It follows that a free and interior act 5 such as faith is 
gradually reduced to a code of external behaviour such as 
religious practice. Then the inner content of an awareness 
which finds no expression becomes degraded in its turn. 
Convictions become conventions that are increasingly empty 
of meaning until religious observance itself disintegrates. "It's 
all mumbo-jumbo and means nothing", we are told. New 
convictions directly opposed to those previously held will 
then justify a non-religious attitude or even an anti-religious 



34 MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 

volte-face. Anticlericalism will give way to absolute indiffer- 
ence. 

True, this naturally atheist consciousness contains many 
elements borrowed from Christianity, but the original Chris- 
tian reality has been assimilated, rationalized, secularized, 
transposed. It is no longer the sign of Christ, but of progress 
and human evolution. It is a human acquisition in the sphere 
of culture and civilization. There is no religious resonance 
or reference. 

The stages of consciousness (that is, consciousness in the 
course of its evolution) are inherent in processes which we 
must identify together with their time references: certain 
periods of life, certain situations (marriage, military service, 
certain types of work). We have to estimate how far social 
conditions obscure or purify a man's awareness. Some men 
are totally conditioned by this sociological reality in cases 
where extreme poverty, slum life and suifering take every- 
thing away except the desire to survive. Some developments 
are related to the trials faith has to undergo; others move 
from one stage of consciousness to another. 

The Young Christian Workers and their adult section (as 
they operate in France) offer special opportunities for Chris- 
tian witness. Witness such as this is not necessarily borne 
by an awareness which clearly sees the Spirit suddenly at 
work, nor is it the result of exact observation on the part of 
those who come to know these facts as they arise in working- 
class life. It is the priest's task to help men to see that God 
is creating a new life among his own people and in the world. 
He has gradually to identify the presence of Christ, and this 
is the purpose of his own work in the service of a community 
which is growing in charity. This community the Catholic 
Action group or any other which is genuine urges each 
member's awareness towards its own perfection along a path 
which involves respect for each individual vocation. And the 
sign by which this awareness of the Spirit is recognized in 
each man's awareness and in the resultant collective con- 
sciousness, is the growth of spiritual freedom. 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 35 

THE VALUES OF THE MODERN WORLD AND THE 
CHRISTIAN FAITH 

In Ms 1956 Christmas message Pius XII noted that there 
is an obvious contradiction in a human race which, although 
confident in its progress, is yet the prey of fear and threatened 
by total destruction. He then called upon Christians to resolve 
this contradiction: "Christians are certain that they can win 
this victory by continuing to take their stand on the firm 
ground of nature and faith, and by a courageous yet prudent 
reassessment of the values involved, and in the first place of 
those which are within man himself." 

To complete this short outline of some of the characteristics 
of the new cultural world and the content of contemporary 
consciousness, it is essential to identify the ultimate signifi- 
cance of those modern values which make it possible for the 
human race in its search for salvation to go further along 
that road. 

When men face such human realities as the meaning of life, 
love, the family, the education of their children, suffering, 
happiness, etc., ideas, ideals and codes of conduct are put 
forward in every period of history and have more or less 
influence and driving power. These are what we term 
"values". 1 These values determine social progress and are 
the basis of social behaviour patterns. The acceptance by all 
of the same criteria, in the same hierarchical order, defines 
the scale of values of a civilization, a society or a group. 

The Church as the guardian of divine and evangelical 
values is qualified to interpret and to detect the religious 

1 From the sociological standpoint, values may be defined as the 
criteria used by groups or by society in judging the importance of 
persons, aims and other elements in a culture. Moral values are 
personal or collective criteria based on an appraisal in the moral 
sphere and to which we all refer more or less spontaneously or 
explicitly when we make our decisions and motivate our choices and 
attitudes. Every value is both external to persons and at the same 
time within them. 



36 MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 

content of the human values proper to a given epoch. She 
alone can see the religious significance of the imperatives 
which influence the lives of immense collectivities, imperatives 
such as the sense of progress, the various forms of solidarity 
among the workers, the advancement of the younger nations. 

Further, the Church's mission demands that she should be 
able to bear witness, within the sight and knowledge of all 
men, to the answers provided by the Christian message to the 
deep longings these values contain, and so to reveal to men 
the fact that, although they may not be conscious of it, they 
are the bearers of great spiritual riches. For the Church this 
means that the clear teaching of the Word of God must be 
completed and corroborated by the way Christians live, in- 
volved as they are in the concrete collective realities which 
unite men whose desire it is to build a city of true brothers. 

In the sphere of temporal organization, important tasks, a 
ferment of deep and sometimes contradictory aspirations, call 
upon men's spirit of generosity, especially among the peoples 
of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. It is from within an 
intelligent and courageous commitment that twentieth-cen- 
tury Christians bear witness to their faith in the eternal values 
of the Gospel. But the necessary distinctions must be made. 
There must be no ambiguity about this. We must be capable 
of grasping to the full those contemporary values which can 
become a way of salvation. 

We are justified in indicating as points of insertion for 
faith the sense of freedom in modern man, his respect for 
others, his trust in progress, but only if we begin by looking 
at the world with the eye of faith. It is from this standpoint 
that Mgr Chappoulie writes: 

Gradually it will become possible for Christians to discover, 
even in men who have become thoroughly paganized and are 
the most hostile to the Church, points of insertion for the 
seeds of the Gospel. For the apostle enlightened by the Holy 
Spirit there is no "world*' so violently opposed to the Gospel 
that he cannot see in it some noble natural values upon which 
the Christian leaven may work. 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 37 

As the Christian sees them, these values in themselves 
are ambiguous. They run the risk of enclosing man in upon 
himself and of becoming a substitute for the absolute. Yet at 
the same time they may be a call to a higher sphere which 
completely transcends them. When taken as absolutes, these 
values are man's idol. When they are considered as fore- 
shadowing a greater reality they point to an absolute which 
does away with their ambiguity. 

Man's insatiable craving for happiness, his longing for a 
world where there is no frustration or despair, the new city 
of which the Marxists dream as they press forward along the 
path of the world's evolution, the joys of life mingled with its 
pain, all these are presentiments of the Salvation whose 
alpha and omega is Christ. For it is he who is "our paschal 
victim" (1 Cor. 5. 7). "Now it (the grace of salvation) has 
come to light, since our Saviour Jesus Christ came to en- 
lighten us; now he has annulled death, now he has shed 
abroad the rays of life and immortality" (2 Tim. 1. 10). 

It is Christ who beckons men today as in the past through 
these values. 2 This is what the Christian is called upon to 
reveal in terms of salvation as he provides evidence by his 
presence in the world that these values are linked to Christ 
the Saviour. 

Although we have drawn a distinction between "human 
values" (such as health, work, education, art, whose refer- 
ence is to the ends and activities men may pursue) and "re- 
ligious values" (those which are directly orientated to union 

2 This is why the discoveries of our time have such an immense 
significance for the Christian. "The discoveries which are being made 
with increasing rapidity should not be for the Christian a mere item 
of news or no more than interesting scientific titbits. They have a 
genuine value as signs and they must be integrated into the Christian's 
apostolic vision of the Redemption. They are not just adding orna- 
ments to the existing universe, they are building a new one. And it is 
this new universe and no other, that we are called to save" (Cardinal 
Suhard, The Priest in the City, p. 1). 



38 MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 

with God and to the spiritual activities of the Church), both 
sets of values are constantly intermingled. The same man 
pursues economic, scientific, social and religious ends and 
activities. 

It is for the Christian to learn once more how to have 
respect for those human values which are genuine because 
they develop the nature of man. They deserve to possess a 
real autonomy together with institutions and an organiza- 
tional framework distinct from those of the Church. It is 
because the harmonious union of these two complementary 
types of value has not been understood that we continue to 
endure the stale odours of clericalism and naturalism (or 
laicism). 

THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUES OF WORK AND OF 

INTERNATIONAL LIFE 

Among the fundamental values of the contemporary 
world, we wish to draw attention first of all to those which 
emerge from a civilization based on work. While certain 
working conditions debase man, he is more conscious than 
formerly of his dignity as a worker and he has a great respect 
for all that strengthens the bonds between men and the rights 
of justice. Hence the following values which Sre in many ways 
echoes of the Gospel: 

a spirit of class loyalty which is not without its moments of 
intolerance, 

a spirit of solidarity in the sphere of mutual aid, demands, 
strikes, trade union struggles, 

a sense of responsibility, which gives the workers' claims their 
true character and scope, 

a respect for technical progress and for creative intelligence, 

a clarification of the idea of authority leading at times to 
crises over questions of authority; the combination of 
authority with ability and hence the value of leadership, the 
sense of the emergence of the working class, 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 39 

the discovery of politics, 

insistence on exact and precise analysis on a scientific basis, 

the value of sectional organizations. 

Other contemporary values centre round the development 
of international life and originate in the great events which 
are shaking certain countries, in the rapid dissemination of 
news by radio and television and in the world-wide repercus- 
sion of the policy of the great nations. Hence: 

the discovery of politics and the development of an interna- 
tional sense, 

the close relations existing between scientists and technologists 
of different countries, 

the respect for the rights of the human person, and for the 
liberty of other people, 

refusal to resort to violence, the rights of the weak, racial 
equality, 

the rediscovery of true poverty by a reaction against the tyran- 
nical power of money. 

These values, together with others whose importance Is 
linked with the evolution of the different human communities 
and social groups, are staples in the life of large bodies of 
men which are more or less open to Christian influence. With 
this fact in mind, it will be doubtless easier for us to under- 
stand the definition of the Christian mission in the broad 
sense given in Economic et Humanisme (1947), by Fr Lebret: 

. . . that which causes the world to move towards the highest 
values, the revelation of each and every man to all the others, 
the revelation of the whole direction of man's evolution, the 
revelation of the divine. . . . All this must be based on a spiri- 
tuality whose scope is greater than that of the materialist 
mystiques which are in conflict with one another. . . . We need 
a spirituality emerging from the vision of the world on the 
march, a spirituality of overall coherence. 

The mission of the Church as regards values that have 
themselves been revalued is to make it possible for them to 



40 MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN AWARENESS 

be rediscovered in the light of God, 3 and the teaching of the 
Church as events develop is directed to this end. 

This attention to the sequence of events in contemporary 
history conditions the interpretation it is possible for the 
Church to put upon all which makes up the pattern of human 
existence. Pope John XXIII follows Pius XII in expressing 
the Church's welcome to contemporary values: "The Church, 
her youth ever renewed by the breath of the Spirit, is always 
ready to recognize, to welcome and even to quicken all that 
honours human intelligence and the heart of man." 

Cardinal Wyszynski said on his release from imprisonment: 
"Man is worth more than a tractor." So too Cardinal Cush- 
ing, when he denounced at Boston the persistence of racial- 
ism, declared: "Wherever any man becomes the victim of 

racial discrimination, Christ himself is crucified again We 

do not have to turn our eyes to other countries and other 
nations to find people who, by unworthy acts of discrimina- 
tion, seek to reduce to nothing the full meaning of our Re- 
demption by Christ." 

With Fr Lebret, we may add: "I believe that what the 
modem world expects of Catholics today is that they should 
incarnate human values in so obvious a way, that they should 
have so far-reaching a sense of other people's needs, so dis- 
interested a capacity to help others in a competent manner, 
that a tangible proof of the truths of the Gospel is provided 
by their behaviour in this respect." 

The Christian mission implies that Christians face the 
facts. Before we explain how the Church faces the facts of 

3 It must also be borne in mind that certain Christian values are, 
so to speak* lost to the modern world. Examples are the sense of 
mystery, of what transcends man and whose content is too vast for 
him to exhaust; the sense of sin (modern man uses the words "mis- 
take" and "error"); the spiritual efficacy of prayer and sacrifice, etc. 
It is for the Christian to bear witness within the values the modern 
world contains and to live by them while at the same time transcend- 
ing them, but he must also witness to the values the modern world 
forgets. The preaching of the Gospel is impossible otherwise. 



MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHWSTIAN AWARENESS 41 

the great modern currents of thought, and before we describe 
the new missionary era inseparable from a Church engaged 

in her mission, we take the liberty of closing this survey of 
contemporary institutions and states of awareness by quoting 
the folio-wing plea by Friedrich Heer for a genuinely Catholic 
attitude of mind among Christians, caEed as they are to 
devote themselves to the Christian mission: 

Today the Catholic Christian needs to have an attitude of 
mind genuinely eager to make contact with reality and full of 
confidence in the future. He needs an authentic confidence in 
himself, he needs to be deeply rooted in the present, to seek a 
reconciliation with his time and with his contemporaries. 
Leo XIIFs appeal many years ago to French Catholics to rally 
to the Republic is an indication of what our tasks are to be, 
both now and in the future. And this reconciliation with our 
time and our contemporaries cannot be brought about except 
through the exercise of patience and through a joyful accept- 
ance of new struggles whose forms we have still to discover. 

Our numerous non-Christian contemporaries and the spirit 
of the times (and both, in so many ways, refuse to have any- 
thing to do with the Christian attitude) may well accept only 
one form of the proof of God's presence, namely Ms presence 
and his active presence in the fullness and power of a spiritual 
life perfectly incarnated in a human person. 

A man who wants to bear witness to the personal God must 
enlarge his own personality, he must bring it to maturity, he 
must make it a lens or a prism whose facets may reveal the 
splendour of the Sun. 

The fear many Christians have of the period in which they 
live, of the present and the future, casts a cloud for many 
non-Christian minds over the divine sun, God, that unconquered 
sun which is Christ, that sun whose rays pierce the spirits of 
all men. We have to create, not only among ourselves but 
together with all those among whom we live, the facets of that 
prism which will lie open to this divine radiance. 



PART II 

AN EXCEPTIONAL MISSIONARY 
SITUATION 



CHAPTER III 



THE CHURCH AND THE 

GREAT CONTEMPORARY 

MOVEMENTS 



Even a rapid glance at the religious situation of the contem- 
porary world convinces us that Catholicism and even Chris- 
tianity is a minority religion. There are some 500,000,000 
Catholics out of a total of 2,800,000,000 human beings. This 
represents about seventeen per cent of the total world popula- 
tion. And according to the strict calculations of Fr Nai'denoff, 
if only those Catholics who are genuine believers and 
who practise are counted, the figure must be reduced to 
250,000,000. Other Christians number some 450,000,000. But 
there are also great masses of men who are not Christians, 
some 400,000,000 Mohammedans, 320,000,000 Hindus and 
almost 200,000,000 atheists or men with no religion. 

A few investigations will make it easier to understand that 
the Church is in a minority. Leaving aside countries in which 
she is completely absent and forbidden, what are the 
260,000 Catholics of Japan among 95,000,000 inhabitants, 
the 1,200,000 in Indonesia among 86,000,000? In Asia Catho- 
lics are a mere two and a quarter per cent and only just over 
eleven and a half per cent in Africa. And we are well aware 
that in certain countries taken as a whole, the working classes, 
the technologists and the men of letters remain outside the 
Church's sphere of influence. 



46 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

A WORLD STANDING ON ITS OWN FEET 

It is not possible to trace in a few words the pattern of 
the forces at work in the world of today. We have to be 
brief and say that our world is in process of growth, it is a 
world in transformation, a world standing on its own feet. 

The population increase is the major problem of the 
twentieth century. The birth-rate operates to the Church's dis- 
advantage since it favours the pagan masses and increases the 
disproportion between them and the body of the faithful. 
One example will suffice. In 1910 the population of China 
was estimated at 368,000,000. Today it is in the order of 
700,000,000. In some thirty or forty years time it will be in 
the order of 1,000,000,000. The number of Chinese Christians, 
especially under present circumstances, will hardly increase 
at all. The estimated population of the world in 1650 was 
545,000,000, in 1850, 1,200,000,000, which indicates that 
world population doubled during the space of a century. The 
average estimate for the year 1980 is 3,600,000,000! The 
experts are of opinion that the earth has the necessary re- 
sources for a population of this size but they think that 
inadequate cultivation and an unequal distribution of these 
resources foreshadow grave inequalities, increased poverty 
leading to fierce revolutions. A rapidly increasing population, 
or at least a population whose growth cannot be stopped, is 
a challenge to the work of evangelization. 

This world in process of growth is also one undergoing a 
genuine mutation, as we have already mentioned at the 
beginning of this book. Following in the footsteps of Fr Lebret 
(Face au monde d'aujourd'hui, Second World Congress of the 
Lay Apostolate, vol. II) we draw attention to some further 
details: the increase in the power at the disposal of mankind 
consequent upon the progress of the sciences and the result- 
ant technological evolution; the existence of the great masses 
who are becoming conscious of their needs, of their low 
standards of living and of their strength; the spread of a two- 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 47 

fold materialism, that of the West and that of the Marxist 
world; the twofold economic and cultural process of the 
polarization of financial, scientific, military and economic 
power in the direction of the United States and the U.S.S.R. 
We have also pointed out already, in connection with the 
process of socialization, the collectivist and communitarian 
style of life which is tending to take root everywhere. As Fr 
Lebret shows, this is both a hindrance to and a starting-point 
for the search for God, and so to and for evangelization. 

We must lay greater stress on the third characteristic, 
namely, the world as standing on its own feet. Whatever we 
may think of Fr Frisque's analysis of the mission into times 
of strength and times of weakness (and this is an analysis 
which should be undertaken again in detail and so doubtless 
modified in the process) we may accept his definition of a 
world "standing on its own feet" as "a section of the human 
race ... in possession of a civilization and a culture inspired 
by a world-vision, and having as its framework a solid 
system of thought". It may well be that some section of the 
human race has always been more or less "on its own feet". 
In any case, this is true in our time. And it means that we 
are facing a world which is consistent with itself and coherent, 
yet has to a certain extent an aggressive attitude towards 
Christianity. 

Here are three examples, Islam, Marxism, the sects that 
are partly Christian and partly pagan. Three other examples 
will be brought forward later as the three spearheads of 
future development, namely, the scientific and technological 
world, the underdeveloped countries, the working-class 
world. In other words, from one or several points of view, the 
whole modem world appears as coherent and yet as antago- 
nistic to Christian action. 

Islam is in the first place a fellowship, a community, a 
sharing in the same spirit, a system in which temporal and 
spiritual are closely interlocked. It is to all appearances 
a system without any flaw and it is based on a faith as 



48 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

unshakeable and as hard as a rock; it Is a huge world-wide 
sounding-box, a web in which all the threads are bound 
together and all reverberate at the slightest impulse; it is a 
sense of pride, a contempt for others, an essentially religious 
totalitarianism claiming to control the whole of life and to 
give a solution to every problem. In spite of centuries of 
contacts and many missionary efforts, conversions of Moham- 
medans to Christianity remain rare except in those peripheral 
areas where Islam is no more than a superficial tincture. The 
modem technological world is in a fair way to shaking the 
edifice of Islam but for thirteen centuries it has opposed to 
Christianity a granite-like resistance defying all attempts at 
penetration. 

Communism is not a religion but it often shows the coher- 
ence, the total vision of the world, the fervour, the mystical 
spirit, perhaps even the fanaticism, of a religion. The mono- 
lithic organization of the Party, which includes all the national 
Communist parties, increases the cohesion, the spirit of obedi- 
ence and faith which so often make its members impervious 
to conversion and certain of a glorious future. J. Monnerot 
has called Communism "the twentieth-century Islam". This 
is obviously a formula intended to shock, it is thought-pro- 
voking and rough and ready, but it contains some truth. The 
two worlds of Islam and of Communism have one thing in 
common, they explain everything, they are sure of themselves, 
at least to all appearances; they are fiercely hostile to influ- 
ences from outside, they are united, integrated, coherent. 
There are several million Communist militants in the world 
and tens of millions of men whose life and thought are domi- 
nated by Marxism. Here is a formidable problem for the 
future of the Church and her mission. We shall return to it 
when we state our conclusions. 

Another world, much less stable and homogeneous, is that 
of the sects. We are not referring here to the Protestant de- 
nominations with their innumerable divisions and a religious 
influence that is far from negligible, but of the new religious 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 49 

movements which are bringing about a symbiosis between 
Christianity and non-Christian religions although at varying 
levels and sometimes only on the surface. There is Voodoo 
in Haiti, Caodaism in Vietnam, Matswanism and Kibangism 
in Africa. These various movements are amazingly successful 
and they derive their family likeness and their inner solidarity 
from their roots in the deepest levels of the mentality of the 
people, its past and its folklore, and from the fact that they 
correspond to national and local aspirations. In the presence 
of movements such as these Christianity appears as some- 
thing foreign, out of keeping, rigid and demanding. Borrow- 
ings from it and the consequent confusion do not make its 
task any easier, they create fresh difficulties. These sects 
cause tensions of a new kind and, as Peguy would have said, 
lay on an anti-Christian coating. They inaugurate a new 
spiritual balance of forces which satisfies, for a time at least, 
religious aspirations and needs. 



RELIGIOUS REVIVALS AND NATIONALISM 

Two factors accentuate the resistance of the world to Chris- 
tianity. One is the revival of non-Christian religions and the 
other a supercilious and widespread spirit of nationalism. 
The first phenomenon is both a defence reflex against an 
invasion of materialism and Christianity, and also an imita- 
tion of the latter. Since the last war there has been a revival 
of Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, a partial revival 
of Shintoism and even of traditional Animism. These different 
institutions are reorganizing themselves, regrouping them- 
selves, adapting themselves to the modem world; they are 
founding schools and charitable undertakings, sometimes even 
missionary societies. Islam and Buddhism are tending to be- 
come State religions, particularly in Pakistan, Burma and 
Ceylon. Buddhism celebrated with great splendour the 2,500th 
anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment. Hinduism is 
sending missionaries all over the world. Animism is extolled 



50 THE, CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

as the religious basis of the negro spirit. Everywhere religion 
claims that it is capable of bringing about peace and happi- 
ness, and gives proof of its inner and external vitality. 

This is often combined with stirring and enthusiastic 
nationalist awakening. This powerful movement is funda- 
mentally legitimate though often excessive and unjust because 
it has long been repressed and distorted; it is a driving force 
among all those peoples who till recently were fully or partially 
colonized. It unites the under-equipped countries. It is one 
of the great events of our time and its symbol is the Bandung 
Conference (April, 1955). Its explosive force is phenomenal 
and it raises to their feet the peoples whom history has 
treated unfairly. It compensates for poverty and humiliations; 
it is a factor making for cohesion and for resistance to foreign 
influences, including Christianity. And it is based on sound 
and genuine values, the community and family spirit, art and 
contemplation, communion with nature, respect for old age 
and for life, balanced living and health. These are values 
which Christianity when properly understood should adopt, 
preserve, extol and make its own. The non-Christian world is 
not, as has been too long believed, an empty, poor and nega- 
tive thing, a hollow world. Nor is it a flabby, docile world, 
a world for us to grasp, a world waiting and calling for us. 

It is a world standing on its own feet. A further proof of this 
is its aggressive attitude towards ourselves. It is only too 
easy and childish to put this aggressive attitude down to some 
sort of adolescent crisis. But there is also the aggressiveness 
of the adult, of the man who is sure of himself, of the man 
who has become aware of his own strength and of his own 
personality and who no longer wants to allow himself to be 
led by others. This aggressiveness has many aspects and 
many names: there is the aggressiveness of nationalism, of 
secularism, of the technological spirit and of such anti-Chris- 
tian ideals as atheism and existentialism. 

There exists a non-Christian world. For all practical pur- 
poses it is atheist and almost always materialist from the point 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 51 

of view of morals and thought. It Is a world which none of 
the efforts at evangelization at present undertaken by the 
Church seems capable of reaching directly to any appreciable 
extent. It is a world which, for innumerable reasons, rejects 
the Church and her message, a world which is building the 
future and from which the Church is not merely absent but 
to a great extent excluded. It is a new and coherent world, 
impelled forward by one single evolutionary movement and 
with which the established Christian communities and their 
clergy no longer have much contact. The working class, more 
or less deeply imbued with Marxism or Socialism (in many 
countries at least), is only one part of this world which extends 
far beyond it. It now includes whole populations and, in 
Africa, populations that have only recently achieved national 
independence as well as peoples with a far more developed 
and sometimes more ancient culture, in Asia for instance. 
The only thing they will accept from the West is its tech- 
nology. The current theme of neutralism is becoming a 
dominant idea for them and they intend to free themselves 
both economically and culturally from all Western influence. 
They thus run the risk of rejecting the Church which, for the 
time being, seems to them linked in fact with the West. 

In these countries or in these social surroundings, the exist- 
ing Christian communities remain cut off. from many of the 
circles formed by the dynamic and effective groups. An im- 
pressive objective study could be made of the situation of 
Christian communities in almost all the Asiatic countries and 
in many of those in Africa or Latin America, as well as in 
the working class and the technological worlds. These 
Churches certainly face up to the problem of the spread of 
apostolic work and there have been attempts on their part 
to bring this about. But they too often remain entirely without 
influence on economic and technological evolution in its 
inexorable course; and they are often hindered in their activi- 
ties by suspicion on the part of the civil authorities. Hence 
they run the risk of falling back on themselves in an attitude 



52 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

of self-defence which, though doubtless essential at times, 
leaves them without any genuine action upon the most active 
and representative groups on whom will depend in fact the 
economic, human and political future of the country. 

Thus the West, paradoxically enough, is working in two 
mutually contradictory ways against Christianity. Its self- 
styled monopoly of the latter and its historical predomi- 
nance in the Church make Christianity, despite its Eastern 
origin, appear largely as a Western phenomenon and so 
strange and suspect to all that is not Western. Still more does 
it seem to be bound up with the West's excesses and crimes, 
sharing with it the grave responsibility for colonialism and 
economic exploitation, a responsibility rendered all the 
heavier because of the bitterness and the disappointments of 
a youthful nationalism which finds itself up against realities, 
like a bird beating itself against the bars of its cage. In other 
respects the West gives rise to ideals which gradually flood 
the world and are formidable obstacles to the spread of the 
Gospel. Leaving Marxism to one side, we may mention other 
forms of atheism, secularism, materialist technological 
theories, existentialism, etc. Thus the West conducts a war on 
two fronts against Christianity. On the one hand it seems to 
have annexed Christianity for its own benefit, to have used it 
and distorted it to its own advantage. On the other hand it 
mysteriously produces Christianity's most obvious enemies, 
It is the origin and source of nationalism in the world, that 
equivocal force which turns against the West and sometimes 
against Christianity. 

The aggressiveness of the non-Christian world is revealed 
in many ways; there are limits to the numbers of missionaries 
permitted to enter certain countries such as India and Egypt; 
there are campaigns against the missionaries as in India, 
threats to the Christian schools or confiscation of private 
schools as in the Sudan, Ceylon, Guinea, etc., not to mention 
the more or less open persecution in Communist countries 
or those influenced by Communism. In all kinds of places, 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORAHY MOVEMENTS 53 

evangelization is looked at with suspicion, it seems to be the 
sign of complacency, intolerance, a violation of men's con- 
sciences, a cultural aggression which young and independent 
peoples cannot accept. Too many Christians are considered 
as traitors to their country or to the cause of the workers 
or to that of human progress. Christianity seems contrary to 
the national interest, to public peace, to the progress of the 
masses. 

OUR HANDICAPS 

We still have to complete this picture which we want to 
make clear and realistic but not systematically pessimistic, 
by calling attention to some of our handicaps. Certain of these 
we have already mentioned, the population increase, the 
apparent Western origin of Christianity, its seeming opposi- 
tion to national aims. There are others which in all fairness 
must be pointed out. 

The first of these seems to be the inadequacy of the mis- 
sionary organization and mobilization of the Church. She is 
hemmed in by traditional limits and past categories and so 
cannot approach the mission worlds with sufficient flexibility, 
freedom, strength or resources. This is as true in the case of 
the working-class world and other dechristianized sectors, of 
the world of technology and other groups which have never 
been Christianized because they are of recent date, as in that 
of the world beyond the seas. Take some examples that speak 
for themselves. Out of a total of 450,000 priests, only 30,000 
(including the native clergy) are stationed in Asia and Africa. 
In the same way, only 60,000 nuns out of a total of about 
1,000,000 are in these continents. This means that, among two- 
thirds of the human race, one priest out of every fif teen in the 
world is at work and one nun out of every sixteen. We can 
take a still more striking example. France alone has almost 
twice as many priests and nuns as the whole of Asia and 
Africa. If the proportion were the same in France as in Asia 



54 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

and Africa, there would be one priest to every ward (arron- 
dissemenf) In Paris. There therefore exist countries which 
are spiritually overequipped and countries which are under- 
equipped. This is a sad fact and the disproportion between 
the two is very considerable. The same observation is valid 
for the other missionary sectors, the working-class world, the 
technical world, etc. And we have only to see how in France 
dioceses poor in religious organizations grow increasingly 
poorer year by year while dioceses still rich in this respect 
look on, often enough, with indifierence. Concern for world- 
wide evangelization should lead to regrouping, reduction of 
numbers where these are excessive, considerable movement 
of personnel throughout the Church and the world. 

Another handicap is the general lack of preparation of 
missionaries in every sector for the difficult task that faces 
them today. Although the Church has spoken clearly on this 
subject, little attention has been paid to what she has said. 
Because of lack of personnel or of foresight as well as through 
a failure to give sufficient thought to the matter, many of the 
superiors responsible have not devoted enough time to pro- 
vide their subjects with adequate formation. Although this is 
not general and in all fairness we ought to mention the excep- 
tions, yet the fact remains that specialist missionaries have 
not received the doctrinal and technical formation required in 
view of the modern conditions under which the apostolate is 
exercised. One of the reasons for the failure of the priest- 
workers was their inadequate doctrinal equipment. Enthusi- 
asm or heroic charity do not supply for every deficiency. The 
priests our dioceses are providing (in accordance with Fidel 
donum) for the Churches of Africa are not generally given 
any special formation. Too many foreign missionaries, not 
to mention the local clergy, have too small an intellectual 
and doctrinal equipment, and it is not sufficiently suited to the 
conditions of the country. In every missionary area through- 
out the world there are apostles who have not been able to 
adapt themselves, who are a deadweight, a hindrance, whose 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 55 

presence does more harm than good. Yet through negligence, 
lack of authority or of courage, they are left where they are 
and no account Is taken of their sometimes baneful influence. 
The times are too serious for such lacunae, inertia and ob- 
stacles to be tolerated. 

There is more than enough to be said on the need for 
reforms and a new spirit. The missionary Encyclicals have 
shown the way, especially Princeps pastorum (1959), but it is 
far from true that they have been applied everywhere seri- 
ously, intelligently and boldly. We shall only mention a few 
points they raise: their insistence on the formation of elites 
and cadres, re-adaptation of the education of the clergy, of 
Catholic Action and of religious instruction, a more thorough 
social and civic activity, the establishment of centres for 
research, for study and for thorough formation, an increase in 
the number of contemplative convents, and greater emphasis 
on the international spirit and on international collaboration. 
To take a few examples, can we tolerate the fact that in that 
part of Africa under French influence there is at present no 
Catholic institute of higher studies (not necessarily a Uni- 
versity) and almost no schools for the formation of cadresl 
Can we tolerate the failure to organize or to regulate the 
teaching of local languages in many missionary areas? 

There is another deep-seated cause behind this situation. 
Just as we normally have the rulers we deserve, and Chris- 
tians generally speaking have the clergy they deserve, so too 
Christians have the missions they deserve. If Christendom 
had a greater international and missionary spirit, if the popes 
had not spoken almost in vain for more than forty years, if 
priests and Christians, not to mention bishops, had taken the 
spread of the faith in all mission fields more seriously, we 
should not be in such an unfavourable situation in the modern 
world. Missionaries would be more numerous, better formed, 
better equipped and supported. They would not have the 
unpleasant feeling that they are isolated, misunderstood and 
sometimes almost cut off from the Church and from the main 



56 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

body of Christians. Christendom is often dull, clumsy, tied 
to the past and blind to the realities of the world of today. 
It is only slowly awaking to its world-wide responsibilities. 
And the awakening has come through the shock administered 
by the facts of underdevelopment and material poverty in 
the world. There may well be an element of fear for Christen- 
dom's own safety. But this awakening ought to have been the 
result of Christendom's deep faith and love for Christ and 
the Church. When Christians really have the missionary spirit 
in all its breadth and vision, then the mission will be better 
situated in the world of today. 

There is one final handicap in the work of evangelization 
and it is the lack of unity among Christians. This has been 
said over and over again, but the fact is too serious to be 
passed over in complete silence. Historically speaking, the 
harm done to the evangelization of the world by the divisions 
among Christians is unquestionable and considerable. These 
divisions are a source of amazement and of scandal and they 
prevent conversions. They are a permanent contradiction to 
Christian witness in the concrete. By praying and working 
for closer contact and union among Christians, we are labour- 
ing for the conversion of the world, we are doing a mission- 
ary task. Catholic circles are at last beginning to feel concern 
in this matter but prejudices are still present and there are 
many whose minds are still not convinced of the importance 
of this subject. As long as these divisions exist, there will 
still be a formidable obstacle to the progress of the world- 
wide mission. 

Such in brief is the missionary situation today. It is cer- 
tainly true that more than ever before ardent souls are conse- 
crating their lives to missionary work intelligently and in the 
spirit of charity. More than ever before perhaps Christendom 
is making massive efforts in this field. Yet much remains to 
be done, and as Pius XI said, quoting a Latin tag, nothing 
is done while anything remains to be done. 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 57 

COUNTRIES IN COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT 

The second important sector of the mission is that of the 
underdeveloped countries which it would be more tactful 
and just to call the countries in course of development. The 
term is not co-extensive with that of "mission country" since 
there are countries extremely well equipped (Scandinavia, 
for example) which from a juridical point of view are mission 
countries, while some underdeveloped countries are not, from 
the juridical standpoint, mission countries (Latin America 
taken as a whole is an instance of this). It is nonetheless true 
that the lack of material and cultural equipment often goes 
hand in hand with spiritual or more precisely Christian 
underdevelopment. 

It is no part of our task to go into the question of under- 
development. We merely restate, after Yves Lacoste, the 
phenomena characteristic of it. They are: an inadequate food 
supply, a deficient agriculture, a low average national income, 
a low standard of living, insufficient industry, insufficient use 
of mechanical energy, a subordinate economic position, an 
excessively large commercial sector, out-of-date social insti- 
tutions, the slow growth of the middle classes, a low level 
of national unity, a high birth-rate, a defective though improv- 
ing health service, and a growing awareness of all this. The 
people who live in the underdeveloped countries are in a 
wretched state and they know it. They also know that their 
situation is that of the majority of men and they have become 
aware of their own strength. They know in a more or less 
vague way that the future is on their side and that they are 
to some extent the masters of the world's future, if only 
through the pattern of the voting in the United Nations 
where these countries see their number increasing. It may one 
day give them an absolute majority. 

These men are not very familiar with Christianity and have 
no great sympathy with it. They have anti-Western prejudices 
carefully and abundantly fed by Communist propaganda. 



58 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

They often confuse Christianity with the West and mistakenly 
accuse the former of the sins of the latter. They have a strong 
desire to live and to live in freedom and happiness. They feel 
within them a confused longing for unity and brotherhood 
among men. They are sometimes tempted to give way to 
hatred or resentment but they are too well aware of their 
need for peace to accept war in any lighthearted way. They 
want to be neutral and declare that they are. They are dis- 
turbed by the clashes between the two Great Powers. They 
ask for economic aid from the West but are mistrustful of its 
interference in the political, cultural and even the spiritual 
spheres. They have a somewhat naive admiration for Russia 
and China which started from a situation similar to their own 
and have become great nations. But they do not know the 
cost and the limits of this spectacular success which is often 
exaggerated by propaganda. They are not sufficiently aware 
that technology presupposes a genuine asceticism and "is 

based on virtues much more than on material forces The 

work of an air line, an electric power station, a public works 
undertaking depend on outstanding qualities of self-abnega- 
tion, devotion, honesty and conscientiousness" (Pierre Ron- 
dot). 

In a word, these men are often genuinely intoxicated by 
the idea of progress and possessed by the demon of tech- 
nology; they are above all eager to succeed in the economic 
and political fields. In principle, therefore, they appear some- 
what impervious to spiritual action. Yet man does not live 
by bread alone and hence he bears within him a vision of the 
world and a past that are largely spiritual. Christianity must 
speak his language, make his aspirations its own while cor- 
recting and purifying them, it must show the real effectiveness 
in the sphere of human progress and the extent to which it 
defends man against himself and against his false gods. The 
missionary must try to meet modern man on his own ground, 
he must show him how by keeping our eyes on heaven we 
save and give a sense to our life here on earth, he must reveal 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 59 

the way in which Christ takes all things to himself and leads 
us towards a better life. These simple considerations deter- 
mine the direction missionary activity must take and lead 
to a great many practical applications. We must take care 
that we do not disappoint a world which longs for liberty, 
unity and a better life. It is for us to make our own concern 
the future of men in underdeveloped countries while refusing 
to deny all that is acceptable and healthy in their past and 
in our own. 

If we compare the mentality of Christians with the clear 
and often repeated words of the hierarchy of the Church, we 
shall see once again how far it lags behind the Church's 
teaching in the practical sphere. 



THE WORLD OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

There are several spheres in which the missionary work 
of the Church is of special urgency and importance in the 
world today. We shall mention three of them: the world of 
science and technology, the countries now in the course of 
development and the working-class world. There is no doubt 
that these three spheres require the missionary Church to 
make an increased effort of thought and action. 

There is no need to demonstrate that our civilization is of 
the scientific and technological type. We are in the midst of 
the technological revolution, and this in every country 
throughout the world. This revolution has innumerable and 
profound psychological and religious repercussions. A few 
facts pregnant with consequences will illustrate the reality 
and the importance of this revolution: they are, the thousands 
of men and the billions of money devoted to scientific re- 
search, the astounding progress in the field of discovery and 
knowledge, the increasing concentration of the population 
in urban centres, the ever greater need for technologists and 
technicians, automation, socialization, depersonalization. 

The Church has not failed to give her attention to this 



60 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

problem. Pius XII devoted an appreciable portion of his 
teaching to the Christian attitude towards science and tech- 
nology. We have only to re-read, for instance, his 1953 
Christmas message. He constantly reminded us of the moral 
and religious values but was careful not to condemn techno- 
logical progress. He even took care not to adopt a pessimistic 
attitude towards it. It is for man as a son of God to complete 
the Creator's work in the constant light of Christ's message. 

Many studies have been made of the relations between 
Christianity and the technological world showing how rele- 
vant, grave and urgent this problem is. Great men have turned 
their attention to it. Among those who are no longer with 
us it is sufficient to mention Fr Teilhard de Chardin, whose 
work is now exciting universal interest. 

Yet it is easier to provide this question with a theoretical 
rather than a practical answer, and in actual fact there is a 
great gulf between Christianity and the technological world. 
True, M. Fourastie assures us that no religion worthy of the 
name needs to be afraid of a scientific and technological 
civilization. He even goes so far as to claim that "the 
Christian religion itself, and it alone, has produced in the 
human race the social climate necessary for the advent of this 
civilization" (Semaine des Intellectuels, 1955, pp. 187 follow- 
ing). But even a rapid survey of the facts leads to less opti- 
mistic findings. 

It is first of all essential to be aware of the heterogeneous 
nature of this technological world. The worker, the technician, 
the engineer, the manager, the economist, the financier, the 
scientist, each have a specific function in the technological 
undertaking, and their amenability to religious influences and 
attitudes varies considerably. At each level, the problem re- 
quires to be re-examined and reassessed. 

There is a further point; the various nations are at different 
stages in their evolution. Japanese students still hold, in the 
main, the positivist and pseudo-scientific dogmas of the last 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 61 

century and their masters are still Comte, Feuerbach, Renan, 
etc. In countries of pagan, Mohammedan or Communist 
mentality, there is no Christian ideology to provide the desire 
for progress with a content, an orientation or a foundation. 
Any synthesis is inevitably based on other philosophies and 
world views. 

Finally, it is obvious that although science and technology 
are compatible with a developed and intelligent Christian 
faith, they are able in themselves to ruin a faith which is 
without secure foundation and they may turn men away 
from God. We have only to consider the population of the 
technical schools and the world of the lower grade tech- 
nicians to see that here again a little knowledge estranges men 
from God while a great deal of knowledge brings them closer 
to him. But in the world of the scientists how few are Chris- 
tians, especially Christians whose Christian training and 
experience are on a par with their secular culture ! 

It follows therefore that the world of science and tech- 
nology remains a missionary area, not only because there are 
always new fields to be christianized and marked with the 
sign of faith, but because the world in question has, for the 
most part and in many countries, come into existence outside 
the sphere of Christian influence, if not in opposition to it. 
There is an immense amount of work to be done at all levels, 
at the level of reflection and theology as well as at the level 
of action and Christian teaching. The Church today in every 
place, in every set of circumstances and at every social level, 
must take into account this element of the modem world, 
since it is one of the most fundamental and powerful. If the 
Church wants to fulfil the aspirations of modern man, she 
must understand in a thoroughly practical way that one of 
his essential demands is that he should be offered a sure path 
in this field, one which is both human and divine and equally 
removed from a refusal to face the facts and from a blind 
and blissful optimism. She will have to take up a positive 



62 THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

attitude towards this problem as indeed towards every prob- 
lem. As Fr Russo says: 

Technology too is an ideal And I feel I am entitled to 
regret that, in our preoccupation with spiritual values, we do 
not attach enough importance to the technological ideal, even 
when facts seem to be against it. I believe that there is a techno- 
logical ideal and that this ideal is perfectly compatible with a 
Christian view of the world. I would go further still and say 
that this ideal should have its place in our Christian conception 
of the world. 

THE WORLD OF THE WORKERS IS A MISSIONARY 

FIELD a 

The Christian community faces a working-class world which 
is estranged from and hostile to the established capitalist and 
middle-class order. It accuses the Church and her sons of 

1 This notion of a "human field" is borrowed from science and indi- 
cates a complex of social relationships which shape the mentality and 
the behaviour patterns of men or of a group of men according to the 
way in which these influences combine with one another. 

Modern man "belongs" in many different ways. There is the district 
in which he lives, the profession he follows, the groups of which he 
is a member (his political party, religion, friends, cultural influences, 
leisure occupations, etc.); these networks of relationships are not all 
equally Christian or inspired by the Gospel. 

In the sphere of mass evangelization we may roughly distinguish 
between the traditional type of mission in a geographical area (for 
example, the mission to the American Indians) and a type at work 
in a sociological "field" (for instance, the men employed on large-scale 
constructions, the army, the bargees). 

"The missionary field" of the working-class world is a characteristic 
example of a certain collective resistance due to the sociological 
peculiarities of the environment by comparison with that of the 
middle classes which are considered to have more influence in the 
Church. This middle-class environment, on the other hand, even 
though some of its sectors are atheistic, remains within the scope of 
the preaching of the Good News because of a kind of Christian 
osmosis. 

These distinctions, of which the Christian people is still largely 
unaware, require to be gone into more thoroughly and they will 
become increasingly obvious as essentials for an accurate grasp of 
the real data of evangelization. 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 63 

appearing to be quite content with this state of affairs, of being 
a party to it and its abuses and injustices. 

Yet popes and bishops consider as an intolerable challenge 
to the Church's responsibilities a state of things which allows 
a whole world of men, women and children (on whom falls 
the heavier portion of the burden and heat of the day) to live 
outside the household of faith. At the same time, the Church's 
leaders know what force, what youthful vigour, what immense 
enthusiasm and generosity this new world contains (Mgr 
Chappoulie at the Semaine des Intellectuels Catholiques, 1955). 

The working-class world as such, more than ever before, is 
one of the fundamental data in the problem of evangelization. 
It is both complex and exacting and requires that the Church 
should put herself on a missionary footing. The working class 
is now an international, organic, unified reality. Beyond the 
important sociological differences included within it, it is the 
basis of a collective advancement which is irresistible. 

The working-class movement is the product of the oppres- 
sion of the workers. Today, through the collective experiments 
that are being made and because of its increasingly inter- 
national character, the movement not only puts forward its 
claims but also brings to the world as a whole new answers, 
new ways of thought, a new kind of society. More than one 
dominant characteristic of our new cultural world, for ex- 
ample, democratization, nationalization and legislation in the 
field of work, was given its acid test in the working-class 
movement. 

The working-class movement is not only concerned with 
the transformation of the working class, it is gradually be- 
coming the conscience of the new world. In addition, it must 
be remembered that the working-class movement is a histori- 
cal phenomenon which is becoming universal. Yet it is bound 
up with an actual situation that raises grave problems for the 
Christian conscience. As Mgr Chappoulie has written: "We 
cannot honestly condemn working-class unity for the sole 
reason that the Communist party is attempting in the field 



64 THE CHimCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 

of technology to evolve a united working-class action which 
would be a formidable instrument in their hands for the 
seizure of power." As long ago as 1950, Fr Danielou pointed 
out the agonizing dilemma of the militant worker who wishes 
to be an authentic Christian: 

This working-class world is a turning point in creation, it 
is laden with authentic values, it overthrows outworn insti- 
tutions and makes God's action manifest. But at the same time 
it is a pagan world which has replaced the ancient idols of 
the nations by the new idol which is man himself, worshipping 
himself as the recent discoverer of his own demiurgic power. 
Hence the Christian worker is and must be involved in two 
loyalties neither of which he can deny. On the one hand, he 
must be faithful to his class even if this class is at the moment 
linked to an active anti-Christian movement. Whether we like 
it or not, whether we approve of it or not, the working-class 
movement has its own unity and every worker is therefore 
dependent on the U.S.S.R., in so far as the latter is in the 
vanguard of the working-class struggle. He cannot be a party 
to the idolatry it practises. He must show himself wholly in- 
transigent on this score or his attitude would be completely 
meaningless. The two elements together make the Christian 
worker's situation incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible. 
Yet this is the situation in which he must live his life 

And this is why he stands out in our time as the supreme 
witness. He is rejected by all men, by Christianity which does 
not agree that he should be loyal to a movement which aims 
to destroy it and which rejects it instinctively in its own self- 
defence. He is rejected by the Marxists who cannot allow him 
to refuse to worship their idols ("Mission chretienne et mouve- 
ment ouvrier", in Bulletin du Cercle Saint- Jean-Baptiste, Feb. 
1950). 

Thus we are obliged to recognize, as in the case of the 
Christian worker, a crucial contradiction in the sphere of 
collective realities. Working-class unity opposes Christian 
universality, and Communism, in the vanguard of the move- 
ment towards the international unification of the world of 



THE CHURCH AND THE GREAT CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS 65 

work, achieves this unity for its own ends. But this will never 
justify the Church in leaving to their own fate the mass of 
those who are especially called to enter the Kingdom of God. 8 

2 According to some people, the European worker has changed Ms 
awareness and his behaviour in so profound a way that a whole 
period of social history has come to an end. There is no longer, so we 
are told, any working-class movement in the classical sense. This is 
an important issue when we come to consider the evangelization of 
the working-class world. 

It is an undoubted fact that the worker today is no longer what 
he once was. His professional status is undergoing modifications 
introduced by the technological evolution of his work, by new work- 
ing conditions, new housing, a standard of living and cultural facilities 
which are very different from those of the past. But, apart from the 
fact that statistics prove that insecurity and dependence now have a 
different aspect for the worker, he nevertheless preserves a code of 
behaviour typical of his class. 

Some writers tend to hold that the workers living in the most 
unfavourable conditions are no longer the proletarians since the 
latter are now proletarians of a new kind and are in the process of 
achieving their economic and political integration. A whole mass of 
workers, exhausted and worn out by living conditions of various kinds, 
declare they are incapable of reflection, that they cannot read any- 
thing other than strip cartoons, and are physically unable to enjoy 
any entertainment other than a variety show or a comic film. For 
some of them, dancing is too tiring and meetings a luxury. And as 
for religious services 

Note. The English and American reader, perhaps, may find the 
above views of the working class strange and pessimistic. Two points 
must however be borne in mind. (1) In the world as a whole Com- 
munism has a predominant influence over the working-class move- 
ment; (2) there is no guarantee that the spiritual vacuum in our own 
two nations will not eventually be replaced by some form of Marxism. 
Trans. 



CHAPTER IV 



DECHRISTIANIZATION, 

DESACRALIZATION AND 

ATHEISM 



The survey we have just made has covered one after the other 
geographical and cultural groups, the major religions, the 
most influential currents of thought, the key sectors such as 
the world of science and technology, the nations in course of 
development and the working-class world. It has convinced 
us both of the world-wide character of contemporary pagan- 
ism and also of the urgent need for a missionary Church 
conscious of the practical results, in all quarters, of the 
cleavage between itself and the new civilization. 

But before we draw the main outlines of a new missionary 
era, as it is gradually taking shape in the Church of today, 
we must offer a clear diagnosis of this exceptional missionary 
situation. We have to distinguish between dechristianization, 
desacralization and atheism. 

We shall find that any analysis which aims to give a com- 
plete account of the phenomenon of religion as it impinges 
on the minds of our contemporaries is of considerable com- 
plexity. In France and elsewhere, dechristianization must not 
be confused with a lack of christianization in certain geo- 
graphical and cultural groups; and desacralization is not an 
accurate measuring rod for atheism any more than a healthy 



DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRAOZATION AND ATHEISM 67 

sense of the lay status is to be identified with a secularist 
mentality. 1 

DECHRISTIANIZATION AND 
NON-CHRISTIANIZATION 

The French bishops have attempted to examine once again 
and more intensively the present dechristianization of France. 
But although religious practice remains approximately the 
same as fifty years ago and the influence of the Catholic 
Church is felt increasingly in different sectors of the popula- 
tion, yet we are obliged to recognize that a materialistic 
mentality is progressively spreading in individual, family and 
social life. Further, the Church unfortunately has no place at 
all or is only partially present in many social groups. This is 
particularly the case in the working-class world and in relation 
to many forms of modern thought, especially in the field of 
technological civilization, so full as it is in other respects of 
hope for the world. 

This is the opening passage of the Declaration of the 
plenary Session of the French episcopate held in April 1960. 
But how many bishops throughout the world could say the 
same as regards their own countries! The ancient Catholic 
nations are experiencing a religious crisis aggravated by the 
difficulties experienced in an attempt to adapt themselves to 
the contemporary world. The outcome of this situation is a 
decline in religious practice and a weakening of faith. 

Already in 1954 Mgr Garonne had defined this phenome- 
non of dechristianization as follows: 

What we call dechristianization is more exactly described as 
the appearance in the world, in every individual man and in 
sociological institutions, of an entirely new state of mind. This 
state of mind becomes recognizable in our institutions by a 
complete and accepted lack not only of Christian but of any 

1 "If the modern world is secular, in that it separates temporal and 
spiritual, profane and sacred, that secularity is undeniably of Chris- 
tian origin" (Etienne Borne, Modern Atheism [American edn, Athe- 
ism], p. 106, in this series). 



68 DECHRISTIANIZAHON, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 

religious influence. This is something entirely new. This state 
of mind becomes recognizable in men's consciences through 
the existence of a whole sector of existence beyond the range 
of the light of faith. We are thus faced not so much with 
dechristianization as with the appearance of something foreign 
to us and not in itself hostile to Christianity. 

This distinction between "dechristianization" and "non~ 
ckristianization" is not a mere verbal quibble. It expresses a 
complex situation of which religious sociology is becoming 
increasingly aware as it is forced to recognize that in fact 
certain sectors of mankind are not dechristianized since they 
have never been christianized at all as communities. One 
example is the working-class world. 

Our own experience as a parish priest in a dechristianized 
environment has led us to the following conclusions: there 
is a loss of the appreciation of the value of the sacraments 
and of religious practices among a considerable number of 
baptized persons who are still anxious to keep in contact 
with the Church, and a total misunderstanding of what the 
Church is among others who no longer are affected by the 
dechristianization process since they have, to all intents and 
purposes, become atheists. 

The majority of these non-practising baptized persons are 
not included in any category envisaged by the Church's 
Canon Law since they are neither pagans in the primitive 
meaning of the term nor formal apostates. This great mass 
of men and women, our neighbours and friends, our com- 
panions at work or during our leisure hours, form an army 
of baptized persons who are more or less unbelievers and 
whose occasional religious practice is the result of a religious 
throwback and of superstition in the literal sense of the word. 

But a further distinction must be made in this dechristian- 
ized mass. It is composed of social strata which have each 
their own kind of dechristianization. 

For the more wealthy, money has dethroned God. In this 
connection there is no worse form of hypocrisy than the 



DECHRISTIAMZATION, DESACRALIZAHON AND ATHEISM 69 

attitude, for example, of certain nouveaux riches who are 
shameless enough to maintain the religious practices they 
were brought up to observe, such as assistance at Mass and 
Easter duties while, in their daily lives, money like a tidal 
wave has played havoc with their Christianity. They excuse 
themselves by saying that God does not expect so much of 
them. Their almsgiving is a cover for their materialism, a 
cheap way of obtaining pardon. Their relations with a few 
priests who are family friends provide their final justification 
for a quiet conscience. The Church for them is the guardian 
of the established order. There are men who, although they 
appear to be the defenders of spiritual values considered as a 
moral force, are in fact authentic materialists. 

Among the proletarians, a feeling of resentment seems to 
be the source of their prejudice against God and the Church. 
"We haven't any luck and we haven't any God ... if there 
was a God, we shouldn't be in the state we are in." Their 
cry of revolt and their blasphemies are the outward expres- 
sion of their sufferings. A home oppressed by poverty kills 
hope. "There is no way out for us," they say. God is no 
longer a deliverer in their eyes. Deceived by some and for- 
gotten by others, they include God in their writ of excom- 
munication. 2 

2 J. Folliet compares the religious situation of the working class with 
that of the middle classes and is of opinion that the mass of the 
proletariat have never, except in a few individual cases, had any 
knowledge of Christianity or lived the Christian life. On the other 
hand, the predominance of the middle classes from the sociological 
point of view is by way of being an obstacle to the conversion of the 
workers and all the more so in so far as the middle-class, bourgeois 
notions of worship, spiritual life, morality, the parish and civic and 
social ideals are the result of sociological influences rather than of 
the Gospel. Folliet concludes that our duty is to christianize the 
working classes yet without alienating the middle classes (La Crofx, 
June 15th, 1952). 

[While this footnote is especially applicable to conditions in France, 
those of the working class in English-speaking countries are becoming 
increasingly similar to those found in France, at least as far as 
religion is concerned. And the middle-class mentality in religion is 
a ubiquitous phenomenon. Trans.] 



70 DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 

On the one hand, we have the rich man who, though he may 
deceive men, cannot deceive God, and on the other, the poor 
who no longer feel at home in the Church of Jesus Christ; and 
in between is the mass of dechristiamzed men. These are the 
simple folk who muddle along and make do with a debased 
form of Christianity. Their way of life may be summed up 
in two commandments: the first and the more usual is, "I 
have a religion of my own", and the second which is equal 
to the first is, "It is nobody else's business". With this 
summary and distorted decalogue it is possible to hem oneself 
round as much as one likes with an individualism which has 
to answer to nobody, not even to God. The God they speak 
of, whether to honour or to reject him, is a false God, a vague, 
indefinable God, easy-going or unapproachable according to 
the different individuals concerned. As an old Polish refugee 
woman said: "God's been about too long. He's far too old." 
And another woman told me: "St Teresa's my God." An- 
other, I must admit, informed me at the same time that St 
Teresa was her idol. 

There is only one answer to this sort of thing and it is 
that of an active Christian woman: "Your *God'l Well, I 
don't believe in him." It is only when we have bent all our 
energy to unmasking this kind of idolatry, this subtle form 
of individualism, this false idea of the Church, all of which 
are found among the congregations in our churches, that we 
shall really be able to tackle the problem of our brethren the 
unbelievers. 

This process of dechristianization which borders on atheism 
is especially noticeable among young people of the working 
class. Sometimes it works in a way similar to conversion, but 
a conversion to atheism brought about by the "grace" present 
in the environment. I know some young people who have 
thrown off the last vestiges of a religious practice that had 
long since been empty of all meaning, and have then acquired 
a spirit of greater self -sacrifice under the exhilarating influ- 
ence of a new environment. Others, on the other hand, while 



DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZAHON AND ATHEISM 71 

maintaining an exterior contact with the Church (Sunday 
Mass, for example, which they attend so that they can look at 
the girls) have long since given up the faith of their child- 
hood. 

The young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen 
stand at the cross-roads. Some break with the Church but in 
appearance rather than in reality. Among this number are 
very many non-practising Christians who still have an aware- 
ness of God, a taste for prayer and generosity, all of which 
have Jesus Christ for their inspiration. Others break with 
the Church in a way that is more real than apparent and 
they are found among those who never miss their Sunday 
Mass, who send their children to catechism lessons, among 
engaged couples who ask for a church marriage in order to 
compromise with their consciences (to take out a kind of 
"eternal-life insurance policy"), and who are willing to make 
this concession to what they formerly considered a merely 
external piece of display to give some colour to the ceremony. 3 

In the case of both young people and adults, it is one and 
the same prevailing atmosphere which accelerates the de- 
terioration of faith among these dechristianized sectors, and 
among unbelievers strengthens the basic conviction that God 
and the Church are useless: "God", said one young man, "is 
nothing, all that is empty talk! " 

It seems that for the majority of men the line of demar- 
cation is not in the field of religious behaviour (tibds is too 
exterior a phenomenon to provide any decisive criterion) 
but is determined by the kind of attitude a man has towards 
the salvation of the world. The distinction is then 'between 
those who see the salvation of the world as depending on 
liberating it from God, those who do not bother themselves 

3 Yet we may well ask who is really cheating. What was the real 
value of their introduction to the faith in their childhood? What 
opportunity was given to Catholic Action? What idea of the parish? 
What sort of adult witness were these young people offered? As St 
Thomas says: "Only those who have not yet left Jesus Christ can 
break with him.'* 



72 DECHRISHANIZATION, DESACRALIZAHON AND ATHEISM 

about the salvation of the world and those who sniffer because 
they see no salvation for the world. 

, Among those who see the salvation of the world as depend- 
ing on liberating it from God, there are courageous men who 
think that life cannot be allowed to go on without justice or 
progress. They rely solely on their human intelligence and 
devotion in their efforts to better the lot of their brethren. 
Among those who do not feel that the world needs salvation 
are those who have succeeded in life and have a good situa- 
tion. They live in comfort and have achieved their own per- 
sonal advancement. Finally, those who suffer because they see 
no salvation for the world are often men who have not 
succeeded in life. Some of them cast envious eyes on those 
who have, and feel bitter and disappointed. "What have I 
done," they say, "that God should be against me?" Others 
merely vegetate and the failure of their efforts has disap- 
pointed them. They resign themselves to putting up with the 
sort of life others oblige them to lead and mutter: "If only 
there were a God!" The fact that each of these three kinds 
of attitude towards the salvation of the world is found among 
believers and unbelievers, practising Catholics and anticleri- 
cals, shows how complex is the dialogue between the Church 
and the world. 

A more exhaustive analysis of these types of mentality 
would lead us to underline another relevant element which 
upsets any conclusions drawn from statistics alone, namely 
the existence of pseudo-Christians and pseudo-atheists. A 
more exact knowledge of the religious problem would in- 
volve identifying the traces of a genuine atheism among 
practising Christians who are not interested in Christianity 
apart from Sunday attendance at church. We should have to 
take account of the fact that some who declare they are 
atheists lead a life that is genuinely in keeping with the 
Gospel. The grave issue here is not so much that the un- 
believer calls himself an atheist although his life shows per- 
sistent religious traits, as that the practising Catholic calls 



DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 73 

himself a Christian and then says: "I have nothing to reproach 
myself with; I thank thee, God, that I am not as other men." 
Such people should be told that they do not know of what 
spirit they are. Unfortunately the mass of tepid Christians 
forms a barrier and prevents others from entering the Church. 
But although we are obliged to recognize that there are 
"believers" who in fact do not believe, it remains true that 
the phenomenon of dechristianization is essentially collective 
and that whole masses of men more or less turn away from 
the Church. Still more important is the fact that only the 
Christian faith can even become aware, at a certain onto- 
logical level, of this massive dechristianization which chal- 
lenges the preaching of salvation through Jesus. The bishops' 
committee of the Mission de France emphasizes this: 

This view of the phenomenon of dechristianization is a 

freely given supernatural light The grace which we have 

sought once more at its source deals essentially with a fact in 
the religious order, with the absence of Christ and his Church 
among certain men and in a certain environment. 

It is useless to think that any effort towards rechristianiza- 
tion will ever stand any chance of success unless it goes to the 
roots of dechristianization which lie deeper than the working 
class considered apart from the rest, and exert their influence 
over the whole surface of the globe. The proletarian world is 
only one outward sign (the most developed sign perhaps) of 
the transformation which is being brought about at the deepest 
level by technology and of which men are as much the victims 
as they are the architects. 

This sense of dechristianization must remain on the alert and 
sensitive to evil in all its forms and manifestations. 

THE DESACRALIZATION OF OUR INSTITUTIONS 

The dechristianization we witness in our times Is a theme 
frequently repeated. The political upheavals in some areas of 
the world have led observers to forecast the more or less 
imminent and more or less complete collapse of whole sectors 
of the Christian world. 



74 DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 

The spectacular disasters which followed the Russian revo- 
lution of 1917, the advent of the People's Democracies and 
the establishment of the Communist regime in China and in 
North Vietnam cannot fail to give us pause. But are we 
equally shaken by the fact that, since the Renaissance and the 
Reformation, the tide of secularization, of laicization, has 
been slowly, imperceptibly yet inexorably creeping over the 
world in which we live, over the nations whose civilization is 
Christian? This tide, in its negative aspect, is perhaps not so 
much a dechristianizing as a desacralizing force. If this is 
in fact the case, we should be glad this purification is taking 
place since it is doubtless a necessary stage in the genuine 
sanctification of the world and of the human race. 4 How- 
ever, whatever value we may put upon this process, the fact 
is there. It cannot be denied that in the most varied sectors 
there is a movement away from the religious sphere into the 
secular. 

One example is in the realm of art. While almost all writers, 
musicians, sculptors and painters used in the past to seek 
their inspiration in religious themes, nowadays they all look 
for it in the secular world. 

Similarly, if we examine what we may call "the primary 
services" required because certain concrete circumstances 
either of a temporary or permanent nature call on mankind 
to furnish the appropriate solutions, we also notice that what 
until quite recently depended on initiatives provided by the 
Church, has now come within the competence of secular 
bodies. Examples are the problems of hunger, refugees, de- 
prived children, the rehabilitation of prisoners, which are all 
dealt with by institutions such as Unesco, the United Nations, 
the International Labour Office, etc. Catholic bodies such as 
Le Secours Catholique, the International Children's Office or 
the Unicef now collaborate with these institutions. 

4 As Fr Congar well says, our task is not to sacralize the temporal 
order, not even to christianize it in itself, but to lead it to Christ 
(christo-finaliser). See Lay People in the Church, p. 372. 



DECHRISTIAMZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 75 

It may well be that this collaboration is still valuable and 
important since others* suffering easily awakens an echo in 
the truly Christian soul. But side by side with this entry 
on the credit side of our religious awareness, must we not 
write in the debit column a marked reluctance on the part 
of many Christians to share in undenominational undertak- 
ings? This is due to a residue of clericalism, a superiority 
complex, distrust of public institutions, and so our charity 
is somewhat partisan in character and is exercised much more 
effectively in the framework of bodies that have been officially 
approved by the Church authorities. In parenthesis, we must 
admit that lay Christians are not solely responsible for this. 
Too often, priests and bishops fail to draw the attention of 
their flocks to the genuinely human and so virtually Christian 
character of institutions which have come into existence over 
the past few years. How many sermons, Catholic weekly 
newspapers or pastoral letters have mentioned the publication 
of such documents as the new declaration of the rights of 
man or the rights of the child or the conclusions reached by 
certain inquiries made, for instance, by Unesco? And since 
we have mentioned Unesco, is it not regrettable that those who 
conduct its inquiries often meet with so little understanding 
and willingness to cooperate among the missionaries in the 
countries to which the requirements of their investigations 
lead them? 

If we further examine the various elements of social and 
political life, we see that there has been a move from reli- 
gious and Church control to that of the secular authorities in 
these spheres also. Family movements wer& originally reli- 
gious undertakings. Today they are often regrouped with no 
reference at all to religion. 

One sector in modem civilization which is becoming of 
increasing importance is that of leisure activities. Here, too, 
we notice a gradual movement from the religious to the 
secular organizations. No doubt the great religious feasts and 
the Lord's Day still provide the rhythms of the periods of 



76 DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZAITON AND ATHEISM 

activity and rest, but here and there we already see signs of 
a break with this tradition. The Easter holidays are now 
independent of the festival itself and there is a general ten- 
dency to dissociate holidays from religious celebrations. In 
Germany especially, Sunday is gradually ceasing to be the 
day on which work has to stop. 

Over a long period, youth movements were a kind of 
Church preserve, or at least the public authorities were long 
uninterested in them. Now, on the contrary, we see Ministries 
for Youth established in many countries. The importance to- 
day of organizations of young people, which they themselves 
have founded, can be judged by their results. The U.N.E.F. 
(The French National Union of Students) has come into 
prominence because of its attitudes towards certain problems 
(attitudes which are sometimes questioned), while in Turkey, 
Korea and Japan, young people have started revolutionary 
movements which have overthrown the established system in 
their respective countries. 

In the political sphere we are forced to recognize that we 
are far from the days when baptismal registers were the 
equivalent of registers of births and marriages in Church 
were the only ones recognized by the State. We are far, too, 
from the times when the king was only recognized as such 
after his coronation by the Church. In civilized countries, no 
national leader is invested from on high, 5 he is considered 
solely from the point of view of the function he fulfils for 
the common good. 

Still in the political sphere we note the "desacralizing" 
nature of the new nationalisms. For example, we have seen 
Africa pass in ten years through a process of evolution which 
it took us several centuries to achieve. We have watched her 
pass from fetishism with its sacral character to a secular, and 
sometimes a Marxist, nationalism. And this transformation 

5 The Coronation of the English monarch still has a religious signifi- 
cance although it has lost all ties with the Stuart doctrine of the 
divine right of kings. Trans. 



DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 77 

has come about, with a few very rare exceptions, without 
the Church taking any part in it. We are far from the time 
when Alexander VI, after the conquest of America, decided 
how the newly discovered countries were to be divided be- 
tween Spain and Portugal. 

We not only see that the evolution of nations and states 
is taking place outside the sphere of religious jurisdiction, 
but also, on a lower plane, that other human communities 
are passing beyond the influence long exercised over them 
by spiritual authority. Until quite recently the parish was 
the link between members of a community. The church tower 
was the symbol of the village or ward. It sounded the alarm 
or called men to mobilization. The cemetery and the market 
were grouped around the church. Place names were generally 
Christian St Martin, St Denis, etc. Today the place of 
assembly is the Town Hall, the Labour Exchange, or more 
often still, the commercial centre. The cemetery has become 
secularized and streets are named after men famous in the 
secular field. 

In the field of thought and education, we note that know- 
ledge, which was the monopoly of the Church in the Middle 
Ages, is now in the hands of the secular universities and 
schools. Philosophy is autonomous, law and the administra- 
tion of justice have lost their sacral character and they too 
have become secularized. 

One final sector at least seemed to be the refuge of the 
sacred, namely that of life, love and death. The entry of 
scientific knowledge into this field also has begun the process 
of desacralization. Painless childbirth and birth control wit- 
ness to the fact that reason has penetrated this realm of 
fertility which had preserved its element of mystery much 
longer than the others. 

Yet does this phenomenon of desacralization, this move- 
men from the religious to the secular, mean that modern man 
has lost his sense of the sacred? Some claim that this is the 
case. Personally, we incline to think that the sacred is a 



78 DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 

structural element in human awareness. Hence every man 
feels a need, even though he will often refuse to admit it, 
to sacralize some activity, some form of culture or of leisure 
occupation, a person worshipped for his or her own sake; 
by allowing himself to reach a state of uninhibited infatua- 
tion and by his willingness to practise a form of unbridled 
idolatry, he is seeking, in some obscure way, that power unto 
salvation without which he cannot live. 6 This need in man 
is as imperative as hunger and thirst; it is the religion of 
unbelievers. 

The place of the primitive worship of water, fire, sun and 
blood as the sources of life has now been taken by the wor- 
ship of the sources of power, the dollar, oil, the secret of the 
atom with its spectacular practical applications, the film star, 
the gods of the stadium, musical virtuosi. All this is a pro- 
jection of the kind of man each of us would like to be, intoxi- 
cated by power, skill, freedom and love. And so we are able 
to forget the disappointments of life and make ourselves 
immortal in a passing dream. 

This, then, is a proof of the universal need of salvation 
which haunts mankind. These then are the distorted forms 
taken by a religious sense which can no longer make up its 
mind which god it should adore. 

ATHEISM AS A FACTOR IN CIVILIZATION 

Atheism as a factor in civilization fully reveals the form 
of awareness characteristic of godless man. There are men 
who declare that they will have nothing to do with the Church 
of Christ. These men are among the most active and they 
are atheists who have nothing in common with people who 
have become dechristianized and have moved away from the 
Church. 

6 St Paul applies this word "power" to the risen Christ. For him, 
the Gospel is a power of salvation given by God in order to save 
those who believe. And St Luke, writing of Christ 1 s miracles, states 
that power came forth from him. 



DECHRISHANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 79 

These absolute pagans are capable of a disinterestedness, 
a solidarity and a trust in life which many professed Chris- 
tians might well envy. Their life has an aim, they have a 
noble view of the family, of love, money and happiness. 
They have a certain respect for religious convictions but 
only in so far as these are supported by a life of generosity. 
They have a keen sense of the need for the masses to progress 
both economically and politically. They hope their children 
will enjoy a type of happiness which will be both a triumph 
of technology in the service of man and the fruit of the wis- 
dom which the nations at peace, and peace-loving, will at 
length have acquired as the result of a widespread knowledge 
of psychology and the distribution of responsibility at all 
levels of society. 

These cultural factors and others as well are certainly not 
always found in the pure state as some imagine. There are 
illusions and sin present in them and certain of thek values 
are in fact immoral and amoral rather than ethical. But it 
would be a gross error to reject en bloc the values of a new 
cultural world which has turned its back on God, and we 
should be guilty of misunderstanding our contemporaries if 
we ignored the spread of this positive and constructive athe- 
ism. 

This massive and collective phenomenon is not so much 
a system evolved by thinkers (although such post-war writers 
as Sartre and Camus have had a remarkable influence on a 
whole generation of young people), 7 as a series of attitudes 

7 The late Albert Camus is one of the most impressive witnesses 
to contemporary atheism. He once admitted that "if he had turned 
away from God it was not so much because of any fundamental 
atheism as from his wish not to betray human life composed as it is 
of suffering and misery of every kind". In La Chute, he gives his 
views on the bankruptcy of God and at the same time admits the 
Christian atavism of atheists: "We have to choose our master. God is 
no longer in the fashion: the word *God' is now meaningless: it is 
not worth while using it when it runs the risk of shocking anyone. 
Whether men are atheists or pious, Muscovites or Bostonians, they 
all have Christianity in their blood. And yet there isn't a ha'p'orth of 
Christianity among them." 



80 DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 

often adopted without reflection, a point of view and a 
manner of life which find adepts among believers and mould 
social institutions. This is one more reason why we should 
give our attention to it and attempt to be objective and respect 
its values and the people in whom these values are incarnated. 
This is a prerequisite condition for evangelization and for 
the "baptism" (to use an expression frequently employed) 
of a new civilization. 

Atheism is obviously one of the major components of 
modern society. 8 As man proceeds to conquer the universe 
he interprets his conquests in the realms of science, tech- 
nology and psychology as indicating God's retreat from his- 
tory. As we have seen, the religious facts of yesterday be- 
come today purely secular phenomena. Things the believer 
treats as matter for contemplation are considered by the 
technicians as material to be transformed. Everything is in- 
cluded under the headings of phenomena, problems, laws. 
And there is no place for God in the estimates man makes 
of his successful achievement. "What," he says, "is the use 
of God? What is faith for?" 

In actual fact, atheism has varying forms, ranging from 
"practical" atheism (that "comfortable atheism" based on a 

8 The strict sense of the word "pagan" (or unbeliever) is "non- 
baptized". In a more general sense, and one that is a pointer to the 
realities of the situation, the great mass of people, baptized or not 
(and this includes even practising Christians) habitually react without 
any reference to God, and so are "practical" atheists. This caused 
Cardinal Saliege to remark: "There are atheists among churchgoers." 

It is significant, we may add, that from the second to the fourth 
century, it was the pagans who called Christians atheists because they 
abstained from joining in idolatrous worship. Later, from the six- 
teenth century onward, Catholics, Calvinists and Lutherans used the 
term for one another, not without a certain contempt. In the eight- 
eenth, Catholics were still called atheists by people who did not share 
their faith. We always find such expressions to indicate those who 
do not think as we do. 

In his Epistle to the Ephesians (2. 12) St Paul speaking of the 
pagans calls them atheists, because they are idolaters, that is, they 
do not recognize the true God and set up idols in his place. 



DECHRISTIANIZAHON, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 81 

refusal to be bothered, of which Mounier had something to 
say) to militant atheism which seeks to eliminate God as a 
hindrance to man's progress. 

It is because of its militant atheism that Marxism takes its 
stand against God. It would be as wrong to confine the 
causes of atheism to the spread of Marxism as to minimize 
the influence of Marxist theories in justifying practical atti- 
tudes which are for the most part illogical. 

The great pundits of Marxism denounce religion as an 
irrational state of mind and, according to them, "the godless 
are not those who refuse to provide the masses with a god, 
but those who refuse to accept the idea of God prevalent 
among the masses". In their view, God is obviously the God 
of the ready made, a prefabricated God, who holds all the 
winning cards, and hence our freedom is only an illusion. 
"God is the most flagrant instance of alienation. The more 

religious a man is, the less he is a man Atheism is a 

denial of God, and man's existence is established by this 
denial of God." According to Marx, as E. Borne reminds us, 
when God is finally forgotten, we shall know that mankind 
has achieved perfect unity. 

In this indictment of the atheists, we have seen that we are 
dealing with an unacceptable caricature of Christianity, a 
complete disavowal of Jesus Christ and of his redeeming 
Incarnation. But it is not without importance for our faith 
that we should note that this is so and also that we should 
admit that the behaviour of certain Christians provides argu- 
ments in support of this prejudice against God. We are think- 
ing of a certain type of religiosity, a lack of courage, religious 
fatalism in the face of trials, resignation in the face of injus- 
tice: "It is God's will. There's nothing we can do about it." 

Atheism attacks a religious "idealism" lacking in substance 
and with no grip on reality. It is therefore an invitation to 
us to purify our faith of certain limitations we put upon it. 
In his search for true greatness, in his quest of a form of 
salvation for mankind, in his respect for human values, his 



82 DECHRJSTIANIZAIION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 

insistence upon truth, his desire for unity, his passion for 
progress and for liberty, his sense of human solidarity and 
responsibility, the atheist shows himself apt for a dialogue 
with the Word of God. 

The religious meaning of the Marxist phenomenon 

Marxist atheism does not attack living faith at its founda- 
tions, but it does demand certain doctrinal statements from 
the missionary Church. Further, the undeniable existence of a 
Maoist world, well-defined sociologically and with its own 
cultural institutions, has a religious significance for the 
Church. Communism doubtless is a sign of the impatience of 
God whom man has attempted to drive out of the historical 
process. It also is a sign of the absence of Christians in the 
ordering of the temporal city, their unconcern at the presence 
of established abuses, their tacit acceptance of the most fla- 
grant forms of injustice in our society such as slums and the 
problem of hunger. 

It is essential that theologians and parish priests, acting 
under the authority of the Church's hierarchy, should define 
the precise nature of this confrontation of the Church with 
Marxism from the point of view of the faith. The fact that 
Marxism opposes the Church impels her also to turn to Christ 
who has his answers for every epoch, answers that are always 
old and yet ever new: nova et vetera. 

Yet, is it not a fact that we pay far more attention to the 
sociological realities of this Marxist world as it continues to 
expand, than to its religious meaning which ought to lead us 
to purify our faith and intensify our apostolic efforts? Are 
we not prone to adopt an attitude of self-defence, even of 
aggressiveness, as we face the Marxist endeavour, rather than 
to invent new forms of evangelization, to demand a form of 
catechetical teaching more suited to our times and to develop, 
in ourselves and in others, a more evangelical Christianity? 

From the point of view of the apostolate Marxism raises 
questions whose range goes beyond anything we had hitherto 



DECHRISTIAMZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 83 

thought possible. The influence of Marxism extends beyond 
its atheistic ideological pressure in the so-called Communist 
countries. It exercises a great and widespread fascination 
over those nations which are in search of economic institu- 
tions and are faced with fundamental choices (this is especi- 
ally true of underdeveloped countries). And it increasingly 
infects the proletarian sectors in every country especially 
where the living presence of the Church is no longer active. 
We may well ask whether this widespread Marxist influence 
in vast countries, in geographical and cultural areas and in 
so-called Christian regions, is sufficiently counterbalanced by 
an effort of doctrinal thought, general pastoral activity and 
a missionary attitude throughout the Church. Are Christians 
anxious "to be present" in paganized areas and in the collec- 
tive realities of our time? Do they really feel the need to 
make genuine contact if they are to provide a corporate 
witness? Are the persecutions in certain countries seen by us 
as an opportunity to question ourselves as to our love for 
those who are responsible for this persecution? For the Gos- 
pel commands us to pray for those who persecute us and to 
do good to them. 

At rock bottom, Marxism reveals itself as an overall human 
endeavour in which man is considered capable of redeeming 
himself, in which there is a radical denial of God. There are 
always fragments of truth in every error 9 as well as undeniable 
values such as compassion, justice, hope and salvation which 

9 "Speaking very generally, we would note that in this world of 
ours there is no such thing as total error, that is, error which does not 
contain some aspect of the truth. The best way for the Christian to 
fight against error has always been, and always will be, not to 
combat it as absolute but first of all to discover the element of truth 
it contains and to recognize the rights of this partial truth by showing 
how it achieves its fullness in a continually increased understanding 
of the Christian synthesis. Nova et vetera: the providential use of 
error is that it always offers opportunities for those who witness to 
the truth to discover in the latter certain aspects or values which have 
not hitherto been sufficiently brought to light" (Fr Feret in Verite et 
vie, 391, p. 41). 



84 DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZAHON AND ATHEISM 

offer themselves as opportunities for the preaching of the 
Gospel. It is not enough to denounce errors, we must bring 
out the essentials of Christianity in a catechetical teaching 
that has been deepened by a return to the sources of revela- 
tion and tradition (in particular, the eschatological vision of 
history, hope in its supernatural sense, the purification of our 
faith, the meaning of the Bible and the Church, must all be 
restored). 

Our catechetical teaching is not suited to minds formed or 
affected by Marxism since it fails to emphasize the mystery 
of Christ. Nor are we able to detect the signs of Marxist 
influence on our active Christians. We are scarcely aware that 
Marxism confines the moral conscience to the political field, 
diminishes awareness of and respect for objective truth, does 
away with any idea of and pleasure in all constructive thought 
outside the scope of revolutionary action and dulls the true 
sense of the demands of the spiritual order in temporal 
matters. 

Laymen engaged in Catholic Action (the latter under Provi- 
dence is now developing into one of the Church's institutions 
in our time) are God's answer, in the realm of facts, to the 
Marxist phenomena. But from this point of view, is Catholic 
Action considered with all the attention, boldness and respect 
it needs, together with the help it requires from a mission 
among the workers and from priests who are in real contact 
with working-class conditions? 

As Christians watch the ascendancy of Marxism, it is not 
enough for them to reply "the Church has spoken" and then 
add a few quotations from the pope or the bishops. This is 
too facile and often an ineffective "intellectual victory". Com- 
munism is what it is, but it is a fact of which we have to take 
account. When the questions at issue are war and peace, 
housing, social injustice, the only language unbelievers can 
understand is that of action undertaken and risks incurred. 
What the mass of unbelievers requires of us is not only the 
formulation of doctrine but doctrine lived. Whether or not 



DECHRISTIANIZATION, DESACRALIZATION AND ATHEISM 85 

an answer is to be given to Marxism as an inverted form of 
Christianity depends on the willingness of Christians to be 
converted and to commit themselves to action. 10 

When St Peter spoke to the early Christians, he did not say: 
"Be ready to refute all the objections you hear", but he gave 
them this advice: "If anyone asks you to give an account of 
the hope that you cherish, be ready at all times to answer for 
it " (1 Peter 3. 15.) 

10 Capitalism, although it is not an atheist ideology, must be in- 
cluded among the influences favouring dechristianization and atheism 
because of the materialist atmosphere it creates and its manifold 
attacks on the rights of the human person. As a body, Christians do 
not seem to appreciate how harmful it is. On the other hand, active 
Christians have discovered that it is not primarily Marxism but the 
practical materialism for which capitalism is responsible which, all 
around us, is present as a force working for the breakdown of faith. 

On November 15th, 1946, Pius XII denounced the misdeeds of 
capitalism: "Modern cities with then: continual development, their 
huge populations, are the typical product of the domination of 
large-scale capitalism over economic life and so over man himself. 
It too often happens that economic life and the use of capital are 
not regulated by human needs in accordance with their natural and 
objective importance, but, on the contrary, by capital and its profit 
motives which determine what needs are to be satisfied and to what 
extent. It is not human work destined to serve the common good 
which attracts capital to itself but, on the contrary, it is capital 
which gives the impetus to work in this place or that and moves 
men around as though they were balls in a game." 



PART III 



A NEW MISSIONARY ERA 



CHAPTER V 

THE MISSION AND 
THE MISSIONS 



There is little space here for a theology of the mission. And it 
is not easy in a few pages to examine the basis of the mission 
and to define and describe it. Yet our regret that this is so is 
tempered by the realization that valuable books dealing with 
this subject have been increasing in numbers over the past 
few years. We begin by getting rid of erroneous ideas. The 
mission is neither directly nor formally a philanthropic, social, 
cultural or civilizing task. Its aim is not human progress on 
the human level, but man's salvation. It is not a human, it 
is a divine task. It is not a form of domination or imperialism. 
As Pius XII clearly showed in his 1945 Christmas Message, 
the Church is not an empire, she seeks only voluntary mem- 
bers and she desires to influence them in the depths of their 
being. The mission is built up of men and of human com- 
munities. It must not be confused with the apostolate in the 
general sense since it is concerned directly with men who are 
pagans, with pagan communities and realities. It is not even 
an effort to bring about individual conversions, it aims at 
collective conversions. It seeks to "plant", to establish the 
Church in regions, environments and areas which do not 
know her. 

We may now put forward a technical definition of the 
mission: it is that spiritual activity which, originating in the 
Trinitarian processes, consists in preaching the Gospel to 



90 THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 

non-Christians and in establishing among them in an indi- 
genous and stable fashion the entire Christian economy for 
the sake of their own salvation, the full development of the 
Mystical Body and the glory of the Father through the Son 
in the Spirit. 

We begin with this definition because upon it depend all the 
issues discussed in the following pages and this discussion 
will both illustrate and confirm the definition. We therefore 
use the term in its strict sense by contrast with the other 
forms of the apostolate such as catechetical instruction, pas- 
toral work in the normal meaning of the word, and the 
spiritual direction of Christians. Our definition, which is 
modelled on the teaching of Pius XII in Evangelii praecones, 
is centred on missionary preaching (the Kerygma) but includes 
the "planting" of the Church in a given country, in a social 
environment or a sociological sphere. The word "planting" 
has to be understood in a rational sense: "The Church can 
only be said to be founded in a given area if she controls 
her own affairs, has her own churches, her own native clergy, 
her own means of subsistence, in a word, she must de- 
pend on none but herself (Decree Lo sviluppo, May 20th, 
1923). Of course, the mission is never completed, every 
Christian has to be reconverted time after time until he 
comes to the end of his life, yet the mission properly so 
called consists in bringing a non-Christian to the faith or in 
marking some non-Christian reality with the stamp of the 
Gospel, it consists in solidly establishing a young Church 
which is still in a frail and delicate state. It is also true that 
an apostle who brings any individual person to the faith in 
any country in the world may be called a missionary, but he 
will only be genuinely one if he is working in an environment 
that is formally and in practice pagan, only if the particular 
achievement of effecting a conversion to the faith takes place 
within a collective, communal mission situation. 

The mission is rooted in the processes of the Trinity. It 
originates in the Father and is destined to return to him, It is 



THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 91 

wholly contained in the inner, eternal life of God and in the 
history of salvation. The logical sequence of facts reveals to 
us the Father, the generation of the Word, the procession 
of the Spirit, the temporal mission of the Word in the Incar- 
nation, the temporal mission of the Spirit at Pentecost, the 
mission of the Church, and finally the Father who will be all 
in all. The mission is, as it were, a continuation of the process 
of love in the Trinity, the product of its emergence, of its 
bursting forth into time. In the divine order, all is love; the 
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Church and her 
mission, mankind's return to God. 

There is in truth only one missionary, Christ, and one 
mission, Christ's. The mission of the Spirit is its other aspect, 
its complement and fulfilment. Christ's mission takes two 
forms, a personal form which consisted in achieving man- 
kind's salvation for the glory of God and in founding the 
Church, and a collective form which is to last until the end 
of time and is the gathering together of all things and of all 
men in the sanctifying love of the Father, the regrouping of 
mankind into one single divine family. This is the gathering 
together, throughout the world and through all the centuries, 
of the children of God who were scattered abroad, as St John 
says. The great mysteries of Christ are therefore indissolubly 
linked with the mission, his Incarnation, Ms redeeming death, 
the Eucharist, the resurrection and his triumphal return. 

Since in the last analysis there is only one mission, Christ's, 
the Church alone can be "sent", since she alone is the Body 
and Bride of Christ, Christ continued and fulfilling himself 
on earth throughout the centuries. In the mission, the Church 
is both the means and the end. As she spreads over the earth, 
the Church is building up her own body. She is the instrument 
by means of which the faith is spread and she works at the 
building of her own body, at her own fulfilment until she 
reaches the full stature of the perfect Christ, until the heavenly 
Jerusalem becomes a fully accomplished fact. 

This involves many applications of the first importance as 



92 THE MISSION AND THE MSSIONS 

regards the mission. The duty of evangelization is the primary 
duty incumbent on the popes, as they themselves have de- 
clared. The Church by her very nature is a missionary Church. 
If she ceased to be a missionary Church she would cease to 
be herself. Her head bears the permanent and urgent responsi- 
bility for the evangelization of the whole world. But this 
responsibility is shared by all the bishops as a collegiate 
body with the pope and with each other. This collegiate 
responsibility of the bishops is becoming increasingly clear 
both in pontifical documents and in the writings of modern 
theologians. It arises from the fact that the bishops are the 
successors of the apostles to whom was entrusted the evan- 
gelization of the world and that they possess the fullness of 
Christ's priesthood which is essentially a missionary priest- 
hood. 

Hence, as the popes have said over and over again, this 
missionary duty is particularly incumbent on priests. Men 
and women in the religious orders are also called upon to 
undertake it, as in a more general sense are all Christians. 
Some of the latter have realized this, as is evidenced by the 
foundation of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith by 
Pauline Jaiicot in 1822. This doctrine has been frequently 
expounded by recent popes, especially since Benedict XV's 
apostolic letter Maximum illud (1919). Unfortunately, public 
opinion has remained largely unaffected by this teaching 
perhaps because it has not been sufficiently incorporated into 
catechetical instruction, preaching and Catholic Action as 
practised. Christians have been roused rather by contempo- 
rary events such as the upheavals due to the last war, the 
emergence of Asiatic and African nations and the discovery 
of the fact of underdevelopment. This is a pity for, on the 
one hand, the international world-wide awakening of Chris- 
tians has come late in the day, and on the other, it risks 
being influenced by political, economic and social rather than 
religious considerations. It is high time parishes, schools, 
colleges and Catholic Action groups were more closely associ- 



THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 93 

ated with the world-wide life of the Church and with the 
spiritual renewal of the world. Pius XII pointed out that the 
missionary spirit would find ample nourishment in the dogmas 
of the Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body. 

THE MISSION AND CATHOLICITY 

The Catholicity of the Church will help us to give Its full 
significance and scope to the idea of the mission. What is at 
issue is nothing less than the realization in time and space 
of the universal "recapitulation" of all things in Christ. As 
Fr Congar has said: "Catholicity is above all else the capacity 
of the Church's principles to assimilate, perfect, sublimate, 
win and unite to God the whole of man, all men and all 
values." The universality of the Church is a consequence of 
the Father's plan of Redemption, implemented in history by 
the redeeming Incarnation of the Son, continued throughout 
time by the life-giving activity of the Church whose desire 
is in all things to glorify the Father with the Son. All things 
are to be integrated in the Mystical Body of Christ, all things 
are to sing the glory of the Father; all men, all nations, all 
cultures and civilizations, all human realities and techno- 
logical inventions. 

Hence the mission is not only exercised in the geographical 
and ethnic spheres but also in those of civilization and soci- 
ology. In other words, in addition to the mission in the 
traditional sense, which is to integrate all nations in the 
Church together with their specific mentalities and values, 
there is room for other types of mission. Everything that 
comes into existence on the earth must be marked with the 
seal of Christianity. This is true of the worlds we see arising 
or consolidating themselves in our own times, the world of 
the underdeveloped countries and also the working-class 
world, the world of the peasant, the worlds of science, tech- 
nology, the press, literature, leisure, sport, the cinema, radio 
and television, the family, politics, etc. Those who desire to 



94 THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 

Christianize these different values, mentalities and human 
communities have a right to be called missionaries. Fr Teil- 
hard de Chardin, for instance, was a genuine missionary in 
the field of science and in the modern world. From this point 
of view there are many human groups among which the 
mission has only just begun: financiers, politicians, university 
teachers, the members and experts working in international 
organizations, the various elites at every level and of every 
grade (technicians, trades unionists, students, workers from 
overseas, etc.). The missionary duty in the strict sense, that 
is, the immediate duty to bear witness and to preach the 
Gospel, is directly incumbent upon many more people than 
appears at first sight. We must take a broader view and 
persuade ourselves that wherever pagan realities and groups 
are found, the missionary spirit has a field in which to act, 
material on which to set its mark, and which it may fashion 
for the glory of God. When we say this we are not abandoning 
our former point of view. We are facing a genuine pagan 
situation and a collective reality that must be imbued with 
Christian influence, saved and integrated into the Body of 
Christ. The definition of the mission we gave on a formei 
page is applicable here without any unwarranted straining of 
its meaning and without recourse to sheer analogy. 

Missionary work will therefore be faithful to the doctrine 
of adaptation or, as we prefer to say, of assimilation and 
integration. Christianity must adopt the sound principles 
and the values of all the nations and of all human groups, of 
all forms of art, language, thought and sensibility. All that 
determines men's way of life, all that they do, belongs to 
Christ and must be incorporated into Christianity and into 
the Church, All that is beautiful, just and healthy can help 
to fashion and shape the City of God. As there is a Chinese 
or African way of being a Christian, so there will be a 
working-class, a technological, a scientific way of being a 
Christian. The Church waits to receive all these values with- 
out which she cannot fully be herself. She wishes to sing 



THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 95 

God's glory in all human tongues, in every situation, in every 
state of mind that is compatible with faith. She stands for 
unity, but unity in diversity not in uniformity. She respects 
all genuine values, she purifies them, re-establishes them 
where necessary, but she also saves them and brings them 
to the realm of the eternal. She does not require the Russian 
or the Papuan to think, pray and live his faith like a French- 
man or an Italian. She allows, she wants a scientist or a tech- 
nician, a journalist or a film actor to be a Christian in his 
own way, provided that the faith and morals are respected 
in the situation in which he finds himself. She wants to bring 
the reign of Christ to every mind and to every mentality. 
From all these diverse elements, she creates a perfect har- 
mony. Everywhere she sees children of God, and it is within 
her fold that they preserve their liberty and their personality 
not only at the individual level but also at that of the collec- 
tive mentality. Her mission will never be finished for new 
forms of collective life will always come into being as well 
as new habits of thought, feeling and expression. 

A TURNING-POINT IN THE CHURCH'S 
MISSIONARY TASK 

Thus the historical evolution of the Church's missionary 
work is evident, as is also the fact that we are now entering 
a new missionary age whose characteristics may be summed 
up in three words, it is the era of mutual exchanges, of ser- 
vice and of unity, A statement of Pius XITs throws light on 
the missionary epoch of the future: 

The Church is supranational both because she loves all 
nations and peoples with the same love and also because she 
is nowhere a stranger. She lives and grows in all the countries 
of the world, and all the countries of the world contribute to 
her life and growth. In the past, the Church's life in its visible 
aspect manifested its vigour in the countries of our ancient 
continent of Europe, and flowed out from it like a majestic 



96 THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 

river over what it was then still possible to call the periphery 
of the world. Today, on the contrary, we see her as the insti- 
tution in which life and energy are shared among all the mem- 
bers of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth. Many countries 
in other continents have long since passed beyond the mission- 
ary stage of their ecclesiastical organization. They are governed 
by their own hierarchy and are conferring on the whole 
Church spiritual and material benefits of which in former 
times they were merely recipients (Christmas Message, 1945). 

Many African and Asian countries are passing from the 
mission status and already have their own Church. These 
young Churches, with their local bishops and their cardinals, 
are contributing on an increasing scale to the life and govern- 
ment of the Universal Church. While we continue to give to 
them, they also give to us, and it is well that this should be 
so. The era of mutual exchanges has begun, charity has 
become reciprocal and moves in both directions. The Church 
will gain in strength as a result and her Catholicity will be- 
come more extensive in the concrete. 

Consequently, the foreign missionary is increasingly be- 
coming a subordinate, a helper, an auxiliary, a servant of the 
local Church. This demands of Mm a change of mind and 
attitude which some will not succeed in achieving. They will 
do well to make way for men who are younger or more 
flexible and modern. Considerable delicacy, patience, humility 
and spiritual poverty are needed. The missionary's motto 
is more than ever that of St John the Baptist: "He must 
increase and I must decrease." By "he" we mean Christ in 
a given place, the local Church. Every priest must attempt 
to train a responsible and committed laity, but the foreign 
priest (and religious) must also make way for the local clergy. 
This is the lesson implied in the encyclical Princeps pastorum 
(1959). 

We are at long last entering on the era of unity and of the 
concentration of all our efforts, those of the foreign and 
local clergy in accordance with the directives of the popes, 



THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 97 

those, too, of the old Christian countries and the young 
Churches, and finally the effort made by the foreign and 
the home missions. And of this we shall have something to 
say in a moment. It is no longer possible to work indepen- 
dently of one another in watertight compartments. The same 
problems arise everywhere. Everywhere we have to face a 
technological and secularized civilization, Communism and 
militant atheism. Experiments and discoveries made in one 
sector must be of use to the others. Men and institutions can 
now be exchanged thanks to the ease and speed of communi- 
cations. One of the most urgent needs is to establish every- 
where schools for the training of leaders. If necessary these 
schools should be grouped on a regional or continental basis. 
The modem world is issuing an immense challenge to Chris- 
tianity. All our forces and all our vital energies must be 
brought into operation if man is to be saved both in the 
human and the supernatural senses of the word. The mission 
has a new aspect. It is everywhere and every Christian must 
take his share in it. The time for sleep has passed. We are 
standing on the slopes of a volcano and the situation grows 
daily worse. 

THE FOREIGN AND THE HOME MISSIONS 

It is not easy to give a clear account of the uses of a word 
such as "mission" with its many applications and the magic 
of its past. Nor can we attempt in a few pages to write its 
history in detail. We can only provide a few pointers, a few 
interesting historical notes, and suggest something of what 
the future may hold. 

The issue is confused at the outset by Canon Law and 
current usage, which uses the word in three senses. There 
are the missions to distant parts and, at home, those to dio- 
ceses and parishes. In 1926 Pius XI wrote: 

The missions are divided into two major categories: foreign 
and home missions. We are reminded of the significant words 



98 THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 

of our well-loved St Philip Neri: "Stay here, your mission is 
in Rome." This he said not because Rome was a missionary 
territory but because even in Rome, as everywhere else, there 
is room for missionary work. There always will be so long as 
there are souls to be brought to the light, saved and led back 
to the paths of virtue. 

There is a statement by Pius XII which is even more 
precise and significant. As far as I know, this is the first time 
home missions are mentioned in a papal document devoted 
to missionary work. At the beginning of the encyclical Fidei 
Danum (1952), Pius XII explained that the choice of Africa 
as its theme did not mean that he had forgotten other apos- 
tolic fields: 

May then this fervour be directed towards the dechristian- 
ized areas of Europe and the vast regions of South America. 
May it show pity towards the spiritual distress of the in- 
numerable victims of modern atheism, particularly the young 
who are growing up in ignorance and sometimes in hatred of 
God. These are necessary and urgent tasks demanding of all 
a new outburst of apostolic energy which will raise up im- 
mense armies of apostles like those of the Church at the 
dawn of her existence. 

Thus Pius XII himself overruled the distinction we pointed 
out above and abolished the contradiction between the two 
types of mission. 

It seems therefore that the opposition between foreign and 
home missions no longer exists and that it is becoming in- 
creasingly clear that they are complementary and interde- 
pendent. The theology of the mission as outlined above shows 
where the basis of this concentration and this identification 
lies. We merely express the hope that the name and the idea 
of the mission will preserve their strict sense and that the 
word will be used with care. The mission consists in evangeliz- 
ing those who are not Christians or, more precisely, in 
evangelizing masses of men and environments which are non- 
Christian. Even a fervent apostolate is not missionary unless 



THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 99 

it goes out to meet these pagan or paganized worlds. The 
geographical idea of the mission is no longer the only one, 
there is now a sociological mission and a mission to the 
world of the new civilizations. 



THE PROBLEMS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 

What we have just said is true even of the foreign missions. 
A recent monograph on the Madura mission in South-East 
India 1 will throw more light on our preceding pages and 
confirm our theological conclusions. 

The first stage is that of evangelization and it is famous 
for the outstanding men who inaugurated it. On this eastern 
coast of India, Christianity did not penetrate until the six- 
teenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese. St Francis 
Xavier did the pioneer work on the Fishery Coast But al- 
though many missionaries were to find their vocation by 
following his shining example, he left few concrete and lasting 
traces in this area. Fr de Nobili with Ms method of integration, 
and his adoption of the way of life of the people of the 
country, opened the door although in the midst of formidable 
difficulties. He invented the writing of Tamil prose, created 
Tamil Catholic terminology and literature and made contact 
with the elite of the population. In 1693 the country was 
hallowed by the martyrdom of St John de Britto. In the 
eighteenth century, Fr Constant Beschi entered the front rank 
of Tamil literature. Then came the period of trial, the un- 
happy dispute over the so-called Malabar rites and the sup- 
pression of the Jesuits. 

The latter returned to the area in 1838, and the second 
period of the mission, the period of its institutions, began. 
A great effort was made to establish secondary and higher 
education. This tended to give some prestige to a religion 
which was despised, and awakened the admiration of the 
ruling classes. The local clergy, whom the missionaries had 

1 AndrS Rocaries, Quatre cents ans aux Indes (Paris, Fayard, 1960). 



100 THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 

trained from the beginning, began to grow in numbers. Local 
seminaries, noviciates and congregations were established. 

Between 1920 and 1930 the third and last stage began with 
the Indianization of the Church, the establishment of a genu- 
inely Indian Church. Dioceses were separated from the 
original mission and entrusted to the Indian clergy. The latter, 
both secular and regular, now forms a large majority. The 
Church is beginning to live her own life. She is no longer 
a mission but a Church. Foreign missionaries are only auxi- 
liaries of the local clergy and a number of them opted for 
Indian nationality when India became independent. It is true 
that Catholics are still a small minority (three per cent in 
Madura, one per cent in India as a whole) but Christianity 
no longer appears to be a foreign religion or a Western mani- 
festation. Thanks to the persistent efforts of India's apostles 
from the outset, prejudices have disappeared, a different view 
of our faith is now current and Nehru himself admits that 
Christianity is part of the nation's spiritual heritage. 

But at the very time when Christianity has been granted 
the right of citizenship in India, it finds itself confronted by 
a new task. It is called upon to humanize and christianize 
the invading forces of a soulless technology, to exorcize and 
to guide the desire for social progress and human develop- 
ment: 

We do not doubt that India is able to bring to the common 
treasury of the Church its own variety of holiness and spiri- 
tuality. This great people, which seems to have rediscovered 
itself during the past few years, has its own particular type 
of art, culture and intellectual speculation. We may well 
wonder whether the inroads of a soulless technology claiming 
to ensure economic and social progress may not involve the 
risk of losing this precious heritage. It is for the Church to give 
its true value to this rich inheritance and to breathe a new soul 
into it while at the same time welcoming and cooperating to 
the full with all the necessary developments. St Paul says that 
everything is to be born again in Christ (Ephes. 1. 10) and this 



THE MISSION AND THE MISSIONS 101 

is the very meaning of universal redemption and of missionary 
activity (A. Rocaries, op. cit., pp. 119-20). 

A new missionary era is therefore opening before us. 
Throughout the world (and Pius XITs teaching remains of 
immense value here) we have to distinguish in the new civi- 
lization between what is to be welcomed and what is not. 
Not that we have to erect barriers against progress and return 
to the spinning-wheel or to sailing ships. But neither must 
we allow ourselves to be swept along by the dehumanizing, 
secular and atheist current of the times. By making the neces- 
sary distinctions the Church not only saves herself but man 
and the traditional values of Indian spirituality in the case 
we are considering. Once again, she takes up the defence of 
culture and of the mind, of religion and of all that is best in 
mankind. 

Not all missionaries are yet conscious of these problems 
at least in all their scope and importance. However, technical 
schools in considerable numbers have been opened in India. 
The Poona Social Institute has been established. In South 
India Catholic students have organized themselves and their 
study weeks take into account all the different elements of 
the modem apostolate. They are aware that the destiny of 
the Church and of the world is involved and that there is no 
avoiding the encounter of these two great forces. The chal- 
lenge of the modem world to Christianity is manifold and 
the Church's mission must accept it loyally and at every 
level. There is the demographic challenge, the challenge of 
underdevelopment and increasing poverty, the challenge of a 
technological and scientific civilization which attempts to 
invade every department of life and claims that it can explain 
and that it ought to dominate everything. And finally, there 
is the challenge of mass civilization in which all the others 
are included. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PRIEST WORKERS, 

ONE TYPE OF HOME 

MISSION 



We had not originally intended to mention the priest workers 
if only because of the great hidden suffering these men have 
endured, because too of the grossly intemperate language of 
certain sections of the press which has often caused confusion 
in men's minds and thrown discredit unfairly on the Church 
by an arbitrary interpretation of her intentions. We witnessed 
the confusion brought about in the consciences of many 
priests and laymen when this effort, whose beginnings were 
so full of promise, was stopped, and we too possess no 
authority to reconsider the interpretation of the Roman de- 
cisions which withdrew priests from the world of work. 

Yet we are increasingly convinced that the presence of 
these few hundred priests in the world of work was not only 
the outstanding feature of a period rich in new apostolic 
activities, but also, in spite of the fact that it has now ceased, 
continues to have a prophetic and universal meaning for the 
Church. The experiment is typical of the Church in her mis- 
sionary activity. As such it remains one among the invitations 
which, in our times, urge us to undertake the evangelization 
of non-Christian environments. 

Twelve years of contact with priest workers, who for long 
had friendly relations with our parish community, allow us 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 103 

to bear our own personal witness. Our parishioners were quite 
aware that these curates who were sent to work were delegates 
of the Christian community in the working-class world. They 
knew too that this was not an underhand way of filling the 
church or of practising proselytism. They understood that 
these priests were to give themselves whoEy to their com- 
rades, so they agreed not to monopolize them and to accept 
the inevitable separation that was involved. But they also 
knew that we were one with them in the same priesthood. 
Priests were going out to work because both laymen and 
clergy wished to be better Christians. Later, we were able to 
see how genuine this bond between us was, when we noted 
how anxious our men and women were to be kept informed 
about the priest workers. News of them was treated as a 
family affair. Many unbelievers came to the same conclusion. 
"If you didn't belong to the Church," they would say to a 
priest worker, "there would be no sense in your being here." 

Among the converts who were baptized during those years 
at the Easter vigil, there were some who had been influenced 
by this witness of priests in the working-class world before 
they had asked to be received into the Church. Others had 
been friendly with one or other of them before recovering 
the faith of their childhood. 

Certainly the priest workers did more than anyone else 
to make me conscious of the working class. Priests, who had 
been my own curates, taught me to look at working-class 
life with new eyes, to see even passing contacts in a new 
light, and to grasp the human realities in a newspaper or 
during a visit to some quarter of the parish. We now feel 
that we are involved when there is a strike, and examples of 
injustice stir us to action. Under the influence of these priests, 
I learned to have a new faith in mankind. I realized more 
clearly that there is a kind of mistrust of man which dims 
one's faith in God. 

To suggest that I have made staggering discoveries in the 
sphere of pastoral work with the help of priest workers may 



104 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

sound paradoxical since priest workers are not concerned 
with pastoral work in the parish. But in actual fact these men 
who have undertaken the exploration of unknown territories 
have made me see, through the very way in which they 
behave, that the parish is a stock that grows in Christian 
soil. The wholly gratuitous charity of the worker priests with 
its wider sweep, their profound respect for unbelievers, the 
way they share the pain and the joy of other men, their 
renunciation of all illusory prestige, these will help the 
parish one day to recover its true nature. 

If we are among those who hope that priests will once 
more enter the world of work (in new ways which take care 
to safeguard the character of the priesthood), it is because 
of our twelve years of experience and contact with some of 
them, and because we know that, thanks to them, the distant 
murmur of the Good News of the Gospel has reached the 
ears of the present world. Many workers knew that these 
priests, who shared their labours, and the neighbouring parish 
which did its best to give them a welcome, belonged to the 
same Church. And so, at those times when they had any 
contact with the parish, they felt less out of their element. 

This "distant murmur" in the neighbourhood was not un- 
like that which St Mark describes so well in his Gospel. The 
Good News of Jesus Christ spread like a rumour. What 
people heard about him amazed them long before they met 
him, "And the story of his doings at once spread through 
the whole region We never saw the like." 

Would such changes of heart have been possible if we had 
only had our layfolk to listen to? For most priests, contact 
with active Christians will always be the chief means of 
initiation into the realities of working-class life and the irre- 
placeable element needed to complete their priestly activity. 
But it was desirable that, when faced with so tragic a situa- 
tion, priests should experience in their own flesh and blood 
the deep longing of the working masses. It is obvious in our 
view that our great friendship with the worker priests and 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 105 

our common past made it easier for us to listen to what they 
had to say. 

The working-class movement is unknown territory as far as 
the Church is concerned. When we are considering unknown 
territories we do not begin by bringing the first explorers to 
book. When new land has to be reclaimed and evangelized, 
there are bound to be periods of uncertainty and of experi- 
ment, and a margin of error is always possible. 

A working-class life means a complete upheaval for the 
priest who leads it. Let us not be like the guide whose inten- 
tions are excellent but who recites a lesson on swimming to 
a man who is struggling as best he may in a furious sea. And 
we must be on our guard against a certain ambiguity in the 
thought, if not in the words, of those who pass judgement 
when they have the authority to do so and in total ignorance 
of working-class life. 

To those who point to the failings or even the apostasy 
of some of the worker priests, we would reply that great 
undertakings are not accomplished even in the Church except 
by a process of trial and error. And who is to estimate 
where responsibility lies in the case of priests chosen for 
this work without due consideration or of priests who were 
inadequately supported by the attitude of Christians in general 
or who had even to endure severe trials at their hands? 
Obedient sons of the Church as these priests were, they were 
judged by one school of thought as often as not without being 
given a chance to defend themselves. Are priest workers 
the only people likely to make mistakes? They are not the 
kind of men who fall in love with systems, who are content 
to do nothing, who justify some passing craze or other by 
arguments that are more or less theological, or who build up 
a theory on the foundation of a single fact. A priest worker 
soon ceases to be a juvenile. 

We may remember the significant stir created abroad as 
well as in France by the announcement in 1953 that priest 
workers were to be abolished. We may also remember the 



106 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

typical reactions of certain traditionally minded Christians 
who were eager to denounce any scandals they could point to 
or to emphasize that the priestly life and certain working- 
class conditions are incompatible. A good many of these 
Christians would have approved the remark of a parishioner 
in the Lyons area: "Rome has spoken at last! All these 
priests in mufti or dressed up as coal-men ... it was un- 
dignified. They preferred delivering coal to conducting funeral 
services in the cemetery." 

Perhaps the parochial clergy themselves, absorbed in their 
traditional tasks, did not realize the issues at stake in an 
endeavour which bishops, even those outside France, had 
gradually encouraged in their own struggle with the same 
kind of paganism. On the other hand it would be unjust not 
to mention the many proofs given by the bishops of their 
interest in the experiment, especially at the time of trial in 
1953. "For a while the paternal link between the bishop and 
the faithful was renewed in a way that had not existed, as far 
as one could see, for a very long time" (A. Beguin). 

The uncomfortable position of these worker priests in the 
Church, during the years when they were plunged into the 
working world, was nonetheless a "sign which men will 
refuse to recognize". The faith of every Christian who is 
strictly faithful to the Gospel should be such a sign. 

They were suspected of having abandoned the life of 
prayer, yet they quite simply discovered that never in the 
course of their ministry had they had such a spirit of prayer. 
They had been forced to break with a great deal of their 
past, they had been thrown headlong into a way of life quite 
different from that of the ecclesiastical and middle-class 
world which had shaped their early years in the priesthood, 
they were conscious both of the spirit of solidarity around 
them and also shocked at all the human suffering sanctioned 
by established "disorder", they were misunderstood and 
even criticized sometimes by their former brethren, and they 
found that once they had become acclimatized to their new 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 107 

life certain characteristics of their former parish life were 
becoming foreign to them. But this did not prevent them from 
having deeper, because more interior, links with other priests. 

They were dispensed from preaching but in their living 
priestly experience in the world of the wage earners they 
found new possibilities in the field of catechesis and the pre- 
liminaries to the act of faith. 1 

"I learned from my workmates", said one of them, "how to 
earn my daily bread and I taught them how to earn the bread 
of eternal life." Their priestly poverty had become more 
evangelical by the very fact that they were living the life 
of the wage earners. They had become the hope of the poor. 
"The men who are poor", says St James, "(are) to be heirs 
of that kingdom which he has promised to those who love 
him." How many Christians realize the irreplaceable mission 
of the poor in the Church of Jesus Christ? The poor those 
of whom Scripture speaks and whose poverty in spirit often 
goes with a very hard life are heirs to the Spirit. "When the 
poor are no longer at home in the Church", wrote Fr Chenu, 
"it is not so much that the poor are without their Church as 
that the Church is without her poor." An active Christian 
worker put this in another but equally true and evangelical 

1 Here is a simple statement by Fr Michel Favreau, priest and 
worker, who died as the result of an accident at Bordeaux: "I find 
prayer is much easier here than in the rush and bother of preparations 
for meetings or parish bazaars. When you are carrying sacks or 
cases in the shadow of the derricks shaped like a cross it is easy to 
unite yourself with the crucified Christ. Every day is Good Friday. 
Temptations in the moral sphere are less serious and agonizing than 
in the life of a curate [he had been a curate previously]. The great 
temptation now is to be 'fed up* with the life, to refuse to enter 
fully into it, to find ways of escaping from it, ways of making it 
easier, in a word, to fail to make the mysteries of the Incarnation 
and the Cross come to life again in one's own existence. My Mass 
has a far greater meaning for me than it used to have. And I have 
discovered the Bible. But there is also the painful sense of feeling 
one is misunderstood by the vast majority of the parochial clergy, 
that one is as much a stranger as a true proletarian when one goes 
into a presbytery or a church." 



108 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

way when he said: "If the Church is only open to the middle 
classes, then she is closed to the poor. If the Church is open to 
the poor, then she is open to everyone." The priest workers 
were thus the heirs of the message of St Francis of Assissi, 
only in a manner appropriate to our own times. We must not 
shatter the hopes of the poor in our day. 

We may leave to the theologians and the sociologists the 
task of gradually revealing the outlines of this missionary 
epic, its origins in the distant past, its original character in 
our own times, the theology of the priesthood and of the laity 
which is involved in it, and the spiritual relationship it has 
with the development in spirituality personified in St Teresa 
of Lisieux and Charles de Foucauld. For us, concerned as we 
are with the future growth of the Church, the issue at stake 
in this missionary situation is what interests us, first of all for 
its own sake, but above all because of its prophetic meaning 
as regards the missionary status of the Church. 

As far as evangelization is concerned, the issue at stake is 
obviously considerable. For the first time in religious history, 
thanks to the combined efforts of Catholic Action and priests 
in the world of work, the Gospel was brought to working 
men as working men. And this by the authentic presence 
among them of the Church in their actual working life in her 
priesthood and her laity. But, with the passage of time, it is 
becoming clear that the priest worker movement was oppor- 
tune since it provided the Catholicity of the Church with a 
dimension which, had it not been for these priests, would 
have remained in some sense an abstraction. It is a strange 
paradox that such a Catholic phenomenon should often have 
been opposed on the score of being un-Catholic, and that 
the priest workers should have been accused of encouraging 
division between social classes and sectarianism within the 
Church. It is undeniable that in our time the majority of 
vocations to the priesthood come from families with a bour- 
geois, peasant or middle-class mentality and way of life. 
And this at a time when the working-class world is a stranger 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 109 

to the Church. The mission of the priest workers was to pro- 
vide the Church with deep roots in an environment which, in 
a sense, had to be previously "naturalized". This effort to 
give the Church back her universality in the concrete forms 
part of her universal mission properly so called. 

Before and after the priest workers, other efforts, which 
have more or less found their place in the Church, have 
characterized the evangelization of those environments which 
are least open to the Gospel. In the past Fr Lebbe, who be- 
came a naturalized Chinaman, Fr Monchanin identifying 
himself with the Indians, with their mentality and their cul- 
ture, Fr Peyriguere more recently among the Berbers of the 
Middle Atlas region, all have a striking kinship (at least at 
that deep level which transcends the difference between their 
situations) with those priest workers who foresaw the mystical 
implications of their own entry into the working-class world. 
And there is another similarity; missionaries in China have 
been forced to adopt means of subsistence which oblige them 
to become wage earners. And this was not the case a few 
years ago. 

A radical change in the missionary's way of life is taking 
shape under the pressure of economic necessities and the 
prevalent slogans which continually urge increased production. 
We feel that the example of the French priest workers has 
been a determining factor in this evolution which has led to 
the voluntary proletarianization of hundreds of priests and 
nuns. They are going to live as working men and women 
among the people they come to evangelize. The majority will 
be peasants, but their holdings will rapidly become model 
farms and sometimes stock-breeding centres. A number of 
them, like everybody else, have been given their land by the 
Communists. Others are starting cloth weaving shops, are 
becoming gardeners, manufacturers, businessmen, itinerant 

chemists One Chinese bishop is a pedlar selling the cheese 

made from beans known as Tu-Fu. Another, Mgr Fu, works 
the bellows of the stove in a large inn. Persecution has made 
them return instinctively to a life of evangelical poverty 
("Chine nouvelle et Christianisme", in Etudes, March 1950). 



110 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

TOWARDS A PASTORAL METHOD ADAPTED 
TO OUR TIMES 

As we have already seen, collective factors whose influ- 
ence is continually on the increase, because they are bound 
up with the phenomenon of industrial civilization, are modi- 
fying profoundly the data of a pastoral method suited to our 
times. 

The demographic explosion of the twentieth century, the 
mobility of the masses of the people who are constantly on 
the move (not only the countryfolk coming to live in the 
towns, but also people spending their summer holidays away 
from home, workmen away for the week-end, skilled workers 
continually moved from place to place according to the trends 
in the labour market), the concentration of industry round the 
towns with the consequent ribbon development of housing, 
shanty towns, mass undertakings, the great quarries of Casa- 
blanca, the fabelas of Rio de Janeiro, all these are essentially 
new and have caused profound changes in the conditions under 
which the Church's institutions have to establish their pastoral 
work (Michael Goison). 

This extract shows how a combined pastoral method a 
concerted effort to readapt the Church's organization to the 
new needs of a world she has to evangelize will have to be 
flexible and continually evolving. There is no need to take 
fright or to lift our arms to heaven in a gesture of despair. 
This combined pastoral effort is a return to our Christian 
origins and of itself leads to a closer contact with the realities 
of human life. Although it is everywhere subject to the same 
doctrinal criteria, it does not excuse us from pastoral work 
adapted to levels of consciousness which vary according to 
regions and local environment. 

Finally, if "individualism is a sin against the priesthood" 
(Pius XII), it is because it is an attack against its collegiate 
character. It is because priests are priests and our times re- 
quire that priests should work together and should collabo- 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 111 

rate with one another more extensively and with a greater 
sense of urgency. Priests working in the same parish were 
already brought together by the mere fact of living under 
the same roof, they already formed groups whose main 
purpose was mutual encouragement at the spiritual level; 
but in addition to this, teams of priests have speeded up the 
establishment of a common pastoral front. 

This has had obvious advantages economy of physical 
effort, a deeper understanding, a new style of preaching, a 
more broad-minded Catholic press, the greater authenticity 
of a liturgy which welcomes those Christians who merely 
stand on the threshold of the Church but, above all, it 
provides a more favourable starting point for effective evan- 
gelization. Yet we would add that a combined pastoral 
method worthy of the name ought, in this field of evangeliza- 
tion, to give greater scope to the responsibilities incumbent 
on lay people at the various stages of reflection, choice of 
apostolic methods and their implementation. 

The organization of pastoral work in the Church, as she 
faces a new set of realities, is still far too clerical it is still 
the business of priests rather than of a cell in the Church, 
it still tries to improve existing organizations rather than to 
create others of a new kind, decisions are taken at top level 
instead of approval and authority being ultimately given to 
basic research. 

MISSIONARY PARISHES 

The parish's vocation is to be the strategic point of spiritual 
life, the place which tells us what charity is and nourishes 
it, the font in which all the human realities of the earthly 
city are brought to Christ. It too suffers from the convulsions 
of a period in a perpetual state of flux, and it encourages 
the work of evangelization to a greater or lesser extent in 
proportion as it adapts itself or not to the spiritual needs 
of its parishioners. But as we face the greater scope of a 



112 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

pastoral method suited to our times we must not minimize 
the evangelizing nature of the most humble tasks of the 
ministry once they are undertaken from an apostolic stand- 
point. 2 

Especially in dechristianized environments, the parish 
appears as a relay station for action in a pagan situation, 
and this is a task linked with a mission going far beyond 
parochial interests. Parishes are just as necessary now as in 
the past, but they should be more aware of and more in- 
formed about their own limitations when the question of 
reaching the pagan world arises. How can they possibly reach 
the whole of human reality in the world of planning of which 
we have already spoken? How can they even be sufficient 
to christianize the whole human existence of those with whom 
they come into contact through the liturgical assembly and 
the Word of God? 3 What in fact can be done to give that 
complete education in the faith promised by the Church to 
the newly baptized, when routine and ultra-conservatism 
hold back Christians whose own vocation urges them to 

2 In 1943, Pius XII reminded us of "this silent daily work, often 
unseen, whose action is more than ever of decisive importance in our 
day, since all those souls won to Christ by new and unusual methods 
have eventually to become the responsibility of an active, continual 
and thorough ordinary ministry". 

3 Every man in the past had a fundamental connection with a given 
place. In those days it was enough to found the Church in a place 
for it to be solidly established there. But men are less and less 
attached to a given place. The situations they face, the relations they 
enter into are increasingly complex. Hence we find a type of parish- 
ioner who is a stranger in his own parish. "His inner existence is 
attached to other 'areas', and these do far more to give him a forma- 
tion. And so, although he is not fully conscious of the fact, he will 
consider his parish as a Service station' supplying certain 'spiritual' 
needs. He will only come under the influence of the Gospel in that 
sector of his being (and it is a very small sector) which realizes that 
it is a member of a parish and linked to the human beings who live 
in it. Meanwhile, the Gospel will perhaps not affect that other part 
of Mm which, for example, is attached to a given scientific environ- 
ment. Hence his faith is always being called into question or does 
not seem disturbed by others* denial of it" (Parole et mission, Fore- 
word, No. 9). 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 113 

launch, out into the deep? It is a fact that a certain type of 
clericalism in education mass-produces unbelievers whose 
only relic of their early formation is a political and bourgeois 
veneer which they ought to have outgrown. We may as well 
say with Bernanos that here and there we find parishes in a 
dying condition because they have failed to adapt themselves, 
their clergy have had too much to do, there has been a dead 
weight of tradition and custom, factors making for dechris- 
tianization have exerted pressure, practising Christians have 
become rarer and the arteries of the faith have hardened. 

It is doubtless true that we should distinguish two phases 
in the process of making our parishes missionary. First there 
is the phase of purification. And this takes time for we can 
never purify ourselves enough. During this period our minds 
have to be opened to the missionary spirit and we have to 
learn to encourage the adoption of methods more suited to 
the times. There has to be a liturgy which is outwardly 
expressed in a more vital way, preaching which, pays more 
attention to the real needs of the congregation, constant con- 
tact with the parents of the children who attend catechism 
and with all comers, apostolic exchanges of views with the 
few workers who are active Christians and a knowledge, 
based on sociology, of all that goes to form the collective life 
of the civil community: housing, transport, places of work, 
political activities, cultural organizations and information 
services. . . . The true face of Jesus Christ is revealed by a slow 
purification of men's consciences achieved by our sensitive 
awareness of human realities, by the attention we pay to men 
and to the institutions which they invent for themselves. 

In working-class areas one of the major obstacles to evan- 
gelization in our parishes is a certain image of the Church 
which gives those outside the impression of a spirit of com- 
promise; there is the business of money connected with 
religious ceremonies, ostentatious display which, shocks the 
working-class mind, and favours shown to those who are 
wealthy and powerful. In these same districts, the parish 



114 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

priest's constant desire, if he wishes to be a missionary, is 
not that his church should be full but that the workers should 
be able to enter it as workers and go out to the factory as 
Christians. 

Catholic Action introduces the laity as such to the mind 
and heart of parish priests by man to man contact and by 
reflection on facts in the light of religion. This full and vital 
collaboration between priests and laymen is something very 
different from mere formal meetings in the sacristy or the 
presbytery. A parish where this collaboration exists shows 
that it is anxious to see the laity advance as a whole. It 
should also make sure that the Church is present on the 
various bodies which form the organic structure of the world 
of work and civil life: the trades union, subsidiary organi- 
zations, town councils, ward committees, influential associ- 
ations. New values emerge in the faith of Christians and in 
the priest's sermons: the meaning of work, the demands of 
justice, willingness to accept responsibility, solidarity and 
loyalty, respect for the liberty of others. We have to rid our- 
selves of the spirit of conquest and become gradually aware 
of the universal character of our faith. 

When they have heard many sermons stressing all this, the 
parishioners know that every baptized person is an envoy 
among his unbelieving brethren. They realize that they have 
a responsibility, that they are to be "the leaven of the Gospel" 
in their own surroundings. They have gained a more "catho- 
lic" vision of the universe since they are not so tempted to be 
satisfied with the soothing conformity of religious practice. 
They see too that their responsibility is world-wide, that their 
vocation is both missionary and universal. As Folliet has 
said: "If you are a Catholic, then those who are not must 
keep you awake at night." 

When a parish has become more aware of the universality 
of the Church, it has to be made ready for effective mission- 
ary work. And this is done by sending out pioneers in advance 
into pagan territory. This parish, more aware than others of 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 115 

Its limitations, realizes how heavy a burden it carries in the 
sociological order and how encumbered the Gospel still is, 
in spite of years of conceited effort. And it is precisely because 
it knows that it is still too remote from the mentality, the 
work, life and leisure of the masses which surround it, 
that it feels ready to collaborate closely with priests and 
laymen who are sufficiently untrammelled by parochial insti- 
tutions to blaze a trail for an authentic mission in "missionary 
areas" outside the Church. 

We have to cease to be closed parishes, we must become 
open parishes and from open parishes pass on to the stage at 
which we are missionary parishes. And this demands a pas- 
toral method which slowly prepares the parish to play an 
active role in the evangelization of the masses of mankind. 

The liturgical movement and missionary effort 

The various contemporary liturgical movements deserve 
special mention not only for the genuine influence they have 
been exercising over the consciousness of Christians for the 
past twenty years, but also because of the new demands 
raised by the advent of a new cultural world. It is a fact that 
certain types of modern man are becoming increasingly dis- 
tinguishable from the typical Churchman. It is also true that 
the ways in which the liturgy expresses itself are less acces- 
sible to the kind of mind produced by science and tech- 
nology. 

A missionary Church cannot close its eyes to this difficulty 
in the sphere of communication. As regards liturgical pas- 
toral methods in mission countries Cardinal Agagianian 
writes : 

Even in the celebration of the Eucharist, the missionary 
Church is now increasingly admitting native elements so as 
to encourage the active participation of the faithful in the 
various regions. As a beginning native music and the vernacu- 
lar language are used to a certain extent. The missionaries 
thus show that they realize that the Church must, like a 



116 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

good mother, be at home everywhere among her children. 
Benedict XV expressed this very clearly in Maximum, illud: "The 
Church is Catholic and must nowhere find herself a stranger." 

The current liturgical reforms meet this need for an en- 
lightened and active participation in the Christian Mystery. 
And the liturgical movement, by returning to a sound tra- 
dition, has taken its stand against "folklore" and "druidical" 
Christianity which proliferates during periods of dechristia- 
nization. The meeting between the Church and modern man, 
in an adequate liturgical celebration, requires an effort on the 
part of every Christian to probe the secrets of this privileged 
and community expression of the faith, and it involves on 
the part of the Church a constant concern to adapt the 
ways in which the liturgy expresses itself to the needs of the 
new cultures. 

There is always the temptation to greet some decree or other 
as the dawn of a liturgical revival, and this involves the risk 
of upsetting the balance of forces between the liturgical 
Mystery and secular life. As Fr Congar has said: "No liturgy 
is really worth bothering about if it cannot be carried out 
intelligently and with feeling by human beings." 

Operation "Charity" and the mission 

We are to follow the truth, in a spirit of charity, and so 
grow up, in everything, into a due proportion with Christ, who 
is our head. On him all the body depends; it is organized and 
unified by each contact with the source which supplies it; and 
thus, each limb receiving the active power it needs, it achieves 
its natural growth, building itself up through charity (Ephes. 4. 
15-16). 

In a combined pastoral method, which takes account of the 
missionary concerns of the Church, works of charity occupy 
a place which, although traditional, is nonetheless typical of 
our times. It is a deplorable fact that vocations in the sphere 
of charitable works are becoming more rare. This is due to 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 117 

the fact that Christians throw in their hand as they see how 
widespread poverty is, due also to the fact that everyone has 
his own problems in the material sphere. But a sluggish faith 
is also to blame. 

Here again our ideas often lag behind the work of inter- 
national organizations for mutual aid. And these are them- 
selves sorely tried by the constantly changing nature of the 
urgent and complex tasks for which they are jointly respons- 
ible: destitution among refugees, insecurity among dis- 
placed persons and emigrants, famine and various other 
catastrophes. 

It is from the unification of all parts of the body in Charity, 
as St Paul says, that a combined pastoral effort receives its 
stability without prejudice to the tasks proper to Catholic 
Action in different environments. When, for example, on 
Christmas night, our parishioners send off parcels in answer 
to an appeal for war victims in Italy, for starving people in 
India, for refugees from some recent disaster . . . when they 
adopt and collect money for North- African child refugees in 
Moroccan camps, then the mystery of Christinas becomes a 
genuine reality for them. 

When children from the catechism class go in groups to 
visit old people in the neighbouring hospital with a teacher 
who is anxious to make them see with the eye of faith the 
distress of lonely folk, when these same children write to an 
Italian mother who is a war-victim: "As I am writing this 
letter, I am thinking that it is the same as if I was writing to 
Christ", then indeed they will learn and practise Christian 
love far better than if they had only learned about it from a 
chapter in the catechism. 

The works of mercy and Catholic Action derive from the 
same missionary spirit which finds expression in two ways 
of loving others, complementary to one another and both 
signs of our faith. The concrete situations in which they are 
exercised are often connected. Action among large social 
groups is enriched by genuine contact with their victims. 



118 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

"What Is *charity' today," Mgr Rodhain used to say, "will 
be social justice tomorrow/' 

On the whole, Catholics have welcomed the Welfare State 
while continuing to adapt Catholic organizations to the needs 
of the times. On the international plane, central Catholic 
organizations do important work in collaboration with State 
organizations (for example, the F.A.O. in its efforts to relieve 
famine throughout the world). This collaboration on the part 
of Catholics was one of the directives issued in 1951 by 
Pius XII to Cantos internationalis, the central organization 
for works of charity. Much remains to be done to promote the 
sense of International solidarity among Catholics, to make 
them anxious that Christians should share in the work of 
these great world-wide organizations as well as in relieving 
hidden poverty in the streets around them. A missionary 
Church is a Church which seeks charity and justice for all 
men. 

THE CALL TO MISSIONARY WORK 

Two besetting sins of Christians, habit and conservatism, 
are brought to the full light of day in a time which is charac- 
terized by a profound upheaval due to the increased speed of 
development. We have all had the painful experience of 
finding that a large number of practising Christians have a 
conservative mentality, a tendency to treat the parish as a 
ghetto, and an instinctive reaction against any changes in 
what they have been used to, liturgical innovations, new 
societies, the development of Catholic Action. 

We must not confuse the sheer weight of habit with respect 
for tradition. One of the sources of the Church's inspiration is 
a sound tradition, a tradition which is a kind of living 
memory. It remains true, however, that, like the grain of 
mustard-seed in the parable, pastoral work, if it is to develop, 
requires a constantly adjusted balance between the data of 
continuity and their changing aspects which do not corrupt 
either revealed dogmas or the unchangeable Word of God. 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 1 19 

According to St Paul, tradition consists in handing on to 
others the life which we have ourselves received. It Is not 
an ossification, but a process of transmission. "Men who 
continue tradition are not those who are obsessed with the 
past, but those whose lives are lived in depth" (Y. de Mont- 
cheuil). 

Although there has been a great renewal in the pastoral 
sphere, it is far from true that it has everywhere reached the 
level of the parish. Our pastoral work is far too often on a 
short term basis. Each parish undertakes apostolic activities 
which sometimes cancel one another out, and all this accord- 
ing to the views of successive parish priests or assistants. We 
find priests reversing their predecessor's policy on principle, 
and so the whole life of a parish is a series of alternate 
permissions and prohibitions. New societies take their place 
beside the old ones and the labels at present in fashion are 
applied to older, more or less moribund groups. This con- 
fusion, which exists in spite of diocesan policy, only hastens 
the advent of complete anarchy in the pastoral sphere and 
this at the very time when a combined pastoral effort every- 
where has become an overriding necessity. 

These indications of a general malaise in all departments 
of apostolic activity are not new. For the past fifty years our 
societies have been in the throes of what we may well call 
an acute crisis. Even where some groups seem to flourish, 
how many illusions lie hidden behind the outward appear- 
ance of a vitality which does not really exist? 

Pastoral work in the sphere of the sacraments especially is 
in a state of confusion. Our liturgy is attended by people 
who have been baptized but not always evangelized. We give 
them the sacraments without sufficient instruction and with- 
out any coherent plan. We bring into the Church children 
who will later be exposed to the influence of a materialist 
environment. We welcome adults but without providing them 
with a genuine, that is, a community initiation into the parish. 
We seem to forget that conversion in their case not only 



120 THE PRJQEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

comes before baptism but is present throughout the whole 
of their sacramental life. We consider that the reception of 
the sacraments is an achievement to be duly noted down as 
such and to be kept up, rather than the indispensable food 
of a faith which has to be continually renewed by a series 
of conversions. Finally, our preaching is of the sort intended 
for catechumens, whereas according to the niind of the 
Church and her liturgy it should be linked with the reception 
of the sacraments and so addressed to people who have 
already been converted and who live by the supernatural 
virtues. 

The reason for these deficiencies is only too often a lack of 
doctrine. 4 Sound pastoral work presupposes a doctrine. Other- 
wise it is no more than a formula. On the other hand, doc- 
trine which is not pastoral is mere armchair theology. There 
is no lack of theologians, thinkers, philosophers and men of 
action. Yet we often find in our reviews theoretical considera- 
tions and generalities which are not sufficiently in touch with 
real life. On the other hand, how many experiments in pas- 
toral work are not nourished from the sources, because we 
have not given ourselves time to sit down and do some hard 
thinking either alone or in a team? 

The lack of contact between theologians and the pastoral 
clergy is still too considerable for genuine pastoral experience 
to bring its light to bear on theology and spirituality. In 
theological circles there is too much thinking that misses the 
mark. Among parish priests there is insufficient doctrinal 
depth based on experience. In a period of dechristianization 

4 "Has theology kept pace with these changes or has Christian life 
gone several lengths ahead? Many people today are ready to give 
their lives for the Church and the world (but not at all for their own 
perfection). They need a theology which describes the Christian life 
from the point of view of service, of the mission, of sharing in the 
burning light and warmth with which the Church floods mankind. If 
we succeeded in thinking out such a theology clearly and in making 
it available for our people by including it in Christian teaching, then 
Christian communities would bring a new force to bear in the world" 
(Balthasar). 



THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 121 

it is a serious thing to allow this sort of dissociation between 
the pastor and the doctor to become permanent. Our cate- 
chetical teaching bears the mark of this divorce within the 
Church. 

It seems to me that in any given sector there should not 
be any cleavage between (1) historical research as the living 
memory of the Church, (2) a process of psychological and 
sociological conditioning in so far as such a conditioning is 
part of the data of real life, (3) basic action by militant Chris- 
tians as an indispensable grasp of the movements of the Holy 
Spirit at the heart of the work of evangelization. 

These researches in very different areas are now under- 
taken without any link between them. Church history ignores 
the active Christian. Religious sociology as we now know 
it ignores the psychology of different mental attitudes. The 
priest should stand at the crossroads where these different 
areas meet and he especially should discover the height, 
breadth and depth of a pastoral charity adequate to the 
needs of a technological civilization. 

The most serious defect of all is the far too common failure 
to see what the layman has to contribute, whether it is a 
parish priest thinking about his way of teaching the catechism 
or of preaching, or a missionary sector trying to extend the 
coordination of its forces engaged in the apostolate. Cate- 
chetical instruction today ought to be not so much a pro- 
gressive course of instruction on the plane of the absolute as 
a re-education in the life of faith. In a dechristianized en- 
vironment it is not enough to catechize a child as an isolated 
individual, his whole environment has to be evangelized. 

Are there any dechristianized areas where we can be sure 
that catechical instruction is at the service of evangelization? 
How are we to explain the fact that certain catechetical 
methods succeed in producing mere deists and not believers 
in the God of Revelation? 

This underlines, as we intend that it should, the key prob- 
lem of the "content" of our evangelization, the proclamation 



122 THE PRIEST WORKERS, ONE TYPE OF HOME MISSION 

of a message which is an urgent invitation to a faith which is 
also a conversion, and which takes into account the three 
chief elements in the modem mind: practical atheism,, indi- 
vidualism and economic materialism. We have to reveal the 
supernatural, theological character of faith, the vital connec- 
tion between our message and the Me of the Church and 
the eschatological dimensions of our salvation. 

In this encyclical Dfvfnf Redemptoris, Pius XI praised "the 
industry and the zeal of so many bishops and priests who are 
discovering and attempting (with all the necessary safeguards) 
new methods in the apostolate, methods more suited to 
modern demands". 



CONCLUSION 

A MISSIONARY CHURCH 



At every period of her history the Church is called upon to 
adapt her evangelical work to the peoples to whom her 
mission takes her, and to the problems which they present. 
The Church as missionary is not the Christian people making 
an inventory of its troops and of the weapons it possesses, 
taking a census of the multitudes to be evangelized, recruiting 
its personnel and determining the tactics to be used for the 
reconquest of lost ground or the annexation of new territories. 
It is the Church re-examining her own nature, rediscovering 
what she truly is and extricating from the dross and dust of 
centuries the hard, pure diamond which Christ has charged 
her to keep shining before the eyes of men. It is the Church 
rediscovering in aH its simplicity and in all its stark reality 
Christ's command: "You, therefore, must go out, making 
disciples of all nations, and baptizing them in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 

"A missionary Church" it is in relation to this expression 
that, in this concluding chapter, we shall work out the mis- 
sionary demands made upon the Church of our times. But it 
is important to distinguish the spiritual meaning of this 
missionary status from its historical context. And this mean- 
ing can only be grasped by Christians through faith in the 
mystery of the Church. 

When we consider the Church's missionary endeavour, it 
appears that we have in the first place to distinguish two well- 
defined periods (of very unequal length be it noted), the 



124 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

periods before and after the critical date, 313, that of the edict 
of Constantine. 

The Church's presence in the Greco-Roman world in the 
apostolic age is evangelical in character and dominated by 
her desire to preach the Gospel to the whole world with no 
other support than an inexhaustible confidence in the Holy 
Spirit which drives her forward to the open sea. 

The edict of Constantine inaugurates a system of official 
relations between the Church and governments. It is a factual 
recognition of the rights and the autonomy of the Church 
as a religious society. The Prince undertakes to maintain the 
Church and to keep order for her so that she may be freer 
in her work of evangelization. The Church organizes institu- 
tions which make it easier for her to manifest herself, provide 
a favourable climate for her growth and a juridical status for 
her "clerks". But there is a danger here; the Church may suc- 
cumb to the temptations offered by the means to power 
pointed out to us in the second temptation of Jesus in the 
desert. 

The Council of Nicaea in the reign of Constantine and the 
reform under Charlemagne were the products of the Church 
supported by the Prince. Today, the Orientals still live under 
a system of Church and State relations similar to that of 
Constantine. This de facto situation is not contrary to the 
Church's constitution, but, as things now are, seems out of 
date; and relations with the civil powers are difficult. 

Christianity at its beginnings encountered the Mediter- 
ranean world which possessed a certain unity under the 
hegemony of the Roman Empire. In modern times, influenced 
by technology and the state of mind it induces, neo-paganism 
is an almost universal phenomenon and a unifying force. 

The reaction of the pagan Roman Empire to Christian 
proselytism expressed itself in a long series of persecutions. 
Today, the opposition between the Church and the atheist 
world is still too recent for us to see what are the constants 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 125 

in&de facto co-existence with Its unpredictable repercussions 
for the apostolate. 

Another historical factor* cultural and not political, is the 
fact that for centuries the Church has developed in the con- 
text of Western civilization which remains one of the elements 
in present-day evangelization. Not that we should exaggerate 
the influence of the West in the Church's development. The 
Orientals are equally conscious that they are developing what 
they have inherited from their early fathers and the first 
Councils. And the East may well find itself playing a great 
part in the fortunes of the Church in the time to come. 

The West has given Christianity its language and its liturgy, 
its code of law and its philosophy, and it would doubtless be 
rash to abandon uncritically the humanism and institutions 
which Western culture has provided for the Church, for they 
are valid substructures for the transmission of the Christian 
message. What is regrettable is that the West, on the strength 
of its economic and military power, has considered itself a 
form of universal culture, and that the preaching of the 
Gospel has generally been done side by side with, this culture's 
penetration. Instead of studying and respecting the ancient 
cultures with their glorious past and their undeniable human 
values, often complementary to what the West has to contri- 
bute, the messenger of the Gospel has too often been 
tempted to make a clean sweep of the ways of thought, feeling 
and expression which he has found in the new countries on 
whose shores he has disembarked, and to impose the intellec- 
tual habits of the West as on a par with the Word of Christ. 

But today, the West as a whole is opposed and discredited 
by the other peoples and to an extent which we find it difficult 
to imagine. Arnold Toynbee 1 does not hesitate to call the 
West "the arch-aggressor of modern times". And the rejection 
of Western culture today involves the refusal of the religious 
message which has been too closely identified with it. 

*A. J. Toynbee, The World and the West (Oxford Univ. Press, 
1953). 



126 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

However undeniable its influence during past centuries, 
the West, we repeat, has no right to claim that its civilization 
is universal. The ancient cultures which have flowered in 
other parts of our planet not only have a glorious past, but 
they still exercise a profound influence on the minds of men 
now in the full process of evolution. And so the civilization 
which is being fashioned today, with some possibility of 
becoming universal, is of a new kind, and no one previous 
tradition has the right to claim to be its author to the exclu- 
sion of the others. 

The engineer and the technician found in such abundance 
throughout the world of industry are not typically Western. 
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the West will one 
day lose its leadership in the field of culture. Although 
countries which only yesterday were colonies are becoming 
Westernized by adopting the technology of the Western 
peoples, yet this technology is emptied of all reference to 
any religious values which these countries accept. They adapt 
themselves to the technology of the West by reacting against 
the West as such. 

THE THIRD REVOLUTION 

Thus after four and a half centuries of Western domination 
and just at the time when tables seem to have been all but 
completely turned after the Second World War, we are in a 
position to take a more accurate view of the present situation. 

Today, however, when the West's bid to win the world has 
been challenged by Russia, we can see that our Western civi- 
lization's apparent triumph on the technological plane is pre- 
carious for the very reason that has made it easy; and the 
reason is that this triumph has been superficial. The West has 
sent its technology racing round the world by the trick of free- 
ing it from the handicap of being coupled with our Western 
Christianity; but, in the next chapter of the story, this un- 
attached Western technology has been picked up by the 
Russians and been coupled with Communism, and this new 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 127 

and potent combination of a Western technology with a Wes- 
tern heresy is now being offered to the Far Eastern peoples 
and to the rest of mankind as a rival way of life to ours 
(A. J. Toynbee, op. cit., p. 61). 

Whatever may be the political Importance of China and 
Russia in the near future, the great event of the century will 
no doubt be the advancement of the peoples who are now 
in a state of development, whether like negro Africa they 
have just acquired their own independence with all the dis- 
advantages of a lack of experience, or whether they have 
succeeded in acquiring the economic means needed to bring 
under cultivation their immense territories with their unde- 
veloped resources. South America is a good example of the 
latter. 

Our European nations were the first promoters and wit- 
nesses of this development among the underequipped peoples 
at the same time as a world-wide proletariat was coming into 
existence strong in the knowledge of shared suffering and 
with the same passion for justice and liberation. We did not 
at first realize how international this new brotherhood of the 
workers of all countries was to be. A new mother country 
has come into existence. The men who work together in the 
same factory, Poles, North Africans or Congolese by birth, 
are brothers in arms bound together by a common destiny 
and striving for a better future. These companions in poverty 
own nothing and all they have to defend is their freedom as 
workers. They make their claims, they strike in the same 
spirit as their elders who, but a short time ago, went to their 
deaths in the front line in defence of their country against 
the invader. For them capitalism is the oppressor and they 
look upon its representatives in the same way as Frenchmen 
did the Nazi occupying troops. 

There is the immense demographic advance of the Asiatic 
peoples, the search for "black gold", confederations of tribes 
which only yesterday were separated by the barriers of 
language, rivalry and white exploitation. There is famine, 



128 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

illiteracy, leprosy, and these are world-wide scourges. There is 
an atlas of destitution from Tokyo to Calcutta, from Rio de 
Janeiro to Mexico, but there is also a hope of deliverance 
in the heart of this immense world of the poor. The same 
urge which has brought them from their primitive conditions 
to the stage at which they realize that they are men tricked 
out of their rights, has led these masses (informed as they 
now are through the widespread use of visual and aural 
means of communication) to share the same desire to emerge 
together from their present state. 

The third revolution taking place under our very eyes, 
after the French Revolution and the working-class revolution 
of Marx and Engels, is that of the poor, of the "third", op- 
pressed world living in subhuman conditions, the revolution 
of the peoples of those continents which only yesterday were 
under colonial domination. And it is a revolution which is 
quite different from its predecessors. Yet its evolution is 
linked with them although we cannot foresee in what direc- 
tion its influence will be brought to bear. But the historical 
context in which it is taking place is obvious for us to see 
and it involves the whole missionary effort of the Church. 

This awakening is brought about because of the profound 
division between poor and rich nations, and it is much to the 
point in our argument to note that the rich nations are those 
which are called Christian. Much more, the West, in which 
Christianity has been incarnated in history, has been revealed 
to the underdeveloped countries as primarily responsible for 
injustice as it is found throughout the world. Even today, 
from the depths of its own comfort and security, it seems to 
look with blind eyes at the poverty of others. 

Aid for the underdeveloped countries has become official 
as a result of competitive policies. It has not, on the whole, 
become a genuine human movement. Christians at least are 
to be found in the international organizations which are doing 
their best to better living conditions in these vast areas. But 
it is the entire Church which is called to become missionary 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 129 

in the presence of those spiritual forms of distress which 
remain the most iniquitous examples of injustice. 

Such then are the outlines of the Church's mission as she 
faces the civilizations and the poor who but yesterday were 
called uncivilized. Christianity is no longer synonymous with 
Christian civilization, 2 any more than it is the religion of the 
West. The Church refuses to allow herself to be confined to 
any particular civilization. 3 It is nevertheless true that her 
universal mission is made more difficult by the complexity 
of current cultural evolution and by the Western foundations 
of Christian culture. 

THE STRUGGLE IN THE CHURCH 

It is essential for us today to realize that the Constantinian 
era has passed away not only, as we have seen, as a historical 
reality, but in its specifically religious sense. 

The relations of Christianity with a world which has nothing 
Constantinian about it must be thought out again and very 
thoroughly We are moving away from the European Con- 
tinent to the whole planet with its rapid increase in population, 
its vastly different civilizations and its mass of completely 
unexpected forms of human behaviour. It is the whole geo- 
graphical and cultural basis of Christianity which has changed. 

The Christian with a "Constantinian" type of mind tends to 
take up arms against this situation. He sees the defects of this 
new world and he is right. They exist. But he makes them his 
excuse for his refusal to sympathize with the aspirations of 

the century in which he liVes The "evangelical" Christian 

is anxious to enter into a dialogue with men of the new type 
(Fr Chenu, LC.L, January 1st, 1960). 

2 "A Christian civilization is not one in which the party in power 
serves the temporal interests of the Church, it is a civilization whicli 
aims to treat all men with respect, it is a human civilization, and the 
characteristic notes of a civilization, whether or not it is Christian, 
are justice and freedom" (Frangois Mauriac). 

3 "The Catholic Church does not identify herself with any culture, 
but she is ready to ally herself with them all" (Pius XII, Letter to 
the Bishop of Augsburg, 1955). 



130 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

The Church in fact meets external opposition from a world 
which is solidly non-Christian, and internal opposition due to 
a kind of tension between the defenders of the status quo and 
missionaries who are asking for freedom to experiment in 
their attempts to bring Jesus Christ to a new world. 

This twofold opposition has a meaning which goes far 
beyond our inertia or our impatience and can only be grasped 
by faith. 

If this opposition is not seen in the light of its religious 
significance, it runs the risk of appearing merely a sociological 
reality. How often we heard it said, at the time of Rome's 
decisions in 1954 and 1959, that they were due to the forces 
of inertia in a Church which was involved to the point of 
danger, both in her leaders and her members, with a world 
that had passed away for ever! But this kind of reaction has 
something very unhealthy about it. It reduces the mystery of 
the Church to a mere sociological system conditioned in the 
same way as any other human institution (Jean Frisque). 

The Church is not a colonial expedition. The meeting be- 
tween Jesus and a man's conscience takes place in the very 
depths of the human heart. The Church must be the meeting- 
place of Jesus Christ with a whole section of the human race, 
and it is with this purpose that she must go forward among 
the nations. But the man she sends will have to "invent" his 
own way of being present in and to a non-Christian world. 
He will be bound by total loyalty to Jesus Christ and will 
belong both to the world he is to evangelize and to the 
Church as she is in the concrete. This is not an easy situation 
to be in when he has to hand on a message which is linked 
with cultural implications foreign to this new world. And it 
is under these circumstances that opposition may come from 
the Church herself. 

At first the missionary just does not understand. It is 
humanly impossible for him to understand. He has given his 
life to the mission he has received. He has obeyed. He has 



CONCLUSION : A MISSIONARY CHURCH 1 3 1 

certainly invented methods of his own, but is this not, by 
definition, what the Church expects from her missionaries? 
And now the Church, using the voice of her hierarchical 
leaders, a voice that is almost always supported by the queries 
of a multitude of Christians, calls in question what he has done 
and this by reminding him that traditionally priest and layman 
do not live out the implications of their priesthood and bap- 
tism in the same way. But why is he blamed since the Church 
must have known beforehand that he would have to invent 
methods of his own? In any case, what does the Church know 
about it? She isn't "in it up to the neck" as he is! Let her 
come and see for herself! And the missionary is tempted to 
tell himself that the Church does not understand because she 
is bound up with, involved in a world that has passed away. 
Some will even perhaps say that the Church Is betraying Jesus 
Christ, that, if Christ were really alive in her, she would not 
react in this way since the issue at stake is the preaching of the 
Gospel to the poor! Humanly speaking the missionary cannot 
understand because, at this level, he is right (Jean Frisque). 

The situation described here is certainly an extreme one 
yet it gives us a profound insight into the mystery of the 
Church. The Church does not know in advance what new 
form she must give to the preaching of Jesus Christ which 
is a mission entrusted to her alone. But, and this is the one 
single purpose she has in mind, what she has to invent, 
although new, is what has always been the mainstay of her 
life. This is the meaning of her tradition. The missionary is 
not the whole Church. This is obvious and yet it is, over and 
beyond Mm, with the Church that the non-Christian world 
enters into a dialogue. Although the Church may oppose him, 
the missionary is nonetheless a man with a mission in the 
Church. She opposes him, yes, but far more than this, she 
expects great things of him. She expects him to re-examine 
the whole project on which he has set his heart, and this 
within the context of Ms increasing obedience to Christ, that 
he may be shaped anew by Mm according to "the measure" 



132 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

of Christ the measure of his plan of salvation which he has 
implemented once and for all. 

In the presence of such demands as this we cannot help 
thinking of Fr Lebbe founding the Church in China, of the 
priest workers on their proletarian mission. And the reality is 
always more complex than a hasty reflection on experiences 
such as theirs. As Jean Risque adds: 

It is the duty of those in authority in the Church to learn 
in a sense from those whom they oppose. 

When any man in authority in the Church does not feel 
that he is personally concerned in the opposition to the mis- 
sion, he makes it impossible for him to understand that the 
missionary, although he has been obedient, has not merely 
"toed the line". The fact is that, although he has consented 
to go down into the depths of the "night" which has been 
forced upon him, the missionary cannot help beginning to 
worry the Church all over again, to ask her questions, and 
often the same questions. 4 

This helps us to gain a better understanding of the mean- 
ing of the Declaration of the French Cardinals and Arch- 
bishops (April 1960) when it alludes to the need for all the 
baptized to become mission-minded. 

* "At the beginning of this century Fr Lebbe, then vicar general at 
Tientsin, had done a remarkable work. One day Ms superiors ordered 
him to leave Tientsin at once and to go to Southern China. He did 
not know the language and he had good reason to think that the 
immediate purpose behind his superiors* decision was political rather 
than religious. Without even seeing his best friend again, he left 
immediately. Six months later during a retreat, he wrote to his new 
bishop and knelt to do it. The letter was a very long document and in 
it he put the same questions as before concerning a native episcopate 
and the patriotism of Chinese Catholics. This document is probably 
one of the most important in the history of the missions. Those who 
had expected him to "toe the line" went so far as to say that he had 
refused to obey. But at Rome he was told that the first Chinese 
bishops owed their consecration to his act of obedience. We should 
not forget that Fr Lebbe knew St Paul by heart and that all his life 
he was anxious to be connected with every attempt at revival in the 
Church of his times" (La Revue Nouvelle, 15 Feb. 1961). 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 133 

THE LIVING ORGANISMS OF THE CHURCH: 
PRIESTS AND LAITY 

"The complete evangelist", wrote Cardinal Suhard, "is not 
just the baptized Christian, nor the priest by himself, it is the 
Christian community. The basic cell, the unit of measure- 
ment in the apostolate, is a kind of organic composite, the 
inseparable pair priest and laity." 

If the Church's mission remains fundamentally the same 
today as yesterday, the mission of salvation in Jesus Christ, 
the Christian must try to find a new way to present salvation 
to a new and unbelieving world. There can be no doubt 
about this. As we face a human race shaken to its founda- 
tions, only the laity collaborating with the priesthood (each 
through the grace of his state) can provide a complete answer 
to the demand for a Christian presence of an entkely new 
kind in the world. Priests and laymen must think out to- 
gether the problem of the place of the priest and the layman 
who wish to remain in close touch as the situation of a mis- 
sionary Church develops. Pius XII in an address to the lay- 
men assembled for the Second World Congress said: "The 
laity therefore, and especially the laity, must realize that they 
are the Church." 

At the beginning of a new world age the Church owes it 
to herself to produce a laity in full employment. The first 
two World Congresses of the Laity held in Rome (1954, 1957) 
were an event in the life of the Church. They showed that 
Pius XII, by calling these assemblies together, wished to 
sanction and consecrate the emergence of the lay movement 
which is developing in the majority of countries. But this was 
only a beginning. Laymen are far from enjoying the position 
in the Church which Pius XI looked forward to when in 
1929 he took under his own protection the work of Fr Cardijn 
and his first Belgian Jocistes. If laymen are generally coming 
to be respected as laymen and as members in their own right 
of a missionary community, it is still a fact that the lay 



134 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

movement as such is not recognized except in the official 
organizational pattern of the Church. It is certainly not so 
recognized by churchmen with a certain attitude of mind and 
code of conduct, in spite of the teaching of the popes and the 
directives of the bishops. 

Our generation needs to be freed from all forms of clerical- 
ism. The habit of using laymen for parish purposes only, the 
attitude of omnipotence adopted by some clerics, the long 
tradition of a real separation between clerics and lay people, 
these are considerable handicaps. And there are others. If the 
layman is to be really present as a Christian in the life of 
the civil community, the priest must be present in the life 
of the layman and as a priest. Lay people are not to be 
servants of the priest nor are priests to be servants of the 
layman. Both priests and lay people are to be servants of the 
Church. 

The Western Church has been a clerical institution for a 
long period of time. Her liturgy since the Middle Ages has 
been a liturgy for clerics. This has tended to make the chants 
and the rites more complicated, whereas the theology and 
liturgy of the East bear traces of a greater contribution on 
the part of the laity. On the other hand, it is in the West that 
the revival of the lay vocation is more directly apostolic in 
inspiration. 

Though the ties between them have in fact been loosened 
in the past, priests and lay people are now rediscovering the 
profound relationships and the mutual interdependence in- 
volved in one and the same mission. This they are doing in 
the midst of a crisis which is all the more painful since it is 
the expression of one and the same consciousness of what 
the Church is. 

In our times, the emergence of the lay movement has 
taken three forms somewhat different in origin, but which 
tend to coalesce in what will be the pattern of a missionary 
lay movement in the future. 

Catholic Action, in the conditions of daily life and under 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 135 

mandate from the hierarchy, has developed considerably over 
the past thirty years and has conducted a progressive experi- 
ment in the sphere of its own objectives which are regrouping, 
spiritual vitality and evangelization. Its range of influence 
in the Church is much more extensive than the field of 
action of its members. It has an apostolic spirit which co- 
operates with the missionary effort in our parishes and, if it 
is to be completely effective, it needs a common front between 
the work of evangelization and a combined pastoral method. 

The foreign missions already have a long experience of lay 
participation in the work of priests. They have what are 
called "mission catechists". These laymen are given the 
responsibility for teaching future candidates for baptism, 
initiating them into the Church's rites and community prayer, 
and taking the place of the missionaries in distant mission 
posts. They have also family and civic obligations in their 
neighbourhood. They have done yeoman service for the 
Church. Pius XII used to say: "One missionary with six 
catechists to help him does more work than seven mission- 
aries." It is no doubt true that these catechists will be called 
upon to develop their work in new ways in view of the new 
conditions in which the missionaries in these areas have to 
continue their preaching of the Gospel, but they still offer a 
valuable example of a much-needed collaboration between 
priests and lay people. 

Finally, the name "lay missionary" has been given to those 
men and women and young people who have gone out to 
work as apostles and to help developing countries in their 
evolution towards complete control of their own affairs. In his 
directives to the members of the World Congresses of the 
Laity, Pius XII defined their task in the service of overseas 
missions as follows: "Doctors, engineers, manual workers in 
various trades are anxious to support the priests' work in the 
missions by their example, their professional activity and 
above all by spiritual training for their missionary work. But 
the lay missionary movement is still only at the beginning of 
its development." 



136 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

A NEW WORLD NEEDS A NEW MISSION 

What forms will the development of a specially trained 
laity take in the future, called as it is to play an outstanding 
missionary role in a situation without precedent in history? 
It is not too rash to think that this lay missionary movement, 
whose outlines are so difficult to define today, may be related 
in a certain sense to the above three types of laymen which 
have become established in the Church today. 

There are whole nations, particularly those under Marxist 
government, whose priest missionaries are no longer openly 
welcome as such. They are no longer admitted, they cannot 
preach the Gospel openly or lay the foundations of a local 
Church. And an unequivocal veto is placed on the mis- 
sionary's influence by those classes which are the most 
advanced from the cultural point of view. The suspicion with 
which the foreign envoy of the Church was formerly treated 
now weighs upon the native clergy. 

In Islam, what was previously a religious defensive reaction 
in face of Christianity, considered as a false religion, is today 
a political attitude arising from suspicious nationalism or, 
though more rarely, from ethnic, racial or ideological preju- 
dices. The Church may well be obliged to find a new status 
for those she sends, priests or lay people, to lay the foundation 
of a local Church. 5 Lay people will in any case be involved 
in the organization of this new world and will surely be on 
the spot as the first missionaries in certain cultural areas to 
which the Church is forbidden access. And priests will un- 
doubtedly be obliged to become members of the working- 

5 Whether he is a priest or a layman, the baptized Christian is 
commissioned by the hierarchy to do the Church's work in a non- 
Christian environment This delegated duty is still in force even if a 
man has to be prepared to wait for a long period before he can 
preach the Gospel. What then will be the nature of this duty dele- 
gated by the bishop in the very different cases of a mandate for 
Catholic Action and the jurisdiction of the missionary priest? This 
is a question which will have to be asked in relation to an increasing 
number of non-Christian environments. 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 137 

class population. They will have to ply a trade, they will have 
to establish themselves as men who are of service to the 
country. And they will continue to have a mission on behalf 
of the Church which no one else can fulfil. 6 

In the future as today, the establishment of the Church will 
depend on the presence of both priests and laymen in an 
entirely new missionary situation. There are situations which 
have an almost prophetic character in the sense that they 
foreshadow, at the level of some local experiment, a state of 
affairs which will soon become general. Thus we may well 
believe that the experiment made by some of the priest 
workers in France will play a determining role in providing 
the theologians with food for reflection, will point the way to 
those who are seeking a pastoral action that will be mission- 
ary, and will lead to forms of priestly life of which perhaps 
we today have no idea. 

Similarly, active Christian workers in a non-Christian en- 
vironment give us some sense of the uncomfortable position 
of Christians in all missionary countries. At this level, the 
incomprehension they encounter, the opposition they pro- 
voke, the crises they undergo in the field of their own con- 
sciences, are typical of that "sign to be contradicted" which 
every Christian ought to be if he is to remain strictly loyal to 
the Gospel. 

6 The new conditions in which the Gospel has to be preached are 
partly responsible for the fall in the number of vocations to the 
priesthood and the religious life in the case of those who are acutely 
aware of the missionary situation. Whereas their elders who are priests 
note that certain outward forms connected with the ecclesiastical 
state, such as clerical costume and certain customs, which they are 
obliged to adopt, are sometimes an added obstacle for a forward- 
looking mission in the pagan world, young men are asking them- 
selves whether they will really be answering our Lord's call by offer- 
ing themselves for ordination. The fact that young men are turning 
away from the priesthood and the religious life, although they have 
done good apostolic work in the ranks of Catholic Action, is not 
unconnected with the fact that many laymen have the impression 
that there has been a slowing down in the missionary movement. A 
priesthood in full apostolic employment is the best means of provid- 
ing numerous and genuinely missionary vocations for the Church in 
the near future. . 



138 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

It Is no longer the dialogue between the Church and the 
working class which is difficult, but the dialogue between the 
Church and the modern world. How can any Christian fail to 
feel uncomfortable when his faith is contradicted by the 
way the majority of men lead their lives? We need only 
point out in this connection the highly significant struggle 
which workers who are members of Catholic Action have to 
endure. 

TOWARDS A PRIESTHOOD WHICH CAN FACE THE 
CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME 

"The whole of the priestly life, and not only the civilization 
of the world of work, has to be rethought." This statement of 
Cardinal Suhard's emphasizes the immense scope of the crisis 
which affects the priesthood everywhere. But this crisis must 
be seen as one of growth for the priesthood in our day. 

Make no mistake about the facts. Although there is a 
genuine apostolic revival, a whole generation of priests has 
paid the price for this religious awakening. These priests 
are only too tragically aware that they are rejected by a 
pagan world. They have made superb efforts, they are fully 
conscious of their own powerlessness, they are victorious even 
in their failure because they are opening the way for their 
successors. Yet they are passing through a period of complete 
darkness, obsessed as they must be with the apostolate of 
those outside the Church and yet bound by a Church organiz- 
ation which they see is not adapted to the needs of the times. 7 
They are convinced of the truth of Cardinal Montinf s words: 

"It is the priest's duty to go to the people, not the people's 

7 As long ago as 1949 Cardinal Siihard said: "The sorrow and 
anguish of priests today is that they feel that the real world is living 
and shaping itself apart from them and that they are strangers in it. 
When they examine their own lives they realize that their ministry is 
essentially concerned with the faithful, but today the lost sheep far 
outnumber the faithful and the priest must seek those who are lost. 
But in actual fact the sheep who have remained in the fold take up 
the greater part of his time.'* 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 139 

duty to go to the priest. It is Ms duty to become a missionary 
once again if lie wants Christianity to survive and to become 
once more a living leaven in our civilization." 

A world he does not understand crushes a man. Some 
priests carry in their own flesh the wounds caused by this 
division between the Church and the working classes. Some 
of them are sick men and all of them suffer inwardly in 
silence. If certain among them have been so overwhelmed 
that they seem to have denied their priesthood, if they have 
been more generous than prudent, if they have preserved a 
mistaken loyalty to those among whom they preached the 
Gospel, is this not one more proof of the tragic failure of 
the Christian priesthood to adapt itself to the needs of the 
technological age which has now begun? 

On the other hand, priests of the more traditional type in 
so-called Christian areas sometimes enjoy a false sense of 
security which is equally significant from our point of view. 
These priests appear to have adapted themselves to the needs 
of the time because of the survival of certain Christian prac- 
tices and an artificial parochial set-up. They owe more to the 
connivance of a sociological environment than to the genuine 
priestly spirit. 

In areas which are Christian from the sociological stand- 
point, the priest is respected and plays the part of a person 
of distinction although his activities are not necessarily 
priestly. His presence may well be in the nature of what 
Pascal in his time called "diversion". Some priests have 
invented substitute tasks for themselves, on the strength of 
their educational resources or natural gifts to be used in a 
good cause. And they even come to a state in which they 
no longer see the absurdity of an unemployed priest. Men of 
strong character have a large number of alibis at their dis- 
posal but others less gifted sometimes see things more clearly 
and are more discouraged. 

There are priests teaching in schools who give to God only 
the minimum of time so that their professional duties as 



140 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

teachers of physics, for example, may be the better safe- 
guarded. Eventually they find they cannot even hear confes- 
sions conscientiously as a priest should. There are country 
priests who delight in reading the Fathers of the Church and 
would look down their noses at others (no more "out of 
touch" than themselves) who keep bees. There are others 
whose form of illusion is their parish drama group, music, 
stamp collecting, or other equally artificial substitutes for 
their real job. Yet neither their persons nor the priesthood 
seem in danger. In the towns, they go to meeting after 
meeting, they organize summer camps, evening lectures, 
courses in a Catholic institute. Activities like these are just as 
likely to mask a failure to adapt one's priestly vocation to 
the needs of the times. Old-fashioned political views, anti- 
quated reading matter, a vocabulary that only a priest can 
understand while the people around him speak a language 
which is quite foreign to him, all these externals indicating 
a good, punctilious priest with a regard for tradition, do not 
of course prove that he is straggling against a bad conscience, 
but how often these attitudes may be covering (though not 
necessarily so) a false sense of security! We may laugh at 
them but they ought in most cases to make us uneasy. 

Is it necessary to insist that the first condition for complete 
effectiveness in the order of faith (whatever changes the times 
impose upon us) is for the priest in the first place to have full 
confidence in his priesthood, a fundamental optimism issuing 
from the theological virtue of hope and transcending both 
success and failure. The priests who are most keenly aware 
of the extent of the process of dechristianization in our 
times are not necessarily those who are most discouraged. 
This confidence in the priesthood is also an act of faith in 
the work Christ does in the hearts of those who are evan- 
gelized. "We saw Love and we believed." Only Love recog- 
nizes Love. 

Once this has been said, it remains true that the Church 
wishes to do everything possible to see that our priesthood 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 141 

possesses both a human and a spiritual balance which will 
give promise of fruitful work. The following extract from 
Pius XII's Constitution Sedes Sapientiae ( 314) shows the 
Church's mind on this question: 

Everything must be brought into action that may be useful 
for the formation of a complete type of man, so that both the 
religious and the priestly formation given may rest on the 
solid foundation of natural integrity and a human culture. For 
men will find a more certain and easier path to Christ if, in the 
person of the priest, the kindness and love of our Lord for 
men appear more clearly. 

These words say all that needs to be said from the point 
of view we should adopt today when we wish to suggest how 
priests should adapt or readapt themselves to the times: we 
must form complete men on the foundation of natural in- 
tegrity and a human culture, as we contemplate the mystery 
of the priest's personality at the service, in the Church, of 
Christ's love among men. 

Our times demand priests who are fully men and men who 
have become fully priests, priests who are alive in the full 
sense of the word, who learn from the school of life and the 
voice of the Spirit. We must bring everything into action, as 
Pius XII told us to, in order to form a complete type of man, 
which implies that we must avoid, in our ecclesiastical insti- 
tutions such as seminaries and scholasticates, everything 
which mass-produces men ill-adapted to the needs of the 
times. We have to admit that this "humanity" is often mis- 
handled in our priests. In our opinion this is one of the causes 
of the crises affecting the priest today. When a man is or- 
dained priest his priestly function, which ought to be one of 
his characteristics as a. man, becomes a substitute for his 
manhood. 

The priest does not escape from the disease of our civiliza- 
tion, whose symptoms are the haste with which we go about 
our business, overwork, lack of relaxation and nervous 



142 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

tension. None of us can be dispensed from the duty of adult 
maturity and the man who is a priest must work out a balance 
between his fundamental human characteristics and his 
function in the Church. In the past, an ecclesiastical status 
was evolved; it implied a certain way of life and a good 
deal of confusion regarding the meaning of that separation 
from the world to which both priest and baptized Christian 
are bound. Today the increasingly effective presence of a 
genuine laity reveals the true nature of the priest's proper 
function in the Church. 

An authentic collaboration between priest and layman not 
only leads to a really effective apostolate but also to a 
balanced and integrated personality in the priest. It is through 
repeated, judicious and mutual contacts between priest and 
layman that the former achieves his own unity in a total 
personal commitment involving genuine responsibilities and 
a dynamic forward movement which are involved in his 
vocation as such. 

Priests of this kind, mixing gladly with other people, be- 
lievers and unbelievers, sharing their interests, in touch with 
the life of the district and well informed on events in the 
world at large, are no longer persons of distinction and 
respected as such. They no longer cut a figure in society, they 
have acquired quite a different attitude of mind. They know 
how to listen, to become informed, to accept facts and sug- 
gestions. They willingly undertake team work and join in a 
combined pastoral effort which seems to them the only 
apostolic method that can cope with the complexity of the 
real situation. 

There are Christians who are scandalized at these external 
changes in the way of life of the parish clergy and at the 
new view they take of their ministry. There may be a certain 
immaturity among some of these priests but, in spite of this, 
the real point at issue is a profound change of attitude which 
requires a spirituality appropriate to the Christian priesthood 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 143 

in our own times, and which is a sign that priests are adapt- 
ing themselves to the needs of our modern world. 8 

A COLLEGIATE EPISCOPATE 

It is true not only that there is now a crisis of growth in the 
priesthood and a slow coming to birth of a lay movement in 
the Christian community, but also that a missionary Church 
is bringing more vividly to light than was recently the case the 
outstanding part played by the man who is the keystone of 
the whole diocesan edifice, the bishop, the successor of the 
apostles. It may well prove that, for the Church as a whole, 
this return to the sources, this rediscovery by the faithful of 
the irreplaceable mission of the episcopate in the growth of 
the Body of Christ, is a major enrichment of capital impor- 
tance. 

The size of dioceses, the large number of parishes and the 
work our bishops have to do prevent them from having more 
contact than they do with their priests and their people. Yet, 
at a time when the fullness of the bishops* priesthood has 
been brought to light by studies on the subject, a combined 
pastoral effort has also made clearer the place of the hier- 
archy in the structure of the diocese. It is the bishop alone 

8 The exterior signs of a man's consecration to the Church's work 
have varied a great deal in the course of history. There is a passage 
in a letter written by Pope Celestine I in the fifth century and in 
which he takes the clergy of Gaul to task for devising a special 
costume for themselves. He wrote: "It is not customary for us priests 
to distinguish ourselves from the Christian people in this way. We 
should be distinguished by our profession and our teaching of the 
Faith; not by our clothes but by our upright conduct, not by paying 
attention to external matters, but by purity of spirit." And more 
recently, Robert Delavignette in Birama has analysed the meaning 
in our time of such exterior marks of separation and distinction as 
clothes. "We are caught up in the craze for speed and we need to 
see amid the clatter of our lives and our roads, the clerical costume of 
the past with its slower rhythms. The clergy, so we expect, will link us 
to the centuries that have gone . . . and so we want to keep the Church 
just as she was in the past so that she may be a place of escape to 
which we may scurry back without any fear that she will have 
changed." 



144 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

who puts life into the mission and gives each sector of it its 
proper place in the Church's life. 

Further, the colossal upheavals in the African, Asiatic and 
South American territories have produced a new awareness 
of the common responsibility of the apostolic college in 
union with the pope. Our eyes have turned instinctively to 
that unique missionary bishop, St Paul, as he faced the Greco- 
Roman world. After him is the line of the great bishop 
founders of Churches; Irenaeus, Remi 5 Boniface and others 
who brought the Gospel to the people entrusted to their care. 
And the moment has now come to return to this great 
apostolic tradition. 

For the bishops (on whom responsibility falls in the first 
place) to be able to face the immense task ahead, it is not 
primarily a question of numbers, but of unanimity, of streng- 
thening the links of the apostolic college to which our Lord 
entrusted the care of the flock. It is Christ's will that they 
should gather together in this way the better to face up to 
their mission. 

The Christian people is well aware of this and it is delighted 
to see its bishops meeting in assemblies, commissions and at 
the Ecumenical Council. God is about to reveal to us one of 
his great plans for the salvation of the world. As in the recent 
past, the meaning of the priesthood has become clear to us, as 
today we are learning the meaning of the lay state, so tomor- 
row, and the process has already begun, we shall see the mean- 
ing of the episcopate in all its grandeur (E. Keller). 

TOWARDS THE MISSION: THE PRELIMINARIES 

We do not yet know what sort of human being the "techno- 
logical man", whose advent seems so close, will be, any more 
than we are aware of the sort of Christian who will come 
forward in the years that lie ahead. There is no point in 
hiding the fact that we are bewildered by so many upheavals. 
We are shaken out of our habits and our tendency to cling to 
the status quo for we are aware that apostolic work is clam- 
ouring to be done. But we have not yet an overall view 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 145 

of the tasks to be carried out nor sufficient knowledge of the 
people to be evangelized. 

What we need are "prophets of our times" (and we are 
instinctively aware of this) to shake us out of our torpor, 
to revive our hope, to give new life to our zeal. A few Chris- 
tian laymen have given us some idea of this prophetic role 
in various departments of literature (Peguy and Bernanos), 
philosophy (Maritain, Gilson), and social and political 
thought (Mounier). 

And if we look carefully we shall also see that there are 
priests whose personality is that of "mystics of our times", 
and who are destined by Providence to mark out our line of 
approach to a pagan or atheist environment. They are men 
with an acute sense of reality, with authentic Catholic insti- 
tutions, and their lives in the first place, then their writings, 
reveal that their response is the fruit of the Spirit at the heart 
of a mystical experience whose roots are deep in the world 
of faith. 

There are two of these men whose fundamental kinship 
is hidden beneath the differences between their spiritual jour- 
neys as well as their temperaments. They are the living and 
providential answer on the one hand to the problem raised by 
the fact of science, and on the other to the problem raised 
in the age of the poor. 

They were missionaries among both the humble and the 
learned in the same new world. Their names are Teilhard 
de Chardin and Charles de Foucauld. They were both seekers 
and explorers in mission fields, both were called to be fore- 
runners and to give the same answer to the most agonizing of 
our questions as we face those environments which are most 
divided from the Church in her Greco-Roman form. 9 

9 We mention these two missionaries but we do not claim that 
they were theologians of the mission or even theologians at all. And 
we have no intention of joining in the heated discussion to which 
Teilhard's work still gives rise. Whatever reservations are made by 
some concerning the interpretation put by uninformed readers on a 
religious thought which did not claim to be definitive, it is Teilhard's 
presence in the scientific world which interests us here, and the 
light it throws on the line of approach towards the mission. 



146 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

"My Gospel and my mission is to take Christ to the heart 
of a realm of reality which is considered to present the great- 
est dangers, to be the most naturalistic and the most pagan." 
Fr Teilhard formulated his missionary ideal in these words 
round about the year 1920. And he added, as he foresaw the 
urgent need for the Church to engage in a universal task of 
evangelization: "We must make our choice at once, for the 
earth is cracking under our feet. The issue at stake is the sur- 
vival of an increasing number of Christians." 

Christianity must be made incarnate and we remember that 
this is what the priest workers attempted to do. Fr Teilhard 
puts this need into words which remind us of those used by 
Pius XI when he sent the J.O.C. out on its mission: "If he is 
to act effectively in any sphere of life, he must himself belong 
to that sphere. Only a workman will be listened to by work- 
ing men. Only the geologist or the soldier can speak to 
geologists and soldiers. Only a man can make men listen to 
him." In 1954, he defined his thought still more clearly: 
"There are increasingly large (and among the most progres- 
sive) sectors of the human race which have slipped from the 
grasp of Christianity because its own humanity has grown 
cold." 10 

As everyone knows, the work and the essential message 
of Fr de Foucauld are summed up in the words: "We must 

proclaim the Gospel by our lives We must be a living 

Gospel." Obviously, in these two men, we are facing a new 
type of apostle and also a new type of mission. And to this 
mission we must now turn our attention. 

A NEW TYPE OF APOSTLE: "THE PREMISSIONAKY" 

These intuitions which were the staple of the lives of these 
two incomparable missionaries confirm our own views on 

10 "It is the fundamental virtues of charity and humility which are 
lacking or which have become weak" (Fr de Foucauld). 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 147 

the mission, but these few quotations do not cast sufficient 
light on the need for an apostolate today among those who 
are furthest from the Church either because they have not 
advanced in the religious life or are hostile to it. Fr Peyri- 
guere, a disciple of Fr de Foucauld, will help us at this point. 
He described this line of approach to the mission as a "pre- 
mission". 11 It is as a disciple of Fr de Foucauld that Fr de 
Peyriguere answers the genuine questions raised by the mis- 
sion in our times. And his answer, both his own and Fr de 
Foucauld's, was that, in the first place, a life has to be led, 
in keeping with one of his own favourite sayings: "we must 
be and do before we talk." "In certain cases", he says else- 
where, "the mission meets such obstacles that it has to pro- 
ceed by a division of labour. The premissionary work has to 
be allotted its own methods and its own specialists. Fr de 
Foucauld sets this premissionary work in relief, brings it to 
the light of day, isolates it from the whole and gives it a 
complete structure of its own. He defines its nature and con- 
ditions." 

"It is not exterior activity which gives a vocation its charac- 
ter, it is the mystique by which it is inspired." By this mys- 
tique is meant an "invisible, mysterious and efficacious 
action". It is nourished by the Eucharist and at the same time 
sustains itself supernaturally in tasks of very varied kinds, 
as the days pass, each with its load of work. 

The premission can only be an outward expression of an 
authentic faith, a preliminary operation issuing from the gift 
of oneself to God and to men. What then does this premission 
mean? 

n The ward "premission** as used by Fr de Foucauld and ex- 
plained by Fr Peyriguere as we shall see in the following pages 
has a very precise meaning. It is a method which brings Christ into 
an environment through our presence, our prayer and our offering 
of ourselves. It is, therefore, decidedly not the same thing as the 
refusal to undertake evangelization on the grounds that the tem- 
poral order must be reformed before the Gospel can be preached. 



148 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHUUCH 

Fr Peyriguere defines what he calls "the lines of force of 
premissionary work" as follows: 

1. Since any direct apostolate is impossible among the 
masses, since we cannot preach Christ openly, what can we 
do? What is our function as members of the Church? 

2. What does our Lord think of these men who refuse to 
accept the Church of Christ? What do they mean to him? 
Are they completely foreign to him? 

And he gives these answers: 

Christ becomes present in the presence of the premissionary. 
And since he becomes present through him, he reveals himself. 
He may not give his name but he is there, going about among 
men who do not know him. The premissionary wants "to pro- 
claim the Gospel through his life". Christ, through and in this 
premissionary, stands out in all the fullness of his moral great- 
ness. We do not wish to minimize the achievements of non- 
Christian religions nor to deny the noble characteristics they 
imprint on human souls. It is nevertheless true that Christ 
in all his fullness now stands on their horizon. In a word, he is 
different. How can he not draw men's eyes towards himself? 
This unknown God may very soon become a God who is 
respected, perhaps a God who is secretly loved. 

And after pointing to this moral greatness of Christ shining 
through the premissionary, he goes on to indicate another 
way in which Christ reveals himself. "Through and in the 
premissionary, Christ shows himself in all the radiance of his 
loving kindness" This loving kindness is shown first of all 
towards those who are his brothers in Christ and whom he 
looks on as such. And they instinctively realize that they are 
loved as brothers. It is through this loving kindness of Christ 
made visible that the premissionary most often finds his way 
to the hearts of those who have resisted the light of Christ's 
moral greatness. Fr Peyriguere concludes: 

Is it enough to say that through the premissionary, Christ 
reveals himself? Because of him, Christ and men's souls are 
not just to look at one another There is an invisible mission 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 149 

of Christ The premissionary places himself in Christ's 

hands so that by becoming a member of a given people, race 
or civilization, Christ may ask in and through him for the 

salvation of his brothers 

Christ is always drawing the premissionary deeper and 
further towards a more complete and more intimate coopera- 
tion in his own mission as the world's Saviour The pre- 
missionary, grafted onto a people, a race, a civilization, places 
himself in Christ's hands so that in and through him Christ 
may complete his own sufferings. He multiplies his entreaties, 
prayers and intercession for the salvation of those he has 
adopted and who have become his. 

To the second question raised by the premission (what does 
Christ think of those men who refuse to accept him?) Fr Pey- 
riguere answers by stating what he calls "the three doctrinal 
presuppositions underlying premissionary work": 

1. The bodily relationship of non-Christians to Christ 
through the fact of the Incarnation. A small section of the 
human race is Christian but the whole race can be "Christie". 

2. The pre-Christianity which constitutes the moral and 
spiritual heritage of non-Christians and is derived from their 
own or other religious sources. 

3. Christ the mystical Redeemer has also his hidden life. 
Grace therefore acts beyond the sphere of visible membership 
of the Church. 

These three fundamental presuppositions are the point of 
emergence of the problems of the premission and are the 
foundation of what we venture once more to call "the christic 
greatness of non-Christians". 

"No man is bom separated from Christ/' said St Jerome. 
We know that the Son of God made man is "a blood relation" 
of all men. Before his birth men lived in the expectation of 
Christ, they looked to his coming, even if they did not realize 
it. Today men are still waiting for Christ (how can they be- 
lieve in him if they have never heard of him? see Rom. 
10. 14). True, this waiting is not to be compared with that of 
the period before Christ. Christ has come, but he has not 



150 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

yet been made manifest to all men, although all of them, as 
Fr Peyriguere says, live "under the influence of Christ". 12 

Who among us has not found these "pre-Christian" virtues 
in the hearts of people who to all appearances are further 
away than any from Christ? In ardent peace movements, in 
a spirit of courageous solidarity, in persistent research, in 

hidden self-sacrifice Who can say by what paths men 

grope their way, paths which we know are the work of grace? 

But it is not enough merely to know this. The demands 
of the law of incarnation remain. "Christ became a hundred 
per cent man. Foucauld made himself a hundred per cent 
Touareg, Peyriguere a hundred per cent Berber. Teilhard a 
hundred per cent scientist. This meant a complete commit- 
ment. This meant the renunciation of the privileges attached 
to an interested, partial or merely apparent commitment" 
(Fr Cornells). 

We can only exercise this premission through which Christ 
becomes present to men if we, each of us in his own situation, 
genuinely live the life of Christ in us on behalf of others. 

With such immense vistas ahead, prayer is already the 
mission begun. "It is from among them, standing before my 
Master as one of them that, during the night, I offer to the 
Trinity what I call the prayer of the Berbers." For Fr Peyri- 
guere this act of bringing others into his prayer did not 
merely mean praying for their intentions, but praying "as the 
representative of those who do not believe, do not pray", just 
as an iron lung functions as a replacement for the paralysed 

12 "In the nineteenth century it would seem that the missions 
showed an immense generosity all to no purpose. Time and money 
were spent without stint, the sick were cared for and the hungry fed. 
... In return, the missions reaped more often than not only rancour 
and contempt. What de Foucauld intuitively saw was that, if we 
were to avoid paternalism, we had to become brethren of the poor, 
to be poor with the poor, to have nothing to give them and to be 
content to live very simply with them so that they might discover 
in all its purity the only wealth we really possess, the friendship of 
Jesus" (Fr Voillaume). 



CONCLUSION : A MISSIONARY CHURCH 151 

and diseased natural lung. It is lending to others a mind 
which has faith, it is lending one's heart and voice. "A priest 
was asked by an unbeliever standing next to him in the 
corridor of a train: 'What are you thinking about?' The 
priest answered: *I am saying your prayers'." 

To pray to Jesus, to pray with Jesus (in the Eucharist) not 
only for others but in their stead, this is the prayer of the 
premissionary. It is suggested in John (15. 5 and 7): "if a man 
lives on in me, and I in him, then he will yield abundant 
fruit. ... As long as you live on in me, and my words live on 
in you, you will be able to make what request you will, and 
have it granted." 

This then is the premissionary work of the Church. An 
enthusiast though he was for his mission, Fr Peyriguere has 
put us on our guard against childish illusions in our mission 
work, whatever their source: "Take care that, in the service 
of the Church, you do not become one more apostle talking 
about Christ, How many are there who give Christ to men 
without saying a word about him? How many who, since they 
speak about him without living by his life, do not give him? 
Christ is overburdened with apostles who talk. He hungers 
and thirsts for apostles who live his life ! " 

However, although the whole Church is a missionary 
Church, that does not mean that there are only "pioneer 
vocations" (men whom Fr Peyriguere calls "the messengers 
of the Christ who cannot yet give his name"). The pioneer's 
vocation is one thing, the militant's in Catholic Action is 
another, and another still that of the mother of a family. We 
must distinguish between these different sorts of vocation 
while we must rediscover the spirit of catholicity, of uni- 
versality. 

Yet at this time of growing missionary awareness, we must 
all listen to the call to the premission which, as Mgr Maury 
has said, "is an effort towards Christian penetration among 
the masses estranged from Christianity, a penetration adapted 



152 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

to the needs of a generation more impressed by our witness 
than our speeches". 



THE PREMISSION IN THE FUTURE: THE ADVENT 
OF THE NATIONS 

We liave listened to these pioneers who are also mystics and 
we have come to understand better the age-old sense of a 
word which for too long has been synonymous with "closed 
shop" in certain Christian circles. It is the noble word 
Catholic. 

We Catholics have lived with a quiet conscience amid age- 
old confusions between our faith and our ideologies, love of 
others and our personal prejudices. We have confused our 
own interests with those of the Church. On the site, the buil- 
ders of the new city have grown accustomed to our absence. 
But now a new era is arousing us from our torpor and 
bringing to maturity a generation of Christians who are to 
be found wherever men of goodwill work side by side. 

It is because she knows that she is Catholic that the 
Church desires to be missionary. She intends to continue 
without ceasing a dialogue with those "spiritual worlds" 
which are attempting together with her to establish their 
status in this new world. 

With Fr Congar "we understand by spiritual worlds in the 
broadest sense* a complex of ideas, values and commitments 
in the sphere of conscience, of such a nature that a man may 
build his life thereon with the ultimate prospect of a final 
objective in the spiritual order". To limit ourselves to con- 
temporary history, the world of the proletariat, the scientific 
world, the secularist, humanist world in our own part of the 
globe, and on the other hand the spiritual worlds of the Jew, 
the Mohammedan and the Hindu, are now brought to the 
point, in a world of generalized communications, where they 
engage in a dialogue with the different Christian denomina- 
tions by means of exchanges of views, mutual esteem, and 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 153 

an understanding renewed by contact with the sources of a 
respect for humanity which they all share. Further (to quote 
again from Fr Congar): "The ecumenical movement in the 
twentieth century is a new phenomenon issuing from a new 
experience among those who engage in it ... The meeting of 
any two Christian communions can no longer be separated 
from the general problem of the divisions between Christians 
and from the context in which Christians, together and even 
transcending their divisions, are seeking to be linked again 
everywhere in unity." 

These "spiritual worlds" and their many offshoots, together 
with an ecumenical movement unique in history, are influenc- 
ing in every way the mighty body of humanity at long last 
aware of its unity. Even if this unity is still only a dream, 
we all are conscious of what the brotherhood of mankind 
would be, with each nation contributing its best qualities and 
for love of all the others; a human race in which there would 
be a union between the patience of the Chinese, the delicacy 
of the Japanese, the Hindu's gift for contemplation, the 
Negro's profoundly human power of expression and his child- 
like wonder, the Anglo-Saxon's flair for organization and 
technology and the clarity of the French genius. 

This universality among the nations is seeking to come to 
light through international institutions, it is being forged by 
a more unified way of thinking, feeling and living. Thus it 
is on a par though not identical with the quest for that unity 
among God's children which has already been achieved in 
lesus Christ. 

A new, necessary, yet dangerous solidarity is a foretaste 
for men of the unity whose accomplishment was inaugurated 
once and for all by Christ as the firstborn of a redeemed 
people. 

Since Christ, who has already come as a man among men 
and at the time appointed by God, is still to come in a spiri- 
tual sense, so long as it remains true that he has not been 



154 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

fully manifested to the whole human race, today Is the time 
of the advent of the nations in relation to the Church. 13 



BEYOND THE DIAGNOSES OF THE SOCIOLOGISTS 

The Church's eyes are open and she has no intention of 
shutting them to the fact that the task is immense. She 
frankly admits with Cardinal Costantini that "for many 
centuries past the Church has succeeded in establishing 
foreign missions, but not herself*. 

Mgr Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian Workers, 
wrote as follows after his return from a long journey through 
Asia: 

These proletarian masses, which today are powerless, will 
tomorrow become the arbiters of order, progress and peace. 
Only the blind are unaware of this. No technological power 
can prevent this Asiatic population from deciding tomorrow 
the future of the world. The coloured races will determine the 
future of the whites. 

The Church is now "established" in the majority of the 
countries of the Asiatic continent with her hierarchy, her 
clergy, her rites, but the work that remains to be done is 
immense. 

In fact, the Asiatic block as such has not really been touched. 
Christians remain on the fringe, on the edge, to one side, 
sometimes even at a distance. They are not yet the leaven in 
the lump. 

13 As a complement to this vision of the salvation of the nations 
it is as well that the faith of Christians should clearly state, as does 
Fr Danielou, that "The mystery of the Blessed Virgin lies in the 
fact that she was in the world before Jesus. This brings us to the 

specifically missionary aspect of the Marian mystery Among 

pagan peoples the Church does not exist Hence before pagan nations 
are converted to Christ, before a local Church becomes viable and 
established among them, there is a mysterious sense in which Mary 
is among them preparing for and prefiguring the Church. Her 
presence is a kind of foreshadowing of what the Church herself 
will be." 



CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 155 

Efforts to prepare a native lay movement must be intensified, 
for tomorrow it is the laity who will have to undertake the task 
of finding answers to the needs of these peoples and of demon- 
strating the value of a native Church in India, Japan and the 
whole of South East Asia. 

The "demographic explosion** is most widespread in Asia, 
while its force is at its greatest in South America. Sociologists 
have calculated that if in the year 2000 the 600 million Latin 
Americans are Catholics, they will then exceed in number 
the Catholics of Western and Eastern Europe by 100 million. 
But a report drawn up by the Pan-American Catholic Action 
secretariat in Santiago de Chili, states: "The operative word 
is 'if'. Everything depends on one 'detail*. This 'detail' is that, 
if the present economic and social institutions are maintained, 
the temporal conditions required for an effective penetration 
by Catholicism and for the development of Christian life will 
disappear within the next forty years and perhaps before." 

"Has Christianity still a chance?" asked Karl Rahner in 
a pamphlet which has excited considerable interest. 14 His own 
answer puts the believer in the only possible situation for a 
missionary Church. There is no denying that the human race 
is increasing in numbers more rapidly than the total of con- 
verted pagans. We have to admit that God is officially ban- 
ished from a secularized world. In our old tired Europe the 
Church in ourselves seems tired and all the more so because 
paganism has been given a legal status. And, still according 
to Karl Rahner, we go on defending historical fagades, the 
rights and customs of a public life, a State and a civilization 
which used to be Christian. Yet we feel, although we do not 
admit it, that we no longer have the right to do this since 
these prerogatives no longer correspond to the number of 
real Christians. Are we then, in line with the logic of the 
pessimistic diagnoses of the sociologists and the historians, 
to conclude that "our struggle to get official Catholic 

14 Karl Rahner, Free Speech in the Church (London, Sheed and 
Ward, 1959). 



156 CONCLUSION: A MISSIONARY CHURCH 

Christianity recognized and accepted in the tangible reality of 
the world and our own history . . . will end in anything but 
failure?" 

This formula which, as Karl Rahner says, is succinct and 
theologically accurate, raises the essential question which we 
must face if we are to have an exact understanding of the 
facts of the situation for a missionary Church. The author's 
own answer deserves our attention if Christians as a body are 
to recover the hope which inspired the first apostles. "Faith 
means including God in one's scheme of things. ... If we are 
Christians we are called upon to put all our trust in God, in 
God alone, without working out in advance whether our 
faith has any chance or not . . . *unpropitious facts' are not 
an obstacle ... to people who really believe." 

The fact remains that the time has come for a great advance 
into the pagan world. It must be both a collective forward 
movement on the part of the Church in her missionary en- 
deavour and a "Catholic" attitude in every Christian con- 
science. 

Ultimately it is in the individual conscience that contem- 
porary unbelief takes up its abode. St John reminds us that 
sin is the primal unbelief, sin is our own form of incredulity. 

Each man is a mission territory. The missionary problem 
lies within the conscience of every Christian. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

In this series: 

BORNE, Etienne: Modern Atheism', CHAMBRE, Henri, S.J.: Chris- 
tianity and Communism; HOLLIS, Christopher: The Church 
and Economics-, MELLOT, Rene P.: Missions in the World 
Today; RETIF, Andre, S.J.: The Catholic Spirit; VAULX, 
Bernard de: History of the Missions. 

CONGAR, Y. M.-J., O.P.: Lay People in the Church, London, 
Geoffrey Chapman, 2nd edn 1960, and Westminster, Md, 
Newman Press, 1957. 

COUTURIER, C, S.J.: The Mission of the Church, London, Long- 
mans, and Baltimore, Helicon, 1959. 

DAM&LOU, L, S.L: The Salvation of the Nations, London and 
New York, Sheed and Ward, 1949. 

FREMANTLE, Anne: Desert Calling (a biography of Charles de 
Foucauld), London, Hollis and Carter, and New York, Henry 
Holt, 1949. 

HOFINGER, Johannes, S.J.: Liturgy and the Missions, London, 
Burns Gates, and New York, Kenedy, 1960. 

LOEW, M. R., O.P.: Mission to the Poorest, London and New 
York, Sheed and Ward, 1951. 

LUBAC, Henri de, S.J.: Catholicism, a Study of Dogma in Relation 
to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind, translated by Lancelot 
C. Sheppard, London, Burns Gates, and New York, Sheed 
and Ward, 1950. 

MICHONISEAU, G.: Revolution in a City Parish, London, Blooms- 
bury, and Westminster, Md, Newman Press, 1950; Missionary 
Spirit in Parish Life, Westminster, Md, Newman Press, 1952. 

RAHNER, Karl: Free Speech in the Church, London and New 
York, Sheed and Ward, 1959. 

SHEPPARD, Lancelot C.: Charles de Foucauld, Dublin, Clonmore 
and Reynolds, 1958. 

SUHARD, Emmanuel: The Priest in the Modern World, published 
in Modern Life, The Monthly Review of the Workers* 
Apostolate, Vol. 5, no. 1, London, 1950; The Church Today, 
Chicago, Fides, 1952. 

WARD Maisie: France Pagan? London and New York, Sheed and 
Ward, 1950. 




The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia 
of Catholicism 

The number of each volume indicates its place in 
the over-all series and not the order of publication. 



PART ONE: KNOWLEDGE AND 
FAITH 

1. What Does Man Know? 

2. Is Theology a Science? 

3. The Meaning of Tradition 

4. The Foundations of Faith 

5. Do Dogmas Change? 

6. What is Faith? 

7. God's Word to Man 

8. Myth or Mystery? 

9. What is a Miracle? 

10. Is There a Christian 
Philosophy? 

11. Early Christian Philosophy 

12. Medieval Christian 
Philosophy 

13. The Basis of Belief 

14. Christianity and Science 

15. The God of Reason 



PART TWO: THE BASIC TRUTHS 

16. The Worship of God 

17. What is the Trinity? 

18. The Holy Spirit 

19. In the Hands of the Creator 

20. The Problem of Evil 

21. Who is the Devil? 

22. Freedom and Providence 

23. The Theology of Grace 

24. What is the Incarnation? 

25. What is Redemption? 

26. The Communion of Saints 

27. Faith, Hope and Charity 

28. Life After Death 



PART THREE: THE NATURE OF 
MAN 

29. The Origins of Man 

30. Evolution 

31. What is Man? 

32. What is Life? 

33. What is Psychology? 

34. Man in his Environment 

35. Man and Metaphysics 

36. Psychical Phenomena 



PART FOUR: THE MEANS OF 
REDEMPTION 

37. Prayer 

38. The Nature of Mysticism 

39. Spiritual Writers of the 
Early Church 

40. Spiritual Writers of the 
Middle Ages 

41. Post-Reformation Spiritu- 
ality 

42. Spirituality in Modern Times 

43. What are Indulgences? 

44. Mary The Mother of God 

45. The Marian Cult 

46. What is a Saint? 

47. What is an Angel? 



PART FIVE: THE LIFE OF 
FAITH 

48. What is the Church? 

49. What is a Sacrament? 

50. Christian Initiation 

51. Penance and Absolution 

52. What is the Eucharist? 

53. What is a Priest? 

54. Christian Marriage 

55. Death and the Christian 

56. What is Christian Life? 

57. Christian Social Teaching 

58. World Morality 

59. Christianity and Money 



PART SIX: THE WORD OF GOD 

60. What is the Bible? 

61. The Promised Land 

62. Biblical Archaeology 

63. Biblical Criticism 

64. God's People in the Bible 

65. The Religion of Israel 

66. The Prophets 

67. How Do We Know Jesus? 

68. The Life of Our Lord 

69. What is the Good News? 

70. St. Paul and His Message 

71. What the Old Testament 
does not Tell Us 

72. The New Testament Apoc- 
rypha 

73. Judaism 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CATHOLICISM 



PART SEVEN: THE HISTORY OF 
. THE CHURCH 

74. Christian Beginnings 

75. The Dawn of the Middle 
Ages 

76. The Early Middle Ages 

77. The Later Middle Ages 

78. The Revolt against the 
Church 

79. The Church in the Modern 
Age 



FART EIGHT: THE ORGANIZA- 
TION OP THE CHURCH 

80. What is Canon Law? 

81. The Papacy 

82. The Ecumenical Councils 

83. What is a Bishop? 

84. The Christian Priesthood 

85. Religious Orders of Men 

86. Religious Orders of Women 

87. Secular Institutes 

88. The Catholic Spirit 



PART NINE: THE CHURCH AND 
THE MODERN WORLD 



89. 
90. 
91. 
92. 
93. 

94. 
95. 

96. 

97. 
98. 

99. 
100. 
101. 
102. 

103. 
104. 
105. 
106. 
107. 



Church and State 
Christianity and Economics 
Atheism 
To be assigned 
Psychiatry and the Chris- 
tian 

Christianity and the Machine 
Age 

Christianity and the Space 
Age 

Christianity and Communism 
Christianity and Colonialism 
The Church Works Through 
Her Saints 

History of the Missions 
Missions in the World Today 
Religious Sociology 
The Church's Mission in the 
World 

The Church and Sex 
The Workers of the Church 
Christian Charity in Action 
Christianity and Education 
Why We Believe 



PART TEN: THE WORSHIP OF 
THE CHURCH 

108. The Spirit of Worship 

109. The Books of Worship 

110. History of the Mass 

111. The Mass in the West 

112. Eastern Liturgies 

113. The Christian Calendar 

114. Vestments and Church 
Furniture 



PART ELEVEN: CATHOLICISM 
AND LITERATURE 

115. What is a Christian Writer? 

116. Sacred Languages 

117. Christian Humanism 

118. To be assigned 

119. Modern Christian 
Literature 

PART TWELVE: CATHOLICISM 
AND THE ARTS 

120. The Christian Meaning of 
Art 

121. Early Christian Art 

122. Church Building 

123. Christian Painting and 
Sculpture 

124. Christian Theatre 

125. Christian Music 

126. Motion Pictures, Radio and 
Television 

PART THIRTEEN: CATHOLI- 
CISM AND SCIENCE 

127. Embryo and Anima 

128. Nuclear Physics in Peace 
and War 

129. Medicine and Morals 

130. Science and Religion 

131. To be assigned 

132. To be assigned 

133. To be assigned 

PART FOURTEEN: OUTSIDE 
THE CHURCH 

134. Judaism and the Law 

135. The Spirit of Eastern 
Orthodoxy 

136. Heresies and Heretics 

137. Protestantism 

138. Christian Unity 

139. Christian Sects 

PART FIFTEEN: NON-CHRIS- 
TIAN BELIEFS 

140. Primitive Religions 

141. Religions of the Ancient 
East 

142. Greco-Roman Religion 

143. Mohammedanism 

144. Hinduism 

145. Buddhism 

146. Mystery Cults 

147. Superstition 

148. The Rationalists 

PART SIXTEEN: GENERAL AND 
SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUMES 

149. Why I am a Christian 

150. Index 

All titles are subject to change. 



^ Q 



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