Pope Objects To Change For Change’s Sake

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 11

Pope Objects To Change For Change’s Sake

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CASTEL GANDOLFO, August 8.

Pope Paul VI said yesterday that the Roman Catholic Church could not turn away from its “best traditions” and undergo arbitrary changes just because of the modern “vogue” for reform, United Press International reports. The Pope spoke to several thousand persons at his

weekly general audience at the Papal summer residence in this hill town south-east of Rome. He did not refer to his controversial encyclical, issued last week, that reaffirmed the Church’s traditional opposition to artificial means of birth control. But observers said he might have had it in mind in calling for the traditional stands of the Church to be defended. He had spoken several times in recent months against what he said was a desire of many Roman Catholics to make changes in the Church for the sake of change. Meanwhile, the Vatican said today the strength of world reaction to the Pope’s ban

showed that the ruling was necessary.

“We are beginning to lose the awareness of certain fundamental Christian and human values,” the Vatican weekly, “L’Osservatore Della Dominica,” said in an editorial.

The 1962-1965 Vatican Council, which urged more Church contact with the world at large, had led many Roman Catholics to think that everything to do with the present day world was acceptable and therefore "Christianisable,” it added.

“There are, however, permanent values in man which do not change with the times and which belong to everybody.”