Prayer as a

Political Problem

by

JEAN DANIELOU

Edited and Translated by

J. R. KIRWAN

SHEED AND WARD : NEW YORK

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THE DIVERSITY Of IMCH1SAN
™c DEARBORN CAMPUS UWA*Y

115

77i/s is a translation of L'Oraison Probleme

Politique (ArtMme Fayard, 1965)

Nihil obstat: M. W. Ashdowne, S.T.D., Ph.l., Censor

Imprimatur: tfi Patrick Casey, Vicar General
Westminster, 18 May, 1967.

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.

© Librairie Artheme Fayard 1965

English translation © Burns & Oates Ltd., 1967

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-21913

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Contents

Foreword 7

I. The Church of the Poor 9

II. Prayer as a Political Problem 23

III. Christianity and Civilization 43

IV. Technology and Man 56

V. Art, Technology and the Sacred 69

VI. Religion and Revelation 82

VII. The Church and the Modern World 105

Conclusion 121

Foreword

The question which this book presents to the reader is this : What will make the
existence of a Christian people possible in the civilization of tomorrow? The
religious problem is a mass problem. It is not at all the problem of an elite. At
the mass level religion and civilization depend very much on one another. There is
no true civilization which is not religious; nor, on the other hand, can there be a
religion of the masses which is not supported by civilization. It would appear that
today there are too many Christians who see no incongruity in the juxtaposition of
a private religion and an irreligious society, not perceiving how ruinous this is
for both society and religion. But how are society and religion to be joined
without either making religion a tool of the secular power or the secular power a
tool of religion ? This book invites the reader to join in the search for an answer
to this problem which is vital for tomorrow.

Jean Danielou

The Church of the Poor

Not all who today speak of the Church of the poor put the same meaning on the term.
Indeed, one can see in the term two opposing conceptions of the Church. On one
view, the Church stands before the world as a sign, giving witness in the world to
that which sur passes the world. On this view, the essential thing is that the
Church should bear witness and make sure of satisfying the first requirement for
this, which is purity. Attempts are made to keep it clear of civiliza tion lest its
purity be compromised. There is a nostalgia for the times of the martyrs and talk
of the end of the Constantinian era. To protect the Church's purity, those who hold
this view would go so far as to risk the abandonment of the crowd of baptized
Christians for whom Christianity is hardly anything more than an external routine.

In opposition to this view there is another which is beginning to make headway.

This does not look back to and defend a Christianity embedded in history, but
rather forward to what the Gospel itself calls for on a realistic view of the
future. For those who take this

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Prayer as a Political Problem

view of the matter, the essential character of the Gospel is to be the religion of
the poor — using that term not to indicate those who are detached from earthly
things, but those who form the great mass of mankind. This view shares St
Augustine's picture of the Church as a net in which all sorts of fish are caught,
where the task of separating the good from the bad is for the angels, not for men.
On this view of the matter, the Church was most truly itself in the days of
Christendom when everybody was baptized and it is this state of affairs which is
much to be desired. But this situation sup poses a Church which is involved with
civilization, for if civilization runs counter to it a Christian people can not
exist. This Church, a great crowd of saints and sinners intermingled, is found
preferable as a Church to one which might be purer but would strongly resemble a
sect.
What does seem to be clear is that the Gospel mes sage is addressed to all men, and
especially to the poor, and that the Church, the community of those who have
received this message, is therefore open to everybody. This is stated clearly in
the Gospel, where Christ applies to himself the words of Isaiah : "I am come to
preach the Gospel to the poor." The word "poor" can have several meanings. It can
mean those who are in poverty; and Christ then will comfort their misery. It can
mean the poor in spirit, those who seek first of all

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The Church of the Poor

the kingdom and its righteousness, and will risk every thing else to gain that. But
it means also the undis tinguished and unprivileged, those who lack money,
education, and rank. This is the sense in which we use it here.

Christ's own actions support this meaning. We see him in the New Testament followed
by men of all types. There were notabilities, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathea, but there were also extortioners and harlots. One notes in particular
how Jesus scan dalized the Pharisees when he refused to set any value on the
purifications prescribed by the law and sat down to eat with whoever happened to be
around. He made it clear that faith alone gives entry to the king dom. Further,
although Jesus selected and trained a small band of disciples in the first part of
his ministry, he also spoke to the multitude. And the Gospel says they followed
him. Then there is the way in which Jesus welcomed children — which, as Cullmann
has shown, expresses the simple sense of community.

That this universalism is one of the marks which distinguishes the Church is shown
again by a study of the early Christian centuries. Most remarkable evi dence of
this is given by the pagan Celsus condemning the Christian communities as packs of
vagabonds and pointing by contrast to the Pythagorean brotherhoods recruited from
the intellectual and moral 6lite. Nor can we oppose the pre-Constantinian era to
the Constanti

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nian in this particular. By the third century, in Africa and in Alexandria, we have
Cyprian and Origen com plaining that an increase in numbers brings with it a loss
of fervour. Moreover, we know that the persecu tions were sporadic and of limited
duration.

This much only is true — the extension of Christian ity to an immense multitude,
which is of its very essence, was held back during the first centuries by the fact
that the social cadres and cultural forms of the society in which it operated were
hostile to it. To cleave to Christianity called then for a strength of character of
which the majority of men are not capable. When the conversion of Constantine re
moved these obstacles the Gospel was made accessible to the poor, that is to say,
to those very people who are not numbered among the elite. The man in the street
could now be a Christian. Far from distorting Christianity, this change allowed it
to become more truly itself, a people.

It is this Christian people which exists today in Brittany and Alsace, Italy and
Spain, Ireland and Por tugal, Brazil and Colombia. It is this people which feels
itself betrayed by those groups of Catholics, clerical and lay, whom it sees as
more concerned with dialogue with Marxists than with work for its defence and
growth. Of course missionary work is essential, but St Paul asks us to think also
of those who are our brothers in the faith. It would be criminal if the crowd

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The Church of the Poor

which makes a personal life impossible. The result of the secularization of society
is that God is no longer present in family, professional, or civic life. A world
has come into being in which everything serves to turn men away from their
spiritual calling.

It is sufficiently clear that Christians ought to be trying to change the shape and
pattern of society so as to make possible a Christian life for the whole of man
kind. It is also obvious that such a transformation must in any case be slow and
may sometimes be ruled out by circumstances. However that may be, somehow a start
has to be made, and this can be done by creating oases in the prevailing secularism
where the Christian vocation can develop. This thought inevitably raises the
question of those Christian institutions which pro vide services not of themselves
within the Church's competence, but which the Church might be brought to provide :
schools, unions of employers and of work ers, etc., which bring Christianity into
social life not merely at the level of individual witness but at that of a
community.

In doing this sort of thing the Church lays claim to nothing that any religious
body could not lay claim to. Religious freedom must be thought of as a right that
belongs to communities as well as to individuals. It implies not only that people
should be able to prac tise a religion publicly, but also that they should have

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the scope and mutual support necessary to order their lives in accordance with the
demands of that religion. In no other way can a tradition be kept alive among a
people. Hence, a religion has the right to set up at the family, educational,
cultural, and social levels those institutions of which it has need to ensure its
con tinuance and development.

It is in this perspective that the need for relations between Church and public
authority becomes evident. This question is often put on a false basis because it
is looked at in a mistaken way. It is seen in the light of conditions which
obtained in the past, when because the Church enjoyed privileges in certain States
she found herself entangled in their political and social structures. The
overthrowing of these temporal struc tures leaves behind sociological factors which
are so many obstacles preventing the Church from carrying out her mission. This
explains why some Christians, rejecting as "sacral" societies those which have an
association between the two, call for a radical separa tion of ecclesiastical from
civil institutions.

This position is explicable, but none the less false and dangerous. It fails to
recognize the fundamental fact that religion of itself forms part of the temporal
common good. Religion is not concerned solely with the future life; it is a
constituent element of this life. Because the religious dimension is an essential
part of human nature, civil society should recognize in it a

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The Church of the Poor

constituent element of the common good for which it is itself responsible.

Therefore, the State ought to give positive recognition to full religious freedom.
This is a matter of Natural Law. State atheism, which stifles religious life, and
laicism, which ignores it, are both contrary to Natural Law.

Furthermore, in a socialized society, as ours is be coming more and more, it is

certain that recognition by the State of religious communities as real aspects of
public life is a necessary condition of their existence both as communities of the
poor and as religious groups. In a capitalist society religious communities were
able to find private sources of provision for their material needs. This had two
defects. In the first place, it tied them to the power of money; and secondly, it
led them to seek their recruits for the most part from the leading social groups
and to keep themselves apart from the poor. In a socialist society the position is
different. Recourse can be had less and less to private funds, and institutions
will be able to survive only to the extent they are recognized and supported by the
State. It is strange that it should be often the same Christians who advocate both
socialism and laicism, for the two sets of ideas are contradictory.

In arguing in this manner we stand firmly on the Natural Law. The argument is not
that the civil author ity should recognize Christianity as such, but that it should
recognize religious institutions in general be

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cause religion is a social fact. It is not to be supposed that the civil authority
has competence of itself to decide upon the truth or otherwise of a religion. That
to which it is bound by Natural Law is to recognize the reality of religion under
whatever form that reality shows itself at any given time and place.

It is evident that the problem of the relationship between Church and State shows
itself in different ways at different times. The problem today is not the same as
it was in medieval civilization. That civiliza tion was characterized by the
recognition by the State of the Catholic religion in preference to all other reli
gions, whether pagan or Jew. The State was denomina tional rather than sacral. The
Church enjoyed privi leges from which other religions were debarred. It has to be
recognized, of course, that this was the usual state of affairs at the time. It was
not possible then to dissociate the State from a particular reli gion.

The question of religious liberty is completely different. Of course, the Church

does not surrender any of the sovereign rights of the truth which is in its charge.
That is not at issue. The principle on which religious liberty rests is that not
only are individuals not to be prevented from following their consciences in
religious matters, even if they are in error, but also they are to have the right
to group themselves into communities and ask for whatever is necessary for

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their continuance and development. Religious liberty, in other words, has no

meaning unless it is concrete, unless, that is, the material conditions for its
existence are assured. In a socialist world such assurance can be given only by the
State.

Those who look at the matter in terms of historical situations are usually unable
to see clearly into the question of the relations between Christianity and
civilization. For them, insistence upon these relations appears to spring from a
wish to keep Christianity in volved in the structures of an outworn world. There
fore, they see a demand for separation as an expression of a wish to face up to new
circumstances. In terms of history they have reason on their side. The relation of
Christianity to civilization is made up perpetually of breakings apart and joinings
together again. When they speak in this sense of freeing Christianity from a
certain sociological burden they are saying something meaningful.

However, it is quite another thing to transpose these historical perspectives to

the theoretical level. It is unreal and dangerous to accept separation as a concept
of any value, to oppose a secular to a Christian civiliza tion, to consider that
the Church and the civil society ought to move in two separate worlds. It is
dangerous for the Faith, for it can be the faith of the poor only if civilization
makes it easily accessible to them and

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does not make it a privilege for a chosen group of spiritually-minded people. It is

dangerous for the civil society, for it leaves that society to shape itself in an
incomplete and inhuman manner. That is the problem with which we are faced.

22

II

Prayer as a Political Problem

The reader might well be surprised by the title given to this chapter and this
book. Public policy and prayer are two realities not usually brought together in
this way. I have chosen the heading deliberately, because it seems to me essential
to make it clear — perhaps somewhat provocatively — that there can be no radical
division between civilization and what belongs to the interior being of man; that
there must be a dialogue between prayer and the pursuit and realization of public
policy; that both the one and the other are necessary and in a sense complementary.
In other words, there cannot be a civilization within which prayer is not
represented; besides, prayer depends on civilization.

There is another reason for this title. For me it points also to the fact that we
live at a time when many barriers that we are accustomed to see erected between
different spheres of human existence are being swept away. It is being borne in
upon us that we have to start again and reconsider the whole problem of man at

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grips with the world. Today, we only have use for thinking that is bold enough to
free itself from the detritus of history and face up to the real problems of the
future. In one sense, we have need of prophecy. Hence the importance of the witness
of such men as Teilhard de Chardin and La Pira, men who break out of the narrow
compartments into which we seek to segregate human problems and try to deal with
them in their full extent.

The way in which the problems of religion and civilization depend upon each other
is shown most clearly in the difficulties experienced in the spiritual life of
contemporary man. We all feel that spiritual experience, prayer, is in danger
today. For us, who consider that man's relationship to God is an essential part of
human nature, and for whom there can be no civilization unless adoration finds a
place in it, this problem is a vital one.

By prayer in this connection I mean spiritual ex perience orientated towards God.

There are two aspects of the question I shall ignore. First, I say nothing of any
spiritual experience which could be simply a man's awakening to consciousness of
himself; for in this sense, spiritual experience could have an a-religious
significance, being simply a beginning of self-conscious ness. Second, I do not
consider prayer in its specifically Christian sense; for I treat of it firstly as a
consti tutive part of all religions, being their interior aspect,

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and secondly as in itself a fundamental part of all humanism.

Prayer cannot exist in the abstract. It can exist only as the act of a particular
man at grips with life. So it requires those conditions which alone will render it
possible for the majority of men. These conditions can be seen as a function of
man's balance in soul and body, and spiritual experience can be assigned its place
in the complete life that such balance gives. Civilization is a conditioning
factor. The prayer of modern man is that of one caught up in the world of technical
civili zation, with all the profound change which that brings to the rhythm of
human existence. The problem which faces us, therefore, is that of the future of
prayer in technical civilization.

So much for what I mean by prayer. Now as to what I mean by politics. In this
context I mean by politics the sphere of the temporal common good. This covers
three things.

In the first place, we are dealing with man collec tively and not with the
individual. We shall be speak ing, therefore, of the prayer of man involved in
social life. It is in this sense that prayer belongs not to the strictly interior
life of man — with which politics has nothing to do — but to the political sphere.

Secondly, politics ought to have the care of the com mon good, that is to say, the
duty of creating an order in which personal fulfilment is possible, where man
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might be able completely to fulfil his destiny. Jeanne Hirsch says : "Politics is
not in itself creative, but it does provide the conditions in which something can
be done." This is one of the best possible definitions. If politics does not create
the conditions in which man can completely fulfil himself, it becomes an impedi
ment to that fulfilment.

Finally, we are dealing with the temporal and not the eternal good. I shall be
speaking of prayer, there fore, not in so far as it is an anticipation of eternal
life in us, but in so far as it forms a constitutive part of the whole temporal
order, of earthly civilization in the full sense of the word. Now the temporal
order, it will be admitted, includes within it the realm of material goods — and it
is the very first task of politics to assure to all men the material conditions
necessary to their existence. Politics has also another purpose — to make a world
in which human relations can flourish in freedom, that is to say, a society in
which man does not exploit man, from which racism of every sort is banished, where
understanding is open, and peace between nations becomes possible.

But politics limited to these objectives would still not assure a complete temporal
common good. I agree with La Pira in his statement — and I have often quoted this —
that the true city is that "in which men have their homes and God also has his. . .
." A city which does not possess churches as well as factories is not fit

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for men. It is inhuman. The task of politics is to assure to men a city in which it
will be possible for them to fulfil themselves completely, to have a full material,
fraternal, and spiritual life. It is for this reason that we consider that, in so
far as it expresses this personal fulfilment of man in a particular dimension,
prayer is a political problem; for a city which would make prayer impossible would
fail to fulfil its role as a city.

So I shall speak of prayer as a social problem. Here again there are some points on
which we must be clear. To say that prayer is a social problem might seem in itself
to be paradoxical. Prayer is a personal relation ship with God. Does it not,
therefore, belong strictly to personal life? It is true that it does, but it is
true also that the full development of this personal life is impossible unless
certain conditions obtain. To deny this would be to fall victim to that most
detestable form of idealism which separates spiritual existence from its material
and sociological substratum. It is our profound belief that man is a unity; that is
to say, that there is a fundamental connection between the prob lems of the body
and those of the soul. (It may be that we are still even today victims of a twisted
system of morals that refuses to take the findings of biology into account.)

Just as man is a creature of flesh, and the work of prayer cannot be considered in
him independently of the fact of his body; so he is also a social being, and

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cannot fulfil himself in prayer divorced from his social nature. At this point
there are two things to be said. In the first place, for some individuals a life of
prayer is always possible, whatever the circumstances. No matter where they are, or
under what conditions, their personalities are strong enough to develop their
powers without help from their environment, or even in spite of it. In the second
place, there is the special case of those who withdraw from society in order to
lead a spiritual life. I shall not be speaking of them; although I might mention
that monks, in fact, create for them selves the environment in which they can pray
effectively.

It is this last consideration that brings us to the heart of our problem. If monks
feel the need to create an environment in which they will find prayer possible, if
they think that prayer is not possible without certain conditions of silence,
solitude, and rule, what are we to say of the mass of mankind? Should prayer be the
privilege of a small spiritual aristocracy, and should the bulk of the Christian
people be excluded from it ? The problem with which we are faced is the problem of
prayer for everybody, of the possibility of prayer for men at grips with the
realities of the temporal life as it is lived today, whether in the family, at
work, or in the city. This is what we are up against and in the end it is the only
problem that really matters.

We must react against any view that makes spiritual

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life the privilege of a small number of individuals; for such a view betrays the
essential point of a message which is not only Christian but religious, that a life
of prayer is an absolutely universal human vocation. Quite apart from the teaching
and demands of Chris tianity, there is the simple fact that prayer is a con
stitutive element of human life. All religions attest this. This was taken for
granted by Christ when he addressed his message to the poor — giving to that word
the meaning we have already attached to it : all and sundry, the undistinguished
and unqualified, the men in the street.

We ought never to forget that the Church is the Church of Everyman. The salvation
which Jesus Christ comes to offer, the life which he comes to give, are salvation
and life offered to the poor — to all — and what is offered to all must be within
the reach of all. Yet today, for most men, given the circumstances in which they
find themselves, the realization of a life of prayer is practically impossible. It
is evident that society is deformed. It is deformed not only because there are some
men who lack bread, nor only because there are human relationships that lack
honesty, but also because this world of prayer which is an essential element in man
himself cannot expand and grow.

There is one further point to clarify. I am speaking of prayer in so far as it is

bound up with particular social conditions. What I want to say by this is that

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religion ought in fact to have a social character. Reli gion as a fact supposes an
environment in which it can develop. There are two dimensions in religion which
ought always to be considered as complemen tary. When religion becomes a purely
social fact we fall victims to a sociological Christianity which con sists of
certain gestures, practices, and traditions; and this is totally insufficient.
Sociological Christianity ought always to be tending to transform itself into per
sonal Christianity; religious practices ought always to be tending towards prayer,
the interior attitude tend ing always to correspond to the external gesture. But
the opposite is equally true. There cannot be a per sonal Christianity unless there
is also a social Chris tianity. If personal religious life is to be able to
flourish, it must have a certain minimum of help from outside, for without this it
is normally impossible for the majority of men.

This point must be stressed, because some people today tend to dismiss the idea of
sociological Chris tianity. They usually do so under the illusion that this is a
matter of keeping to particular sociological forms of Christianity which are tied
to outmoded forms of civilization. (This could in fact be happening in some
traditionalist countries, where a sociological context helps to maintain religious
life, but at the same time acts as a brake on the development of humanity.) No,
what is important is that, with an eye to the future,

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we take account of the fact that certain sociological conditions have to be

realized if the life of prayer is to be accessible to all and sundry. If we fail to
do this and detach spirituality from its collective context, we shall be neglecting
reality. It is against such a dissocia tion as this that we ought to react.

The civilization in which we find ourselves makes prayer difficult. The first thing
that strikes one is that our technological civilization brings about a change in
the rhythm of human existence. There is a speeding up of tempo which makes it more
difficult to find the minimum of freedom on which a minimum life of prayer depends.
These are elementary problems, but none the less basic. Prayer is thus rendered
almost im possible for most men, unless they display a heroism and a strength of
character of which — we must face it — the majority of men are not capable. If it
is only the shelter of a rule which makes possible the flower ing of a life of
prayer for professed religious, then the laity, without this shelter and with added
obstacles, must indeed be in difficulties. Shall we say that the life of prayer can
be possible only for those who are able to take advantage of such shelter and thus
restrict it to only a small part of humanity ?

To be a man of prayer, some might say, it is not necessary to consecrate certain

times to prayer; men can find God in everything. This is perfectly true.

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Nevertheless, we begin to be able to find God in every thing when we have begun by
finding him above and beyond everything. It is practically impossible to lead a
life of union with God so long as there has not been that minimum of formal prayer
which allows us to acquire spiritual liberty by accustoming us to dis engagement
from the chains of our environment. I could cite numberless witnesses in support of
this thesis. Let me repeat, these matters cannot be discussed in the abstract : the
problem must not be put theoretic ally, but concretely, taking the facts of our
lives into account.

Thus we have a problem of rhythm, of the pace of time. We also have the problem of
the socialization of our lives. Even as prayer has need of a certain mini mum of
time, so also it has need of a certain minimum of solitude, a minimum of personal
life. In the actual conditions in which men have to live today, this is practically
impossible. Urban life sucks people up into a relentlessly collective existence.
Pere Depierre once said that one of the reasons why working men went to the cinema
was to seek silence and solitude. It was only there that they could be free of the
necessity of replying to all the demands that were forced upon them, from the
moment they began work in the morn ing to the time when they went home in the
evening to their families. The man of today is an alienated crea ture, one who has
lost the possibility of finding him

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self, who no longer knows who he is, who has had to meet this never-ending barrage
of demands from out side himself and who has ended by becoming deper sonalized.

The problem with which we have to deal here is not simply that of prayer. In a more
general manner, we are concerned with the possibility of personal exis tence. This
is not a problem for only the religious man alone. It is of interest to all men,
for all are threatened with becoming mere units in a collective existence. It is
obvious that some measure of solitude is essential for prayer to the extent that
prayer is the meeting of faith and spiritual experience, the possibility, that is,
for faith to become really part of a man. To the extent that faith fails to become
an inner part of man, it tends to be nothing more than an external practice; and
this is the danger that now threatens.

Another kind of question arises out of this process of "desacralization" which is

now going on in our technological civilization, at least in its present stage. Here
we touch on very important and very delicate problems, matters on which Christians
themselves are divided, but with which it is absolutely essential to deal. The
civilizations of the ancient world were sacral; that is to say, they were
civilizations in which the framework of human existence had an ultimate reli gious
foundation. That was true of all of them, of the Greek and Roman as also of the
Jewish world. It was

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true also of all the animist societies of Africa and Oceania. It is still true
today of the Moslem world. It is evident, however, that technological civilization
and the phenomena it brings in its train (urbanization, for instance) break into
and overthrow the old social cul tures, separate profane culture from religious
life, and destroy a certain balance between the social and the religious dimensions
of man.
The gravity of this crisis for religion and the State must not be minimized. When
collective existence was impregnated with religious values there was formed a world
in which the very framework of living provided a constantly renewed contact with
sacred things. In its traditional form that state of affairs could not sur vive the
irruption of technological civilization. The West suffered the shock first and has
still not recovered from it. Until only a short time ago the study of the Koran was
the foundation of the culture taught at the University of Fez. Today, the culture
which the young Moroccan students want is the technological culture of the West.
Moslem youth, who must pass from a stage of civilization which is still sacral to
the condition of contemporary civilization, is therefore facing a deep crisis.

One particularly grave aspect of this problem, and one in which our
responsibilities are immense, is the irruption of technological civilization into
emergent countries such as Madagascar or the countries of

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Africa. I have discussed these matters recently with a technician from those parts
and I am myself terrified by our failure to grasp what is involved. We are aware
that technical knowledge is in the process of destroy ing a whole civilization and
we give no thought what soever to what is to be put in its place. Of course, it is
no more possible to preserve the sacral African forms as they are now than it was
to preserve the traditional forms of the Christian civilization. But this in no way
detracts from our special responsibility today of find ing how to make the
religious dimension really present in technological civilization, working through
the framework of society itself.

We come back always to the same thought. If that dimension remains completely
absent from that society, if we accept a complete dissociation of the sacred and
the profane worlds, we shall make access to prayer absolutely impossible to the
mass of man kind. Only a few would be able to find God in a world organized without
reference to him. Men move not only in their social environment, but in their
cultural environment as well. It is through this cultural en vironment that they
can have access to the realities of religion. A world which had built up its
culture with out reference to God, a humanism from which adora tion was completely
absent, would make the maintenance of a positive religious point of view impossible
for the great majority of men.

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There can be no questioning the value of the scien tific approach, so long as it
does not try to dabble in matters outside its competence. Our task is to find new
ways by which the world of contemporary thought, and in particular the world of
science, can become a pathway to God. In this connection I would like to recall
something that was said by Teilhard de Chardin, in which he showed that for him —
and this is one of the aspects of his work that I most admire — it was perfectly
possible to take an optimistic view of the question. Teilhard wrote in Sauvons
Vhumanite : "As it arrives at a higher degree of mastery over self, the spirit of
the world finds within itself a more and more pressing need for adoration. The fact
of universal evolution makes God appear greater and more neces sary than ever.
Nothing could be more mistaken than to regard religion as a primitive and passing
phase of mankind's infancy. The more man-like man becomes, the more necessary it is
for him to know how to adore and to be able to do it. The fact of religion is an
irreversible cosmic fact of the first magnitude."

This scholar's declaration of faith that the very pro gress of scientific evolution
ought to bring a greater desire for adoration is one of the most magnificent
professions of optimism I have come across. Continuing to use Pere Teilhard's
illustration, I would go on to say that while humanity's infancy is bound up with a
par ticular type of sacral civilization, atheism does not

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represent the stage of humanity's adulthood. On the contrary, it represents its

adolescence. It comes at that moment exactly when infant humanity revolts against
the universe within which it is formed. We know that revolt is essentially an
adolescent attitude. With adult hood, on the other hand, comes a higher equilibrium
which permits recovery of the fundamental religious values in a new balance of
forces.

Why is it that prayer is fundamental to politics? As I have already said, politics

exists to secure the common good. An essential element of the common good is that
man should be able to fulfil himself at all levels. The religious level cannot be
excluded. Indeed, the possibility of self-realization at that level is a fun
damental element in the common good. The State must make provision for it, for we
cannot suppose that a true polity can exist where there is no room for the
religious dimension. In the State there must be a place for both service and
adoration. Simone Weil was right to protest against today's total secularization of
society and the universe, and to insist that a constitutive element which keeps a
civilization in balance is the fundamental relationship of society and the universe
to all that is sacred.

We are aware today of the problem created by the absence of the religious element
from the fabric of civilization. There is evidence in several directions that

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equilibrium is endangered. Science, in particular, is totally unable to guide a

movement which it has itself set in train. Men feel that science has sent them on a
journey without benefit of steering wheel or brakes. So the question arises, for
all men, religious or not, whether the development of technological civilization as
such seems a sufficient response to the problem of a humanity in course of
development; that is to say, whether this civilization either proposes ends which
have any meaning, or provides standards by which pro gress can be measured.

This raises the question of the function of the spiri tual domain within the world
of technology. Attempts have been made to find an answer in some philosophy of man,
a type of humanism, at the level of which some sort of human order could be
established. It must be said that what has been done in this direction so far has
not succeeded in finding a solution. A common humanism which could embrace men of
all varieties of spiritual allegiance does not seem to be a practical possibility.
Acceptable propositions would have to be so general as not to be capable of
supporting any con crete answer. One finds that at the great international
conferences men fall into the realm of confusion as soon as they begin to speak of
"spiritual values" even though up to that moment argument had been clear and to the
point. It would seem that for many men the spiritual is a sphere where all is vague
and people can

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say anything at all, no matter what. For me, the sphere of the spiritual is as
rigorous a discipline as that of any of the profane sciences. Theology is just as
much a science as physics or linguistics. With it, as with them, only those who are
competent can be expected to answer problems meaningfully.

This is where the function of religion in contempor ary civilization is to be

found. It is my belief that the only people who can contribute anything of value
here are the authentic representatives of various religions. No one has found an
ideology to replace that presented by the great historical religions. So even
though the great world religions have problems to settle between them — and that is
their business — they have today a common and indispensable function within the
tech nical ordering of civilization. In performing this func tion they run up
against politics, for Churches and religions are collective realities. While
politics cannot touch the inner man, for this escapes completely from its
competence, it can destroy the Churches. It can reach them because they are the
collective expression of adoration. Not only can it do this, it does it.

The State can act as it does now in Russia : prevent children from entering church
buildings; stop the teaching of catechism to groups; forbid even the use of
buildings as churches — it can tear them down; pre vent priests from exercising
their functions — it can send them into concentration camps. Of course, there

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will always be a number of religious souls, but the possibility of access to

adoration for the poor, for children, for simple folk, and for families is
practically destroyed. To the extent that the realization of their essential
objects can be prevented by society, the sur vival of the Churches in a world of
technology is a matter of politics.

However, one problem remains. We issue a chal lenge to politics and to the
political societies of today when we tell them that it is vital for them that con
ditions in which prayer is possible should be main tained. They can make the same
challenge to the Churches. In other words, the Churches justify their existence
when they fulfil their function. If it is the function of the Churches to make
prayer possible, the Churches justify themselves when through their efforts prayer
becomes a reality. Churches which are but sociological remnants of sacral societies
and in which mechanical rites continue to be performed; Churches which refuse to
face the concrete realities of civiliza tion; Churches enshrining sociological
conditions which do not correspond to the claims of personality and within which
religion is not personal and does not bear witness to a true interior life — the
State can rightly consider these dead wood and legitimately cut them out. In other
words, the Churches have to estab lish their claim to a place in the technological
civiliza tion of tomorrow. They have to show, through their

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self-evident vitality, that there is indeed a function in the building of this

civilization which they and they alone can fulfil.

This is the challenge that faces us. We are well aware that dialogue is two-sided.
We have the right to ask for certain things from the earthly city, but the earthly
city also has the right to ask certain things from us. Commenting on the request in
the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass
against us," Pastor Dumas remarks "This is the dialogue between Church and State."
The Church must pardon the State if it wants the State to pardon it. Men on both
sides must recognize their faults. If we accuse the State and contemporary
civilization of faults, let us also ask ourselves if they have not the right to
reproach us for our faults. Have the Churches realized the importance of their
mission or have they not rather in many cases remained fixed in attitudes that
prevent them from being an effective force? We recognize here the same sort of
dialogue as we have with some atheists. Here, as there, we find that reli gious men
are reproached, not for being religious, but for not being religious enough; not
for being Christian, but for not being truly so.

We are forced to conclude that, on the one hand, political society needs to create
the sociological dimen sion necessary if prayer is to be the force in the world of
tomorrow which will prevent that world from being

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inhuman; and, on the other hand, that sociological Christianity needs to transform
itself in the Churches into that authentic life of prayer which is truly a per
sonal meeting with the living God. This is the vital element which can justify the
Church in asking the political society of tomorrow to reserve for it its proper
place.

42

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Christianity and Civilization

It is vexing to have to discuss the question of Christian civilization, but

nevertheless inevitable. Christian civilization is real enough, but its essence is
hard to grasp. The term can be given many meanings, so that when I use the
expression I cannot be sure that it means the same thing to all my readers. The
word "civilization" may itself be taken in several senses. It can be taken to mean
the totality of the technical and sociological arrangements which condition the
collec tive life of mankind at a given point in time. It can be taken to mean the
view of a particular human group on what man needs to realize his vocation. It is
clear that "Christian civilization" takes on a different mean ing according to
whether one is referring to one or the other of these conceptions.
The ambiguity of Christian civilization is not in the words only. It lies in the
essence of the concept, be cause it lies at the boundary of two worlds : that of
the Church on the one side, with the supernatural pur pose proper to it; and that
of the earthly city on the other, with the human end proper to it. Christian

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civilization, then, is characteristic of an essentially transitory world — one

which is not that of the earthly cities, with their goods and gods, and which is
not yet that of the celestial city, whose members are the saints and whose head is
Christ. It is because it belongs to these two cities that Christian life in the
world shows this fundamental ambiguity.

It would certainly be more convenient if Church and State were able to pursue their
proper ends with out reference to each other's activity. There are some thinkers
today who hold that it is possible to separate Christianity from civilization,
leaving responsibility for the first to a Church which would recognize that it had
nothing to do with civilization, and responsibility for the second to a form of
Marxism which would stop bothering about either religion or irreligion. Unfor
tunately, this simpliste solution is possible neither in fact nor in theory. The
Church cannot disclaim any interest in temporal society, for that also is subject
to the law of God of which the Church is the interpreter. So the Church has to drag
the enormous weight of civilization along with it; and civilization has to carry
the gaping wound of Christianity in its side; and this state of affairs must
continue to the end of the world. It is of this that we have now to speak.

Our first need is to push unacceptable conceptions of Christian civilization to one

side; we have to try to

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keep clear of or to locate the ambiguities. The first of these, obviously, is the
temptation to identify Chris tianity purely and simply with a Christian
civilization. Here we are taking the word civilization at its highest meaning, as
defining a set of values. We would call Christian a civilization whose institutions
conformed to the divine law, still more one whose morals were penetrated with the
Christian spirit. It is arguable whether such a civilization has ever existed. But
even the fact that it has existed, might exist, or could exist, cannot justify
equivocation by which it is identified with Christianity itself.

Nothing is more detestable than this degradation of Christianity. It is the

"frightful illusion" of which Kierkegaard speaks. Christianity is not merely a
theory about human life, even if it were the highest of such theories. It is a
divine irruption which cuts through to the very seat of our wretchedness, prizing
us loose from this civilization which can do no more than lighten our load, and
brings us out on to a quite differ ent level of existence. All civilization has to
do with man in the flesh, the natural man, and with this world, the world of time
and care. The essence of Christianity is the Spirit in the biblical sense of the
word. It is the transfiguration of our woe. The final end which it sets before us
is not the improvement of the earthly city, but the heavenly Jerusalem and its
glory.
Nothing could be more degrading than to reduce

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Christianity to an earthly ideal and make a philan thropist of Christ. We should

not deceive ourselves, however. Many are guilty of it who love Christ but do not
believe in him, for whom Christ is a prophet — the greatest of the prophets, true,
but only a prophet and not the Word of God taking up our humanity in his
Incarnation, purifying it in the blood of his cross, and taking it at his ascension
into the House of his Father.

It might well be that this way of seeing these events could be a first step towards
Christianity for the non- Christian. There is no sense in it for a Christian. Our
alternative to Marxism is not a Christian civilization, even as an ideal, which
operates on the same level as itself, but an affirmation of Christianity in all its
ful ness. It is not in the order of civilization that we have first to look for the
superiority of Christianity, but in the fact that Christianity reaches to where
civilization cannot reach, to the root of man's wretchedness, to the darkest places
of his being — and that it alone brings with it grace to heal.

The important events in Christianity are not those which make up the history of
civilizations. More im portant than the rise and fall of empires, the fame of
victories, the discoveries of scientists and scholars, the masterpieces of art, are
the Incarnation of the Word, his Resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and
the mission of the Apostles, the conversion and the sancti

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fication of souls. Saints are more important to it than are geniuses or heroes. We
shall say always with Pascal : "Jesus Christ, without possessions and produc ing
nothing that human science could not compass, stands in his own order of
sacredness. He made no in vention, ruled no kingdom. He was humble, patient, holy
before God, terrible to devils, entirely without sin."

This said and this first ambiguity removed, it remains true that there is such a
thing as Christian civilization. There is historical evidence. For a large part of
human ity Christianity has been and remains the religion which is a constitutive
element of any complete civiliza tion; and whatever may have been the reservations
we have had to make just now, it remains true that it has exercised an influence
both on institutions and on morals. There is a danger that the obvious defects of
the civilizations which have been called Christian may blind us to this fact. They
must not be allowed to do so. Christianity has done much to heighten respect for
the human person, to better the condition of women, to emphasize the brotherhood
which exists between men of all races.

But there is also a permanent reality in Christian civilization. That the end
proper to Christianity relates to the highest destiny of mankind has been insisted
on enough to allow us to recall that it is not for this reason uninterested in
men's earthly destinies. This is true
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in a double sense. On the one hand, the earthly city is subject to the Law of God,
not, it is true, in its par ticular applications, but in the principles which
govern them. The Church has always asserted its right and duty to intervene in this
domain, basing its claim to do so on the fact that it has the care of the Natural
Law. (We would prefer to call this the divine law, for it is from God that it
acquires its whole authority in the eyes of the Christian.)

However, this view is only partial. To the extent that institutions are in the last
resort no more than expressions of human relationships, normally they re flect the
spirit which rules those relationships. It is to be expected that the
transformation which the Gospel spirit brings to human relationships should
manifest itself at the institutional level. This is particularly evident as regards
the institution of the family. Of course, this influence is always limited and
always struggling, sharing as it must in the ambiguousness of Christian
civilization; but that there is an influence cannot be denied. The tragedy is not
that Christians have tried to penetrate civilization with the spirit of the Gospel,
but that they have not done it sufficiently.

Besides, the Church cannot fail to have an interest in civilization to the extent
that the city of this world must subordinate itself to the city of eternity. The
Church has been given by God himself the task of leading men to this heavenly city,
and has therefore the

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right to ask of the earthly city that it put no obstacle in the way. Although
Christianity cannot be affected by any sociological conditions and can spring up
under any sort of circumstance, it remains true that a Chris tian people cannot
exist without a milieu to sustain it. It cannot survive in a world where the
institutions are morally perverse or ideologically misconceived. In this sense,
Christianity ought for the sake of its own final end to seek to influence the
institutions of the earthly city.

However, it is necessary to add that although it is legitimate to speak of

Christian civilization, it is dan gerous to make a myth out of it and to let it be
believed that the kingdom of God is a possibility on earth. For although
civilization may not necessarily be impure, it is of necessity narrow and of short
duration. It is a world of righteousness which is not that of the Beati tudes, of a
knowledge which is not Christ's knowledge; it is a world whose forces can be tamed
but never finally subdued, and whose successes are precarious and of small extent.
This should not surprise us, for we know that the kingdom of God is not of this
world — or rather, that in so far as it does exist in this world it exists only in
the hearts of the saints, hidden now but to be made manifest in the fulness of
time.

It is to be noted also that Christian civilization is not without temptation for

Christians. So long as they are persecuted by the powers of this world, they have
no
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difficulty in holding fast to a hope that goes beyond the earthly city. Once let
them become masters of the city and they stand in danger of getting bogged down in
it. It is never entirely without risk for men to handle money or to be active in
politics. How many there are who have undertaken such activities with the best in
tentions and been trapped ! The greatest danger for the Christian does not come
from persecution but from worldliness. The drama of Christian civilization lies in
the fact that engagement in temporal affairs is at one and the same time a duty and
a temptation. There must be a tension between care for the last things, judge ment,
hell, and heaven, and solicitude for the advance of civilization; and there is a
danger that this will be allowed to slacken and the right articulation of one with
the other go undiscovered.

This brings us to a new aspect of the ambiguity in Christian civilization, to an

explanation of why it is that the Christians who are most irritated by the term are
often those most engaged in temporal affairs. This points to a feeling of unease.
However, such uneasiness does not arise out of Christian civilization as such, but
from our civilization in so far as it is styled Christian. It is not at all clear
how far the present state of affairs has any right to be called Christian, and it
is by no means easy to clarify the ambiguity.

The view of some people is that there was a truly Christian civilization in the
Middle Ages and that this

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continued into the seventeenth century, but was then undermined by the Renaissance.
For those people, we are now living in a period of decadence and witnessing the
dissolution of western Christian civilization.

An exactly opposite point of view has been defended by the Austrian writer
Friedrich Heer. He argues that the medieval institutions which formed the backbone
of that civilization had not been truly christianized. The right of ownership, in
particular, had remained the jus utendi et abutendi of the Romans and had not been
changed to take account of the Judeo-Christian prin ciple that the purpose for
which goods exist is more important than their ownership. In the same way, the
modern awakening of nationalist passions shows how little such feelings had been
affected by the unity of Christendom. Heer concludes that "there has never been in
Europe in any true sense a Christianity which was widespread, living, and fruitful.
. . ." For him, Christian civilization belongs more to the future than to the past.

Both of these points of view are doubtless mistaken. Institutions evolve over time,
being the expression of new economic, political, and social situations. As Mounier
remarked, Christianity does not give rise to institutions directly. It works
alongside those which exist, purifying them of their excesses and bringing them
into conformity with the demands of the spirit. It was in this way that it acted on
slavery, not con

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demning it as such but creating a spirit which rendered its continuance impossible.
The work is unceasing, and has always to be begun anew as conditions change. In
this sense there is a fundamental ambiguity in Chris tian civilization, and we have
not to be scandalized that it should exist in ours.

But there is another ambiguity — not this time in escapable — which causes us
trouble. It is true that the Christian civilization which is ours is heir to
authentic Christian values. This is forgotten by those who claim that the structure
of the western civilization of today is fundamentally bad and ought to be replaced
by another which would truly permit Christianity to flourish. Such a view is a
dangerous illusion, for it fails to value properly the really authentic
civilization that exists in family life, in personal rights, and in the cultural
foundations of the society in which we live. It would be frivolous of those who are
its beneficiaries and heirs to see only its failures and to hold it cheap.

However, it is also true that this civilization is not truly Christian, for it is
not faithful to its own prin ciples. This explains our repugnance to calling it
Chris tian, for we find the term dreadfully pharisaical. We are easily led to hold
our civilization cheap, not because we scorn Christian civilization, but because we
feel that the high idea we had of it has been betrayed; and our resentment leads us
to prefer a civilization which is in no way Christian to one which misrepresents

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Christianity. May it not be that the hostility which some Christians today show to
the idea of a Christian civilization is the expression of a disappointed love?

The fact remains that such a position is dangerous even though some people find its
radicalism appealing. The influence of Christianity on civilization has never been
as great as could have been desired, and nothing therefore could be more dangerous
or misguided than to spurn all that has come down from Christian times. It is true
that in some of its forms this heritage could appear to be responsible for outmoded
cultural or social dispositions, but beyond these external features there are
certain human values of permanent impor tance which have been acquired. These must
not be rejected. They must be expressed in forms more adapted to the present time.
It is perfectly possible to bring a country from a Christian civilization of the
traditional type to one that is refashioned without pass ing through a bout of
dechristianization.

There, after all, lies the real problem. What matters is not to cling to historical
forms for their own sake, but to meet fully a requirement springing from the very
essence of Christianity. To this requirement there are two sides. There is first of
all the expression of the fact that Christ has come to save all that has been made.
Redemption is concerned with all creation. It leads it to its goal. But
civilization is part of the order of creation, being the expression of man's
deployment

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of his forces as he realizes his vocation to complete the world through his
intelligence and work. The civiliza tions of history are simply different aspects
of this fundamental civilization.

Christianity is not bound up with any particular civilization, whether in time or

place. It is of the essence of Christianity, on the other hand, to come to the
rescue of all that has been created, and hence of the work and effort of mankind.
In this sense, civiliza tion has need of Christianity, even in its own order, being
by man's sin shut off from the fulness of its own development, even on the natural
plane. It is sick and needs to be healed, like all things that pertain to man in
his wounded state. Indeed, one of the characteristics of our own civilization is a
consciousness of the dan gers brought to humanity by human progress itself in so
far as that progress is not freed from the forces of darkness, from the will to
dominate or the passion to seize and hold, from all that betrays it and turns it
away from its purpose.

On the other hand, Christianity too has need of civilization. Christianity must
take up and consecrate all that has to do with man. Therefore it must not ignore
that side of human reality which concerns work. It is not tied to the culture of
any particular place, nor to that of any particular time. Rather, it is bound to
all. The modern world is no exception. This, too, God has given to Christianity for
it to consecrate, and it would

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be shuffling out of its responsibilities if it refused to face the task. It is true

that industrial civilization began outside Christianity; but it is true also that
it cannot come to fruition except with the aid of Christianity. It is the material
on which Christianity has to work.

I have no liking for Christians who will not touch the facts of human existence for
fear of soiling their hands. The Christians who struggle to make Christian ity
effective in the world, even at the cost of painful blows, those I admire. I love
that Church which plunges into the thickets of human history and is not afraid of
compromising itself by getting mixed up with men's affairs, with their political
conflicts and their cultural disputes. I love that Church because it loves men and
therefore goes out to look for them wherever they are. And I love best of all that
Church which is mud- splashed from history because it has played its part in
history, that Church of the poor which is denounced for its weaknesses by pharisees
whose hands are clean but who can point to no single person they have saved.

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IV

Technology and Man

We have found that it is not possible to keep Chris tianity and civilization apart.
Christ comes to retake possession of the full nature of man and we cannot ex clude
what is on the level of earthly existence. On the one hand, Christianity must take
to itself all man's values; while, on the other, man cannot fulfil himself except
through Christianity. Within this ultimate per spective there are problems to be
dealt with at several different levels. The world of technology itself brings
dangers for men; and there is the risk of man's trying to make himself whole
without God. Beside all this, the problem of religious man is not the same as the
problem of Christian revelation.

These different levels, on which we have now to operate, cannot be completely

separated from one an other, but it is none the less important to distinguish
clearly between them. They can be ranged in a sort of ecumenical hierarchy: the
first problem affecting all men; the second affecting all religious men; the third
affecting all Christians. We shall begin with that

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which deals with all mankind face to face with tech nological civilization.

The question set by technical progress and its appli cations is not simply a moral
problem. It goes far beyond that. In the last resort it involves a view of the
nature and significance of man within a wider and more comprehensive vision. It is
clear from the outset that we have to look at technology in itself from a positive
point of view. It would be absurd to look upon it as an evil thing. The few
thinkers who argue that it is operate on a plane of unreality, and are with out
interest for this enquiry. It is my view, and here I speak as a theologian, that if
we place ourselves in the perspective of the Bible, which is that also of Chris
tianity, we must take a positive view of technical pro gress. From the theoretical
point of view we have no reason whatsoever for being suspicious of it.

I will go further, and add that we ought to bear witness to all the benefits we owe
to technical progress. That there is a debit side is true, and we shall come to it;
but the credit side is enormous in extent, and can not but arouse in us an immense
gratitude to science. When I think of all the suffering which medical and surgical
developments now prevent, I have the impres sion that there is in humanity today, I
will not say happiness, but a possibility of happiness, or at least of conditions
making for happiness, if only men can

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learn to utilize them. Such possibilities were out of reach in those tragic times
when infantile mortality was high and cholera and the plague could destroy
civilizations just as effectively as could now the atomic bomb. We have no
apprehension of such scourges to day. Then again, just at the time when fears might
begin to be felt about the exhaustion of the earth's re sources, hope comes from
the exploration of the riches of the universe. Atomic energy arrives just when
there are fears for the sufficiency of coal and oil reserves. Indeed, it seems to
us that the progress of science is reaching a quite extraordinary stage.

It is of course difficult to be clear about science and technology, because they

can be put to such opposing uses. The problem which science thus poses has always
existed, but it is today presented to us in a much more acute manner because of the
extraordinarily powerful techniques made available by modern technology. A problem
not different in kind from that which men faced in the past has become so much
greater quanti tatively as to be something new. All the same, it is necessary to
put it at its true level, which is not that of technology itself but of the place
which science and technology have taken in the scheme of values that constitutes a
thoroughgoing humanism. On the one hand, science has held itself to be capable of
explaining all that could be known, scientific methods being thought apt to solve
every problem posed by human

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existence. On the other hand, at the level of applied science, the dream of freeing
man from all his ills, a sort of salvation of mankind by technology, has come to
take the place of religious salvation. The new dogma flourished in the nineteenth
century and has lived into the twentieth. It is not long since a reputable philoso
pher argued in a published work that every ill that threatened man would be
conquered by the progress of science.

The essential mischief of contemporary science lies in this kind of myth, that
science or technology is capable of resolving the fundamental problems of man kind.
It has led to a loss of balance in men's thinking today. Physical sciences are
being pursued with extra ordinary vigour, while other disciplines, just as
fundamental and just as scientific, such as ethics, metaphysics, and theology, are
strangely and tragically put to one side. We shall say more of this presently.
Meantime, modern science leads us on a false trail in the sense that when it is
examining critically the answers it itself obtains, it imagines that it is question
ing those on which the essential values of existence are founded.

Today, however, a movement against this trend be gins to make itself felt, and the
possibilities opened up by the new developments in technology have brought an
awakening in two directions.

First, men are becoming aware of the responsibility

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of the expert, and conscious that scientific research cannot be dissociated from
morality. A fundamental question is posed here, and while I do not claim to be able
here and now to give a quick answer to it, I can at least point to its existence.
Oppenheimer gives out standing witness in our time to the moral anguish of a great
scholar in face of the dangers that science and its development can create for
mankind. He testifies to an awakening in scientific circles to moral problems and
to a feeling that science is not enough of itself to re solve them. It seems to me
that we are seeing the creation of a new type of man, the responsible man of
science. It seems to me also that this development of a sense of responsibility and
this preoccupation with ethics among scientists comes at a time when among those
engaged in literary pursuits there is a decline which is in many respects
dreadfully disquieting. One of the grounds for my optimism is the human develop
ment of those engaged in scientific research and the way in which they feel the
need to go beyond and complete their scientific formation with a study of ethics
and metaphysics. Through physics we shall eventually come back to metaphysics, for
the one is not complete without the other.
In the second place, side by side with this awakening to responsibility is a
consciousness of a lack of balance in modern man, an apprehension that some human
values appear to have been insufficiently cared for. The

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nostalgia for oriental wisdom which is found in some circles is a kind of defensive
reaction to this loss. It can be asked whether, from some interior urge rather than
external moral command, men will not be moved to a rediscovery of whole realms of
reality which have been ignored by technological culture, but which have not for
that reason ceased to exist. It can be asked, too, whether the investigation of man
as a moral being will not be one of the great fields of research in the future,
after so long a period of tragic neglect. It is through the almost inherent
development of humanity in its growth that certain values can thus be redis
covered.

The question, then, with which we are faced today is what place to give to
technology within a more com plete vision of the nature of man. To have true mean
ing, it must be subordinated to the highest ends of mankind. The progress that has
been made brings us sharply up against this, and makes us aware of situa tions with
which technology is incapable of dealing. These are problems which primarily
concern the in tegrity of the human person, and here it is questions of biology
that are of outstanding importance. Biology touches two of the fundamental
realities of human ex istence, perhaps the only two that are really funda mental:
love and death. As biology progresses in its study of the way in which life is
transmitted, it makes us aware that there is in sex something which goes

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beyond biology; it encounters love. When biology is put to uses which threaten
interpersonal relations that go beyond biology : in other words, when it threatens
to undermine that personal love which binds a man and a woman and that climate of
love in which alone a child can become a balanced personality, it touches the very
essence of humanity.

Biology has to deal also with death. There is the problem of knowing up to just
what point life should be prolonged; and there is the challenge of death, which is
for many men the occasion of being really them selves, for perhaps the first time,
and of making a really decisive choice. In the use to which they are put, the
forces made available by technology must respect those facts of humanity which show
the transcendence of the human person over all material circumstances. It is this
which obliges us to distinguish between the forces that affect man and man himself,
who, although he is subject to them, yet belongs to quite a different order.

We are not merely playing with words. We are con ducting a serious enquiry, and it
is clear that we ought to be considering some concrete solutions towards which we
can move in the immediate future. Some can be at once dismissed as incomplete or
misleading. There is, for example, the notion that scientific discovery could be
kept more or less secret in a world where

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publicity has already become a matter of necessity. It it said of Leonardo da Vinci

that he kept to himself the secret of the submarine, fearing that others would not
share his view that it was a dastardly act to fire on another vessel when one's own
was invisible. It would be impossible for him to conceal his invention today. In
the same way, it is not possible to control the technological applications of
theoretical advances. This is not to say that there are not real problems here, for
technological procedures take different directions.

One possibility for the future is that the great pioneers of the technological
world of tomorrow will take a collective stand on grounds of conscience, and,
pushing aside the claims of business and political power, bear witness to a new
world ethic and make themselves as a group masters of the discoveries of which they
are themselves the authors. It would seem that we have the right to expect this of
them, even though political divisions in the world make such a universal college of
scholars a very difficult thing to achieve.

An essential part of the problem is that today science is no longer a matter of

individual intuition. The re sponsibility of an individual for the next step
forward in a seemingly inexorable process is to some extent diminished. If one man
does not make the discovery, another will. This consideration raises the question
whether in fact the problem has not ceased to be a

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matter for the conscience of the individual researcher but rather one raised at the
collective level, be it from the point of view of science or morality. It does
appear that there is today a sort of collective conscience, that is to say, a
feeling for certain fundamental values, such as respect for human dignity and
freedom. It is true that this can be overthrown on occasion by political forces,
but it does nevertheless seem to be something real and powerful on which we can
count to regulate and correct technological progress and make it serve the true
good of humanity. Progress at this level would consist in a discovery of those
common values which would allow the future of mankind to be seen as a function of a
certain conception of the nature of man.

These values of the collective conscience have a real influence on the development
of humanity, but the element of vitality and power also plays a part. It would be
an illusion, for example, to believe that the forces of nationalism are destined to
diminish. Quite the contrary. The world of today shows an even greater
consciousness than ever of nationality, and this is a creative and constructive
element of the humanity of tomorrow. The world is not moulded only by tech niques,
nor is it the product only of ideas. There is a part also for those vital forces
which spring from the peoples themselves. The problem is how to make these
different components converge. So far as I am con

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cerned — and this is one of the points on which I have just been insisting — it
would be a mistake to trace everything back to the problems of technology. That is
only one aspect of the vital forces in the world. Is it not remarkable how, just
when it might be thought that the world could be unified through technology, the
way to unity is blocked by the awakening of new nationalisms? It seems to me that
these forces are a healthy protection for humanity against the threat of a
technological civilization which could lead mankind to a collective uniformity,
where originality and the values of feeling and imagination which express the
spirit of peoples could be thrown away. Once again I come back to the idea that
what is important is to create a humanism in which diverse constitutive forces
would be respected.

Finally, technological progress should not make us overestimate the novelty of

modern man. Men are sub ject to new forces, of which technology itself is the
outstanding example. But this is all that is new. Man himself as a person, in his
spiritual being, his freedom and his intelligence, does not seem to me to be in any
way new at all. We are not more intelligent than were Plato and Aristotle. We have
new means at our dis posal; but I do not see that man has changed one whit in his
own nature.

It is not human values themselves which are set vibrating by the shock of modern
technology, but the

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selves to be strong, they feel that much less need of help. In so far as they see
themselves as more to be admired, they are that much less inclined to admire
anything greater than themselves. From some points of view man grows into a screen
which shuts off the sight of God, or a lens which concentrates attention and
admiration upon himself. On the other hand, when man is confronted with this
technological position, he sees more clearly how limited is the help technology can
give him. It leaves him unprovided for in precisely those situations which have the
most importance for him.

Such situations must be seen to have a meaning and importance which go beyond
themselves. Here again art has an essential part to play. It is clear that the
modern cinema of Bergmann or Bunuel goes far beyond mere description. It confronts
man continually with extreme cases of loneliness, captivity, and despair. That is
to say, it shows men in situations which are meaningful because they point a
lesson. Even where it does not show forth a meaning, and rests ambiguous, it none
the less creates a world of free association.
It is a remarkable discovery that the meanings eluci dated by contemporary art lead
back to precisely those situations which underlie the symbolism of the Bible. The
situation of Israel in its escape from Egypt, and that of those who are freed by
baptism on Easter day, are situations of captivity and liberation. The drama

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of the alliance between Yahweh and Israel is described in the Bible in terms
borrowed from human love — fidelity and unfaithfulness. The problem of the appar
ent meaninglessness of suffering is the theme of the Book of Job, while the passion
of the search for justice fills the works of the prophets. So true is all this that
modern art often makes reference to biblical themes, even when it empties them of
all sacred content.

With that last admission we are able to answer a possible objection. To say that
art enables us to go beyond the world of technology into the world of man is not
necessarily the same thing as to say that it brings us also to the world of sacred
things. It can remain at a purely human level. The point is that even at the human
level we see art becoming a principle of release in bringing out the significant
force of the human situation. By this I mean that we can find in it at all levels
that kind of dynamism which makes it an excel lent medium for explaining one side
to the other. This dynamism can be interpreted in different ways, and I do not say
that art in itself offers a meaning. Rather, by its means actual realities can be
given a meaning, and the sacred be thereby provided with a language.

Thus, art and the sacred have a common destiny. Without art, the sacred cannot
reach out to the mass of men. Without the sacred, art is swallowed up by
technology. Together, they can give a reply to the cry

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put up by the world of technology when it asks for a vision that shall lead to a
communion, a unity of spirit, a civilization. Technology gives this civilization
the infrastructure on which the city has to be built and the homes of men and the
House of God to rest. It is a magnificent task which restores to art its human func
tion. This is what art has to understand.

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VI

Religion and Revelation

Men of all religions realize that they have today a common responsibility before
all that endangers the place of God in the civilization of tomorrow. This con
sideration suggests that we should reflect on the nature of the non-Christian
religions and on their relationship to the Christian revelation. Indeed, it is only
if we start from a clearly defined position in this matter that we can avoid, on
the one hand, syncretism, which assimi lates Christianity to religion in general,
even though it be regarded as by far the best of all religions; and, on the other,
sectarianism, which disregards the positive content of the non-Christian religions.
This question is of importance today, whether it be for the way in which the
Christian message is to be presented, or the possibilities of dialogue and co-
operation with non- Christians, or the appreciation of the pagan elements in
Christianity.

I shall confine my remarks to the case presented by the pagan religions, which
means those which exist outside the historic revelation. Thus, I leave to one side
the question of Judaism, this being a quite special

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field of enquiry. Islam, also, I put aside, for it contains elements borrowed from
both Judaism and Christian ity. I ignore also the non-religious world which is some
times mistakenly termed pagan. The pagan is essenti ally a religious man, and
nothing is more contrary to paganism than godlessness.

That which finds expression in the diversity of reli gions is a quality of human
nature. Religious activity is a constitutive part of man. That this is so is proved
by history, by psychology, and by philosophy. For the ethnologist, tools and
worship are signs that men are present. The psychologist also finds in the depths
of the human personality something which cannot be re duced to any other sphere of
experience. This is even more true for the philosopher, for whom authentic humanism
is found where man displays the three sides of his nature: mastery over the
universe by techno logy, communion with others through love, and con version to God
in adoration.

From this point of view, religion does not refer solely to another world. Religious
experience is a con stitutive element of this world. It is an aberration on the
part of modern laicism to imagine that humanism can exist apart from religion. A
world without God is an inhuman world. God is a party to civilization. This is
true, of course, at the level of the individual, for whom the love of God is a
condition of his fulfilment

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and happiness. But it is true also at the level of the community. Religious
activity forms part of the tem poral common good; and this is true whatever form
religious experience may take.

Very many attempts have been made to explain reli gious experience away. There have
been cosmological explanations — that the mystery of nature is only that which is
as yet unexplained; psychological — that reli gion is only a sublimation of
instinct, particularly of the sexual instinct; and sociological — transcendency
merely expresses the submission of the individual to the family or the national
group. All of these observa tions start from well founded facts, but all
misinterpret the facts. They confuse the signs of the sacred with its substance.

After all, it is the peculiar quality of religions to understand the signs by which
the divine presence is revealed. These signs are of different orders. They can be
cosmological phenomena : the starry sky; a thunder storm; the enduring, unchanging,
majestic mountains; the snake, still water, and the moon, suggesting fertil ity;
all these are signs in which men throughout history have seen evidence of a divine
presence.

Still more is it through human gestures that the presence of what is holy can be
perceived. One of the most fundamental characteristics of all religions is the
consecration of the important events in life. The birth of a child, its entry into
adolescence, marriage, and

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death are always the occasion of ceremonial. There is a liturgical cycle to mark
the seasonal rhythm of work. Human rites are copied from those performed by the
gods in the world of the ideal. Rite and myth are ex pressions of a fundamental
experience by which man reaches out to a world beyond his ken.

Positivist explanations of religion are at fault, there fore, when they try to turn
the outward sign of reli gion into the substance of it. As Eliade and Van der Leeuw
rightly perceived, it was not the sun we see that the disciples of Mithras adored,
but in it the beneficent power which gives light and life. And although, as LeVi-
Strauss saw, religion expresses itself in social structures, it is not therefore to
be identified with them. Rather, it is in fundamental human relationships that man
is reunited to a reality which is not his to possess but which brings him into
contact with the unattainable.

Lastly, it is within himself, in his experience both of his weakness and his
immense strength, that man per ceives the presence of something divine, something
which is in him and works through him, yet is not part of him. He finds it in the
motions of his conscience, which compel him to recognize the utter incompati bility
of good and evil; in the light of his reason, which reveals to him the presence of
a truth living at the very centre of his being; in the calls of a love which drives
him to go far beyond all that is finite to seek that

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Good from which all goodness receives its virtue. And sometimes, searching his own
heart, he finds to his sur prise the reflection there of a light that comes from
elsewhere.

This world of religion is one of the privileged sec tors of human experience.
Humanity may be enriched by scientific discoveries and social advances, but its
inmost being can never be so fully expressed as it is in religion. The great
religions of history are expres sions of the religious drive in mankind. Though
they are many, yet are they one. All are expressions of the same level of
experience. Each in its own way, they make visible to us the way in which men have
recog nized God's presence in the world and have sought him beyond its confines.

Even so, it is of their nature to differ from one an other. Each expresses the
religious genius of a people; and there is nothing more characteristic of a people
than its religion. From this point of view the old tag "Cujus regio, ejus religio"
is perfectly true. The reli gion of a people is so much a part of its heritage that
a man could no more betray his religion than betray his race. And indeed it is
absurd to change a religion when that religion is the form in which the religious
genius of a people finds expression. Religions are part of the richness of
creation, and one of its most remarkable aspects. How could Christianity destroy
them, when its mission is not to destroy but to

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fulfil, when it comes to save all that has been created ?

When we look at the matter in this way, we see that nothing could be more false
than to make of Christian ity the religion of the West. Christianity is of quite a
different order. There was at one time a religion of the West, the paganism of
antiquity, Greek or Roman, Celtic or Teutonic. That religion was the equivalent of
Hinduism or Taoism, of animism or the American reli gions. Sankara can be compared
to Plotinus, and Marcus Aurelius to Confucius. This western paganism was worth as
much as the others. Nor is it far removed from us even now. We have never been
anything other than converted pagans. "Fiunt, non nascuntur chris- tiani", in
Tertullian's words; which can be translated : "Pagans are born, but Christians are
made". The west ern way of being a Christian is conditioned by the reli gious
genius of the West. We have a duty to remain faithful to that genius; but we have
no business to be foisting it upon others.

There are different ways of being pagan, and each has its own beauty. All deserve
to be saved, and all will indeed be saved. It was the Semitic way of pagan ism that
was first to be saved, in Abraham. It was the turn of western paganism when Plato
and Virgil were, in a sense, baptized. In the twentieth century it will be the turn
of African paganism; in the twenty-first, of Indian paganism. Within the unity of a
faith which is

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necessarily one, diversity within Christianity reflects the diversity of the

religious outlooks which receive that faith, each in the manner peculiar to itself.
And what right have I to impose on other men my own particular way of welcoming
Jesus Christ?

Thus one sees how essential it is, if there is to be a firm basis for dialogue,
that we be clear about the relationship of Christianity to the other religions. In
this matter, as with ecumenism, the fact that love must be operative does not make
clarity any less desirable. Nothing whatsoever can be founded on con fusion. This
is ignored by syncretism, which, by put ting everything on the same level, robs
dialogue of meaning. The same can be said of sentimentalism, which refuses to mark
in watersheds, so to speak, for fear that they become frontiers. One must always
state clearly what is the question at issue.

What we have been describing is religion in general. The Judeo-Christian religion

confronts us with some thing quite different. We have not here a system of worship,
a cult. What we have is a witness to certain historical events. The Holy Book of
the Christians is a history. It states the evidence for the actions of God, where
the Word appears in time. One does not have to be a Christian to believe in God.
One does have to be a Christian to believe that God has come among men. Religion in
general is a turning of man towards God;

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revelation bears witness to a turning of God towards man.

The distinctions which arise from this fact are obvi ous. Religion in general
concerns itself with the way in which God manifests his presence through the cycles
of nature and of human existence. Revelation is con cerned with a unique event,
"hapax" says the Epistle to the Hebrews. If this event is unique, it is obvious
that the revelation concerning it must also be unique. Faith consists in a belief
in the reality of that event. On the other hand, other religions must necessarily
be diverse, for they are the creations of human genius. They bear witness to the
high standards of religious leaders, such as Buddha and Zoroaster, but they must
also be marked by the necessary defects of all things human. Revelation is the work
of God alone. Man con tributes nothing to it, nor does it belong to him. It is a
pure gift. It is in itself infallible, true in a sense which can be applied only to
God himself.

Religion is concerned in the first instance with the present life. It is one part
of natural human existence, even though it expresses the persistence of permanent
values. Revelation is eschatological. It is concerned with the last things, with
matters which elude man's grasp. It is turned towards the future. It is prophetic.
Religion expresses the desire of man for God. Revelation is witness to the fact
that God has replied to that desire. Religion does not offer salvation; only Jesus
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that. Here, as elsewhere, revelation does not destroy religion but brings it to
fulfilment.

Religion is the realm of spiritual experience. It ex presses the efforts man makes
to develop that part of himself which is turned towards the divine. It will be the
richer the better endowed persons are religiously. Revelation is the domain of
faith. It does not base itself on a personal experience, but puts its confidence in
the experience of another, he who comes from on high and is born in glory. Thus is
revelation laid open to the poor. Only faith matters — and grace which acts within
man's infirmity.

It is clear, therefore, that if there is opposition be tween Christianity and other

religions, this is not an opposition between realities of the same order which are
mutually exclusive. It is rather a sign of a relation ship between them. If there
is a danger in syncretism, there is a danger no less grave in a radicalism which,
in the name of faith, would fail to understand what religion is and what importance
it possesses. Such an attitude is very widespread today. People see the des
truction of religion as a condition of the faith, and fight against the pagan
elements which live on in Christianity. They think that when atheism destroys
religion it opens a way for the faith.

Happily, the encyclical Ecclesiam suam seems to react against this attitude. While
it rejects atheism as a perversion of human nature, it addresses a frater

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nal appeal to the non-biblical religions. It bears witness at one and the same time
to their vitality in the world of today and to the values of which they are the cus
todians. The position adopted by Paul VI in this mat ter is the same as that of
Pius XII and John XXIII. The encyclical Evangelii praecones of Pius XII is particu
larly important in this connection. It admirably defines the attitude of
Christianity to the religious values of paganism. It tells us that Christianity
lifts them up, purifies them, and transfigures them.

The three aspects are fundamental.

That Christianity takes up the religious values of paganism and does not destroy
them is true theologic ally. As we have said, Christ comes to take hold of all that
is man, and the religious is the most precious part of man. It is true also
historically, for although, in a pagan country, Christianity is always at first led
to take a stand against the errors of paganism, it goes on to take to itself the
good things in it. An obvious ex ample which offers proof of this is the
evangelization of the West. Christianity has taken up all that was valuable in the
religions of Greece and Rome. Shrines of pagan goddesses became shrines of the
Virgin Mary, and the seasonal pagan feasts were displaced by Christ mas and
Candlemas.

Another aspect of this taking up of the pagan spirit by revelation concerns the
diversity of expressions of that spirit. Religious genius takes different forms in

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different peoples, and Christianity ought to take each variety to itself. Until now
it is only the western world that has been evangelized in its culture and therefore
also in its religion. And it has come about that the Christianity which the western
world has carried to the four quarters of the globe has been a western type of
Christianity.

Here we touch on problems of fundamental import ance. We are faced today with the
rejection of Christi anity in the name of their own religion by the peoples of the
Far and Near East; and it has to be admitted that this attitude is justified in so
far as the Christian revela tion is presented to them in the shape in which it has
been received by western religious man. What they are rightly rejecting is not
Christianity but its western form. For, in this case, it is in fact destructive of
the cultural values to which these people have the right and the duty to cling.

A difficulty might legitimately be advanced at this point. It could be objected

that the view which has been given of paganism is too optimistic, that the rela
tionship between pagan religions and Christianity is not only that of one adopting
what is best in the other, but also that of a breach between the two. Such an
objection is perfectly justified. Taken in itself, the reli gious part of man is an
aspect of creation and there fore good. But the religions in which it finds expres
sion in the historical situation are always more or less

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tirely a search after temporal good; or Christians have come to occupy themselves
with evangelization and neglect their duty of taking a hand in political affairs.
There is something in what the Marxists say : Chris tianity can be in danger of
turning men away from social and political activity precisely because it sees that
man's destiny lies far beyond any earthly city.

The Church takes the world seriously. By that I mean that man and man's growth are
matters on which the Church has a positive view. The Church takes the world
seriously because the world is the creation, that is to say the work of God, and
because it would be a very odd thing for men to find bad what God finds good. Men
are often more squeamish than God and more easily scandalized. They take exception
to viol ence, although violence is one of the ways in which life bursts forth.
There is violence in the animal king dom, and it is inevitable that there should be
violence in the development of the city of men. They are shocked by sexuality; yet
God has chosen to put there, at the very root as it were of the living being, that
which in the human person will blossom into the mar vel of truly personal love. God
is not shocked by any part of all these riches of life; and it is to this creation
that men have to give their assent.

We need to take particular note of the fact that God has made to man a gift of this
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this so that men can make an inventory of its riches and use them for their own
development. God has made a world in which progress, and particularly tech nical
progress, is an authentic aspect of the creation he wanted to have. That is why the
Church must first of all tell Christians, and indeed all men, that this world has
to be accepted as it is, in all its aspects. The Chris tian must not turn aside and
sulk, preferring always what is past and finding fault with what is present. Such
behaviour shows a lack of respect for that which God himself has willed. What God
asks of us is to live in this world, to make ourselves part of it. The Vatican
Council has said firmly that this acceptance of the world of today in its full
reality is something authen tically Christian.

However, it is certain also that what constitutes this world is more than the
material elements on which it is based. Technical progress creates a certain number
of new possibilities at different levels. It affects means of communication,
standards of life, extent of culture. But technical progress can never do more than
offer possibilities and change environments. All these changes and possibilities
must be ambiguous, capable, that is, of being used in man's service or to do him
harm.

When we speak of civilization, therefore, we are not speaking only of the

conditions which actually obtain in the modern world, for these constitute only

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the possibility of civilization, not civilization itself. The truth is that

civilization consists in an order of things where the material elements, which come
of technical progress, are made to serve the authentic ends of the human person. In
other words, civilization contains not only material but also normative elem ents.
Technology can just as well make a barbarism as a civilization. The modern world
can perfectly well become a barbaric world; and, with its nuclear reactors and
means of communication, more barbaric than were the ancient worlds which achieved
incomparable human successes despite their humbler material re sources.
Developments in ancient Greece, or in the West in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, were admirable because they used for the development of persons those
material resources which they had at their disposal.

We find ourselves at the main point of our enquiry. We are not concerned with the
supernatural destiny of man considered in itself. Death and judgement must always
be kept in mind, as also must the sociological aspect, but neither one nor the
other is the immediate object of our search. What we look for is sited be tween
these two. It is precisely what may be called the earthly city, that which may be
defined as the manner in which the elements of civilization are put at the service
of human persons. The earthly city con

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sists essentially in the arrangements for using all the available cultural,
economic, political, and inter national resources as the requirements of the human
personality demand.

This area of activity is not easy to demarcate pre cisely, and there is a great
deal of misunderstanding with regard to it, particularly in practice. This inter
mediate sphere, which is of a temporal order and is different from both the
material base of civilization and the ultimate destiny of mankind, is for many not
easy to understand. Anything which belongs to the natural order, or comes under
natural law, or is on a natural level, is met with some reserve.

It may be that in the first instance the reasons for this are philosophical. It is
true that in the current of contemporary thought there are two main tendencies to
be found. One is positivist. This confines itself to description, accepts only
facts, contents itself with sociological surveys and the preparation of good tables
of statistics, and seeks to discover constants in the world of actuality. This is a
strong tendency, and a good one, for it presents us with the facts without which
action cannot be planned; but all the same, it does refuse to go beyond what is
purely descriptive. The other tendency I shall call existentialist. Faced with this
factual material, it puts the accent on the human person as free, while paying more
attention to the subjective human attitude than to the objective

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conditions in which this attitude seeks expression.

Be that as it may, the city must be assigned its right ful place: it is not the
final goal. It is our pride, as Christians, to say that mankind is destined for
some thing other than the building of a perishable city, that we go towards a city
which is imperishable, and that men are called to a life beyond that of this world.
But this very boast obliges us to give to the earthly city its due place and proper
value. We give it this proper value when we see that its function is to provide for
the fulfilment of the human person in this mortal life; that is to say, when we see
that the purpose of the earthly city is to provide the conditions which will allow
human beings to develop themselves to the full.

For this, three elements are necessary. First is the utilization of material goods.
That men today should die of hunger is an indication of something profoundly wrong
in the world. A regime is civilized, properly speaking, only where the material
wealth available is put at the disposal of the community of persons. Poverty and
hunger should be seen, not simply as resul tants of economic circumstances, nor as
simple matters of fact, but as something which goes contrary to the very nature of
civilization.

Secondly, civilization supposes that there is friend ship between men, that there
exists a communion of persons. It is true that the modern world puts us in
possession of many means of communication between

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persons; that there is a degree of economic, political, and international

solidarity; that life in our time is much more collectivized and socialized. But
all that is not enough to create a community. Nor are we to suppose that a society
is necessarily a community. Might it not be, rather, that this society of today,
such as we find it particularly in the great agglomerations, is the very negation
of community, a world in which there is more loneliness than ever existed before ?

I am driven to despair at times when I see what our technological civilization is

doing in Africa and Asia, in countries where, in spite of poverty, there was more
happiness because more friendship. Happiness is to be found much more in frank and
open human relations than in growing material wealth. We destroy happi ness when we
destroy an existing sense of community and put nothing in its place. There, then,
is our second task : to make use of the means of communication at our disposal
today — which are altogether admirable — to bring about a wider and closer
fellowship among men and to turn the collectivity into a community.

Finally, unless we relate all things to God, neither man nor city can survive. For
relationship to God is a constitutive part of human nature as such, and there fore
also a constitutive part of the earthly city as such; and this quite anterior to
any ordering to a future world and a supernatural life. It is natural man who is
directed towards God by the very fact of his nature.

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Therefore, when Christians defend God's place in the city as being an essential
element of the city, it is not God whom they defend — he has no need of anybody's
defence and is not even threatened — but man himself.

Two things are necessary : that men live in fellow ship with each other, and that
they live in communion with God; and it may be that Christians have betrayed their
calling at times because they have not said firmly enough that, for them, the two
commandments are absolutely inseparable. A world in which men cannot be at home is
an inhuman world; and so is a world in which God is not at home. Christians, and
all other men of good will, can be called the servants of love only when they have
the courage to proclaim before all the world that there is no civilization other
than this, and that to build it they will dedicate all their strength; for this is
the one city which conforms to the requirements of human nature.

Let us consider the application of this in the con temporary world, looking at what
the Council, using a phrase of John XXIII, has called the "signs of the times".
Some of these signs are positive, and it is in these that the Church recognizes the
voice of God. It is God himself who uses these to put his questions; and hence the
dialogue between the Church and the world is a dialogue of God with himself. It is
God who speaks through the Church and God also who speaks through

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the world. There is no question of a dialogue between God and something which is
foreign to him. The Council says exactly this, that progress is an expres sion of
God's creation, that it is God who is hidden in it, and that we must know how to
find him there.

It must be clearly understood that what we are con cerned with in the first
instance is technical progress itself. An outstanding characteristic of our world
is the use of applied science to bring about an incredibly rapid transformation of
the conditions in which men live. Equally important is the fact that men are becom
ing conscious of their unity. This comes about because, on the one hand and
negatively, they find themselves for the first time threatened all together — we
know now that we could all be swept away at one blow and to that extent our destiny
is common; and because, on the other hand and positively, all are called to live
through the beginnings of the same great adventure — and one which makes them very
conscious of the unity of their species — the expansion of the earth into the
cosmos.

Another important feature of the time is the recog nition of adulthood in every
sort of man. Until now many men could not share fully in the goods of civili zation
because they could not play a full part in its constitution. The workers — one of
the oldest and most striking of emancipations — are having a more and more
effective voice in economic affairs. The non-European

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peoples are being freed from colonialism and are taking an equal place among the
nations. Women are playing a more adult role in those fields which are particularly
their own and also in economic life and in politics. These were all indicated by
John XXIII. I would add to them the increasing importance of youth, for there is
today increasing pressure from the young to inter vene more directly in those
questions which concern them.

But — and here I come to the negative elements — it is plain that all this does not
suffice to make a civiliza tion. It might equally well make a barbarism which could
end in chaos. In other words, nothing of this can have any value except to the
extent that we are build ing a world which is truly human. There is evidence enough
that we are not making much progress and have made many blunders, for the world is
full of grave disorders. In this situation the Church has to point to those things
which are bad in the world and indicate how they ought to be dealt with. For to say
"yes" to the world does not imply that we have to accept in differently everything
we find in the world, whether it comes from God or the devil.

One can be up-to-date by saying yes, or by saying no. To be truly a man of one's
own time one must know how to love all that the world offers that is posi tive, and
at the same time hate all that is by human malice compromised and destroyed — and
this because

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one loves one's world and all who live in it. All that has a positive value can be
turned into a negative. Technical progress can be used to suppress the spiritual
side of men, by tempting them to concentrate entirely on material production and in
doing so sacrifice the essential part of themselves. Such a concentration of all
efforts on production of material goods is a pressing danger which threatens man's
mutilation.

I have said that mankind is moving towards unity, but I would add that such a
movement would be bad if unification led to uniformity, and thus to the des
truction of one of the most precious possessions of humanity — the rich diversity
of its cultures. An integ ral humanism would be one to which Africa, China,
America, and the old countries of Europe brought each their own languages,
cultures, and outlooks. What each has to offer, once lost, could never be replaced.
It was Andre Gide who remarked that a writer was the more universal the more firmly
he was embedded in his own country. "There is nobody more English than Shakes peare
and no one more universal; none more Italian than Dante and no one more universal;
none more French than Racine and no one more universal." To destroy these
differences at the very moment when the young nations of Africa and Asia are
rediscovering them with joy would be a crime against culture and against humanity.
There is undoubtedly all too great a danger today of bringing everything to one
level.

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How dreadfully monotonous and wearisome would be a culture of homo technicus which
was exactly the same in Pekin as in Buenos Aires or London or Dakar !

There is something admirable in this movement in which all men claim to be

recognized as men, all as equals, all as adult. Nevertheless, if this urge towards
freedom leads men to declare their independence of God, to set themselves up as
sovereign, to chafe at the necessity of having to recognize that there is one who
is greater than themselves, they will fail to see that, while at the human level
all men are truly equal, what alone guarantees their freedom and dignity is the
pres ence of a power beyond them to which they can appeal, of a love greater than
any they can compass, of a good which is truly supreme; and when they fail thus,
the drive to emancipation, which is admirable in itself when properly expressed,
must become destructive of their fundamental values in cutting away the most
essential part of themselves, their relation to an Absolute.

There is one more step to take. This is to show in what the mainspring of the
temporal activity of the Christian consists, and why the duty of temporal action
comes directly out of the nature of Christianity and is demanded by the Christian's
fidelity to God. It has to be shown that in this activity he works out his salva
tion and on this activity he will be judged, so that, even

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though he pray morning and night, if he fail in it he fails in his duty as a

Christian.

The majority of Christians are quite convinced still that a man can perfectly well
work out his eternal sal vation while being completely uninterested in political
affairs. This must be stated plainly. The cause lies partly in a faulty formation
of conscience. Not nearly enough of an effort has been made to get people to take
seriously their duty of serving the earthly city. Part also of the cause lies in
the difficulty of maintain ing both that it is a fundamental tenet of Christianity
that the earthly city is not the final goal and the Chris tian has to look to more
than its construction; and that this doctrine does not at all mean that participa
tion in the earthly city's affairs is not a grave duty for the Christian nor one
from which he can dispense himself.

It has, then, to be demonstrated why the duty of building the earthly city proceeds
directly from the demands of the Christian conscience. We have only to look at
God's word, at the fundamental teaching which we find in the Scriptures. Isaiah,
Jeremias, Amos were assiduous in denouncing injustices and in occupying themselves
with international problems. I know of no stronger text against inequality in the
ownership of material goods — and this touches on one of the three essential
conditions for the existence of a real civiliza tion — than this passage from
Isaiah : "Woe upon you,

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that must ever be acquiring house after house, field after neighbouring field, till
all the world goes want ing!" (5.8.) The situation then was one of accumula tion in
the hands of some and despoliation of others; and there has never been a stronger
protest against or a more realistic description of that enrichment and
impoverishment .

The prophets never ceased from their interventions. Why? Renan saw Amos as the
first demagogue. Marx saw in the Old Testament prophets the first protagon ists of
the class war. A close reading of the texts shows that such explanations as these
are completely false. It is a great contemporary Jewish philosopher, Andr£ Neher,
who shows that the prophet Amos denounced injustices precisely because he was
speaking in the name of God. The charter for the earthly city is found in the
alliance between Yahweh and his people. That charter is always being violated by
men, and particularly by those of them who are rich and power ful. The role of the
prophet is continually to denounce these violations of the Alliance, to recall to
men's minds what is God's law in the earthly city, and thus to set in train some
concrete action against the breaches of it. All this is done out of allegiance to
God, and not in virtue of something with which he has no concern.

This, then, is the definitive answer to the question with which we began. When,
whether in unions, poli tics, or cultural matters, a Christian becomes wholly

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involved in struggles to bring the earthly city into conformity with its charter,
or, what is the same thing, with the true ends of man, he does not quit God nor
God's sanctuary to lose himself in a foreign world, as all too often he is led to
think. It is true that this domain of the earthly city is a world of hard fighting,
where the Christian often feels himself lost amid the tumult and the passion, the
whirlpool of false ideas and the clashing of ambitions. It is true that the Chris
tian might well feel some repugnance against involve ment with this terrible world,
because he fears, and not without reason, that he might there lose his soul.
Nevertheless, it would be a tragic mistake if he refused to share in men's
struggles because he wanted to preserve his peace of mind.

Therefore it is necessary for him to realize that the call to struggle comes from
God himself in the midst of this earthly city which is subject to his law, and
which he wants to see conform to it. When the Christian, having prayed, flings
himself into the battle, he finds that he has left God in order to meet God again.
The Christian cannot let himself be deceived by a false laicism which sees the
realities of political and econo mic life as belonging to a completely profane
world existing apart from God. Of course, there is a distinc tion of powers, and
this world is not subject directly to the authority of the Church. But to say that
this world is not directly subject to the Church's authority

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is not to say that it is not subject to the law of God, of which the magisterium of
the Church is the interpreter.

If only the Christian understands that when he serves the earthly city he serves
God and his brethren, and that when he works at the building of the earthly city he
moves towards his own eternal salvation, he will be able to bring to his mind the
words of Jesus : "He who gives a glass of water to one of these little ones, gives
it to me." And if he takes these words of Jesus in a wider sense, and goes beyond
the individual act of charity to that modern form of charity which consists
essentially in the service of civilization through its institutions, he will be in
process of saving his soul. It is Christ himself who assures him of it. To serve
one's brothers and to save one's soul are not opposed one to the other; they are
one and the same thing. In doing what needs to be done, the Christian can redis
cover the unity of his vocation, of his being, and of his personality.

1 20

Conclusion

The point from which the argument of this book began was the danger in which
Christianity stands of becom ing a small sect of the elect and ceasing to be the
reli gion of the poor. We have argued that this must inevit ably be so in a
civilization which finds no place for the religious dimension of man. This has led
us to ask what is the essential nature of civilization. It has become clear that it
is of the essence of civilization to allow man to reach his full development, and
that this devel opment applies also to the religious dimension. Thus we have come
to see that the problem facing us is the problem of religion as a constitutive
element of civili zation.

The affirmation that religion is important is today contested not only by atheistic
ideologies, but also by the "secularist" doctrines which reject the sacred char
acter of earthly realities and activities, and split the temporal away from the
spiritual. This "secularism" shows itself at the level of the material universe,
which is seen exclusively as a network of physical relations and not in its
ontological dimension of creation. It

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shows itself also at the social level by its refusal to treat religion as a social
factor in the city in course of development.

This secularism not only creates conditions which make the survival of the
Christian people impossible, but also endangers civilization itself. The Council
takes a stand against it in the Constitution Gaudium et Spes. While accepting the
autonomy of scientific disciplines and methods, the Council insisted that the
things which form their subject-matter — the physical uni verse, the human person,
economic and political society — belong entirely to God.

It will suffice here to quote a few passages. "It is obviously false to maintain
that the temporal is auto nomous if by that we mean that created things do not
belong to God and that man can dispose of them with out reference to his Creator. .
. .All believers, what ever their religion, have always seen God's presence
manifested in the language of his creatures" (par. 36, 3). And again : "It is from
God that man receives every thing : he sees all things as springing from the hand
of God and respects them" (par. 37, 4). It can be said that what the Council here
sets down is the essence of reli gion, the recognition that everything is the gift
of God.

It is not only faith which the Church defends, but also reason, nature, and the
truth about man. Of course, the religious man of tomorrow will express himself in
ways different from those used yesterday.

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Conclusion

The problem is one of interpretation. We do not seek to empty of meaning words like
God, sin, religion, or to secularize them by giving them a sense which is entirely
profane. On the contrary, what we try to do is to express their objective content,
starting from the experience of contemporary man.

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