CHURCH EMPIRE

Evening Star, Issue 25724, 22 February 1946, Page 6

CHURCH EMPIRE

MAN THE BASIS ESSENTIALITY OF RELIGION (Rec. 8.a.m.) ROME, Feb. 21. The Pope, addressing the 29 new cardinals after presenting them with their birettas at the Consistory in Vatican Palace, said one-ness was the very essence of the Church. This did not mean that it was the Church's office to embrace all human society as in a gigantic world empire. Such a concept of the Church as an earthly empire was fundamentally false. It was not true at any time in history, unless one interpreted a certain passage erroneously by attributing modern ideas and terminology to past centuries. " The Church is not an empire in the modern imperialistic sense of the term," he said. " Its progress and expansion are marked by a trend contrary to that of modern imperialism. The Church seeks out man as such. Its care is to form man and perfect him in divine image. " Modern imperialism, on the contrary, moves in an opposite direction. It does not seek out man as such but material things and forces to which it subjects man. In such circumstances can one wonder at the present anxiety of the people for a common security? It _is an anxiety formed by the unbridled tendency_ towards expansion which carries within it a gnawing worm of ceaseless unrest, and as a result each demand for security is followed by another without end—each perhaps more insistent than its forerunner."

The Pope went on to say that the Church's activity was first and foremost internal. No efforts applied from outside would make the Church collapse, because she rested on man's intrinsic dignity as a free creature and his infinitely higher dignity as a son of God. The Pope quoted from an encyclical of his predecessor: "What individual man can do by himself and by his own strength should not be taken from him and assigned to the community," and added that this revealed the true meaning of imperialism.

Some of its complex origins hadi no real moral basis and necessarily tended to become more and more centralised in every-narrowing uniformity. Consequently their equilibrium and cohesion were maintained solely by the force of material conditions and juridical expedients. These organisms, fragile and unstable in their internal composition, were all the more liable to become a threat to all the family of States. Only the Church could heal such wounds, and she did 60 by having access to the innermost sanctuary of the human being, and inspiring him as the basis of the whole social order.

If, in particular ages and phases, one society or another made its influence on the Church felt more than did others, this did not mean she became a vassal to anyone. " This is the deep significance of the vital law of continuous adaptation which some, who are incapable of grasping such a magnificent concept, have described as opportunism," he said. " The Church's all-embracing comprehension has nothing in common with the narrowness of sect or with the exclusiveness of imperialism. Tied to its own tradition, the Church, unlike an empire, rises above all differences and builds_ ceaselessly on the unbroken foundations of human society. Resting on such a foundation, the family and the State can continue ruling their respective worlds—the family as the source and stream of life, and the State as guardian of the land."

The Pope said that in the world's inextricable confusion, the State was taking over immense offices, for which reason the Church could not shut herself off in privacy, and must refuse to be confined, blind and mute, to the retirement of a sanctuary. She must not desert her divinely-appointed missions of working with man and collaborating in the construction of society. Such a task was arduous because erroneous doctrines were current, declaring man accountable and responsible merely because he' was n member of a determined community. Economic and military competition made society a huge machine of which man was no longer mnster, and of which indeed he was afraid.