Very much is being said in the world today, and in Italy too, about the new relationships which are developing between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. There is a widespread impression, noted in many quarters, that the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) has marked an histor­ical turning-point without precedent for Catholicism. It is being said that the rigid intolerance of centuries past is being replaced by a much more open attitude, by freedom, by respect and even friendly dialogue and collaboration with the Protestant churches as well as with other religions both ancient and modern. How must we evaluate this phenomenon? To understand it we must view it, albeit in summary fashion, in its historical perspective.

Roman Catholic leaders used a twofold tactic to withstand the attack upon the Roman Church involved in the Reformation. On the one hand they repressed its followers through the Inquisition, and on the other they absorbed their values within the monastic orders. But when the Roman church saw that she was no longer able to repress, and could not assimilate opposing doctrines without changing her very character, she closed up inside herself, hardening her position as she grew more central­ized and authoritarian.

Now, after four hundred and fifty years of siege she has detected an opportunity to attack. And of what does this new policy consist? The keynote of this policy is integration. It is a question of introducing into a Roman Catholic context values which, hitherto, have not been acceptable to the Vatican. These values are theological — ecclesiastical in nature. They include a different attitude to the use of the Bible and to the language used during church services, the greater weight given to preaching compared with the Sacrament, and the idea of a unity which is not rigidly uniform but rather elastically open with respect to new tendencies and to Protestant ecumenism. In the opinion of some theo­logians, even the central nucleus of the Lutheran message, justification by faith, can be integrated.

Nor is this process of integration limited to the specifically religious field. It extends also to those values of a cultural order which may be considered to be the fruits, at the level of civilization, of those principles which Protestantism so largely established in many parts of the world. These principles are: freedom and respect for man; an awareness of duty which expresses itself in a seriousness of approach to life; a concern for personal and professional ethics; the autonomy of culture, in its own sphere, free from ecclesiastical control; parliamentary democracy, containing a plurality of viewpoints and functioning at national and international levels through dialogue; and, finally, the rational, scien­tific-technical conception of reality which organizes agricultural, industrial and also human production on a planned basis.

This Roman Catholic operation — and here I use the Pope's words — has 'the purpose of making the whole world catholic'. Catholicism is attempting, in one single grandiose effort, to effect a synthesis of human values on the basis of a catholic interpretation. yet without changing in the least way its 'essential conception or its fundamental structure', since the substance of its dogma is 'untouchable' (Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam). The Roman Church, said Cardinal Bea in La Civilta Cattolica of 6th March, 1965, has no intention of retracting or of modifying any of its previous dogmatic definitions or of withdrawing any of its doctrinal condemnations made in the past. What it is aiming at is a widening of the synthesis.

But what is the norm which regulates and orders this synthesis which is and must remain Catholic? The Pope's answer is clear. It points to the Roman Church, the real and the true continuation of the incarnation as being 'herself the object of faith'. Christians are required to see, in the Pope, Christ himself who teaches, absolves and condemns. The most genuine of evangelical truths, if viewed from this perspective, can only end up radically deformed, since the secondary becomes primary, and vice versa. The evangelical order is inverted in such a way as to lead to another gospel. The end to which this whole synthesis tends is not that of leading man to conversion in Christ but of 'incorporating him', that is to say, making him part of the Roman Church. The inclusion in a catholic context of values which are not catholic brings to mind the time when I used to go to school and witness the experiments of our emaciated science teacher with all the antipathy one experiences for things which are not understood. Amongst the various experiments in which the substances changed their colour and smell as they passed from the liquid to the solid state, there was one which particularly impressed me — the catalyst experiment where a substance causes any number of chemical reactions but without taking part in them and without itself undergoing any kind of change. In the Roman plan of ecumenism the several Protestant churches and their values are the substances involved in the chemical reactions while papal Roman Catholicism is the catalyst which, while transforming other churches, itself remains unchanged.

Just like the rich man in the parable (Luke 12:16-21) who planned to strengthen his agricultural business with a view to an improved long ­term income, Roman Catholicism proposes to construct more capacious granaries so as to accumulate all the riches of religion and modern civilization. The Pope whom, in his own words, we should see and obey as Christ himself, must exercise dominion over all. The Roman Catholic Church receives all, and receiving it purifies it, strengthens it and elevates it. The Roman Catholic Church, effectively and without pause, is professing to gather up all humanity, with all its goods, in Christ ... but take note, 'The Pope is Christ'.

To understand the Roman Church in all its dogmas one must under­stand the essence of its central idea: the Magisterium (that is, the Pope and the bishops who are one in obedience with him) have used all possible means to increase their power. God, Holy Scripture, and Christ have vanished in its womb. The hierarchy has adorned itself with the honour and power due to God alone in his Word and in his Christ. The consequences of this monstrous heresy are incalculable for the whole of humanity. The key document for today's interpretation of the Roman Church is the Hierarchical Constitution of the Church as it finds ex­pression in the Second Vatican Council's. De Ecclesia. This document sets forth with extreme clarity the Roman interpretation of the Church as the extension of the incarnation of Christ in which the human and the divine fuse and intermingle. This allows the Catholic Church to be defined as 'mystery', thereby setting it free from any kind of judgment or criticism:

The society composed of hierarchical organs is the mystical body of Christ..., the church on earth and the church already in possession of the heavenly things must not be considered as two separate things. Rather, they form a single complex reality resulting from a twofold element, human and divine.De Ecclesia, paragraph 8

The Roman Church thus becomes, by 'nature' and of its 'essence', and in its hierarchy and its dogmas, 'infallible', and therefore essentially 'incapable' of and inaccessible to conversion because the infallible can neither repent nor be converted. 

It is also now conceded that many elements of 'sanctification and truth' exist outside the Catholic Church and these are no longer charged with being heretical: instead they are swallowed up in the 'only church'. Thus the Roman Church in the Ecclesiastical Magisterium (the Pope together with the bishops who are one in obedience to him) postulates itself as the unifying element in respect of all existing realities. She is the sole criterion of truth. She perceives and encompasses the small portions of truth present elsewhere. And so, in her theological structure you can meet up so often with profoundly biblical elements and you can come across others which are not biblical at all.

As an example you have only to think about the identification of Christ with the Pope. The promises — of a spiritual nature — made by Jesus to his ministers (that is, to his servants) have been calmly transformed into prerogatives to justify the authority and power of the hierarchy. Can we say that in these conditions there is still room for the Lordship of the Father and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the church? Instead it is asserted that there is power in one man, the Pope, adorned with the power of God, who must be seen infallible as Christ himself. On the other hand we see a great multitude of people who, if they do not thus believe 'blindly', that is, if they do not give up the possession of a faith of their own — even if founded on Scripture — are considered to be enemies of God. There does not exist, nor can there exist, an atheism or a pathway to atheism worse than this. I quote again from the findings of Vatican Two (18, 22):

This doctrine of the institution of the perpetuity, of the value of the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible Magis­terium is again proposed to all the faithful that it should be fervently believed. In the Church the Pope does in fact possess 'full supreme and universal power which may always be freely exercised'.

The 'High Priest' is not, then, Jesus Christ, but the bishop of Rome, whose person and function are exalted by the figure of Christ himself. To Jesus, when he asks us today: 'Who do you say that I am?' we should answer: 'The Pope of Rome!'

I give another example to help us understand better how the key to the central 'dogma' of Rome is the thirst for power, and how, in order to attain it, catholic theology has sacrificed God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and the entire world. Why does the Roman Church uphold the figure of Mary in such a way as contrasts with the sober presentation of her person given to us in the New Testament? It is because Mariology is the projection of the awareness which the Catholic hierarchy has of itself: Mariology is the projection of the self-awareness of the hierarchy. Whatever the Catholic Church is aware of being it sees represented in Mary. The prerogatives which the hierarchy proclaim to be in Mary coincide with the prerogatives which that same hierarchy attributes to itself. The progressive exaltation of Mary in Roman Catholicism is but a consequence and a symptom of a progressive exaltation of the hierarchy. By venerating Mary as co­operator in the work of salvation and partner of the Lord, as mediatrix of grace and as mother of all, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is only expressing its own awareness of being, itself, co-operator, partner of God, mediator and mother: and, in Mary, it is the Pope who is putting himself forward to be adored by the faithful. The hope is dear to some that the biblical movement in the bosom of Catholicism will cause Mariology to die a natural death. But in reality Mariology could fall only if the Roman Catholic church were to relinquish its self-awareness. Mariology is there­fore an objective example of how the Roman hierarchy falsifies Christian truth in order to build up its totalitarian and idolatrous power.

Once again, by way of example, let us consider what Vatican Two teaches about religious liberty. The right to religious liberty is declared to be 'a right of the human person', and this right is seen to include the 'right of immunity from any coercive measures'. This is no more than a recognition of religious liberty in the sense of freedom from coercion by civil authority. It is certainly not the heart-and-mind freedom of each man faced with his responsibility towards God. (This is why catholics tend to have no 'conscience', for their conscience in the Pope). The Council refused to recognize freedom of conscience. The Council said (and I quote);

The traditional catholic doctrine on the moral duty of individuals and society towards the true and only religion, the church of Christ, remains unchanged ... We believe that this one true religion subsists only in the Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The freedom claimed is therefore freedom only for the catholic religion. It remains clear that, in the Roman view, the conscience of all men is bound to the Magisterium of the Church, or, in the last analysis, to the Pope alone. It is a discriminating liberty which is taught: and so in the case of 'mixed marriages' all signs of respect are lacking for the convictions of others, as it is indeed also in ecumenical concerns.

The modern catholic neo-humanism has roots which go back to Erasmus of Rotterdam. It puts at its centre the old 'natural theology' according to which man is able to arrive at the knowledge of God by means of his own reason. With this as a starting point the Catholic Church discerns the possibility of reaching the fundamental unity of the human family, making use of the methods of dialogue or repression according to the needs of the moment, since the end justifies the means. In accordance with its unchanging and enduring line the Catholic Church, both in the pontifical documents and in those of Vatican Two, magnifies (and here I quote) 'the admirable spectacle of truth, unity and charity that she offers, the splendour of teacher of truth and minister of salvation' (Ad Petri Cathedram, Humanae Salutis) with which she shines, the 'beauty' and the 'majesty' of her own institution, the 'prodigy' of her own religious and moral fidelity. And so she bows down to herself, a new Narcissus, to contemplate the mystery of the union of the divine and the human which she incarnates (Ecclesiam Suam). No longer guardian of faith or guide to faith alone, but, herself, the object of faith and the message. The church announces herself and says with triumphant certainty to the other churches and to the world, 'I have that which you seek, that which you lack' (Ecclesiam Suam, III).

There is no sign of a reservation which might indicate awareness of any strain between the will of the Lord for the church and the realities of the church's present situation. There is no distinction allowed between the church of the New Testament and the Roman See. And thus there is never any suggestion that the Roman Church herself may need repen­tance and deliverance from the judgment of God. The only reservations are at an individual level: virtuous declarations of humility and of the inadequacy of the sinners who constitute the church. Where the church is (and by church understand Pope) there is Christ and the Spirit of God (Ecclesiam Suam, III). No heresy in the history of the church has ever reached such a systematic, such a terrible stage of development, as that of this monster who proclaims himself God and demands the obedience, respect and love due only to God. Read the encyclicals proclaimed from amidst the splendour of the gold, the chant and the incense of the papal liturgy, and, if you have only the least amount of Christian sensibility you will experience in the depth of your heart the terrible temptation of Jesus in the desert when Satan showed and offered him the powers of the world in exchange for the adoration of the tempter! No, brethren, Never! Never! Only to God be the honour and the glory for it is in his Son alone that he has revealed himself, and he has given him to us for our salvation! 'Without me you can do nothing!' The sole function of the true church is to bear witness to Christ. If the church does not do this it becomes superfluous, it fails in the reason for its very existence. My brethren, God is not an idol. It is the devil, not God, who is seen in the person of the Pope. Our God-given task as sinners saved by grace is to demonstrate that we live by faith in that Word which witnesses to the only salvation, the only way, the only truth, the only life, Christ Jesus. If Roman Catholicism has not only fallen into the temptation of Satan but has also codified it as a norm for thought and life, then no church is sheltered from such a temptation.

One of the most disquieting symptoms in today's situation is the way in which some churches and Protestant thinkers concentrate on the theme of the church. Such a concentration of interest may exist without any apparent awareness of the fact that the church is to be the herald of the gospel to the world. It often betrays a conscious or unconscious effort at self-conservation. When this is so, the church becomes a part and parcel of the world which she ought to be turning upside down. Instead of being the servant and proclaimer of the Word of God which, like a sharp two-edged sword, can purify society, she becomes the prisoner of existing systems.

Today evangelical 'protest' is more urgently needed than ever, both in the strictly religious dimension (i.e. against any intermediate or penul­timate authority desirous of taking God's place), and in the 'secular' dimension, as for example, against any force which lays claim to being absolute and aims at monopolising the life of man, or even only against a reigning bourgeois tranquility which will not face up to problems and is resistant to the pressures of truth and the urgency of vocation.

This protest cannot be only negative and critical. It must also be a witness to the Lord. So what expression should be given to it? Simply and solely, a continuous striving to live by faith in Christ, a faith through which his dying and his victory become ours. This means, solo gratia, solo fide, solo scriptura. Today it is held that these principles give but an empty ring in the ears of modern man who has his sights fixed on completely different horizons. It is deemed timely to abandon the very contents which the old formulas of the faith expressed and to replace them with matters of more compelling moment. But he who reasons in these terms demonstrates that he has not grasped the substance of the argument in its true profundity, and he betrays an inadequate understanding both of the thought of the Reformation and the message of the New Testament. Certainly there is the need to translate the formulas of the past into language fully comprehensible to modern man and to set them in a framework helpful to his way of thinking. But it is the truth in these formulas which is now said to be no longer of interest and concern to man in the age of technology, and which provoke only a wearied and alien response in him. That which is at stake is the fundamental understanding of man and of the orientation of his existence.

How does twentieth-century man frame his days? What are his categories? The dominant note of his mentality and activity seems to be utilitarian and pragmatic: he lives to earn and he earns to live. He is occupied in the habitual repetition of soulless activity, in search of diversion to avoid thinking. His only prospect is the boredom of repe­tition and the fear of old age and death. According to the Czechoslovakian Marxist Veterslaw Gardavsky, indifferentism appears also to be wide­spread in Communist countries. On the one hand the only objective is to capitalize and on the other to produce. In both cases individual and collective existence is seen as an existence which is closed in upon itself, without a back-cloth and dominated by the economy, elevated to the status of an absolute. Again, together with the economic absolute there co-exist the technological and scientific absolutes, with which the man of today deceives himself into believing that he is able to solve the problems of life. For him all the subjects of real importance have changed. If yesterday, on the boundary between the Medieval and the Modern age, the subjects to be spoken about were salvation and perdition, faith and works, grace and merit, today they are the sense and non-sense of life, oppression and liberation, exploitation and justice. There is more involved in this than the secularization of language. Today, man, concentrated upon himself with all his pseudo-certainties and his self-justifications, is strangling himself in anguish with his own hands, for as he looks within, he cannot help but have the clear sensation of the absence of God.

If this is so, what does it mean to say that the church is an instrument of salvation 'resulting from a twofold element, human and divine', whose representatives, through the power conferred in ordination, act, 'in persona Christi', and who therefore function as mediators through which men and women are enabled to participate in the divine life since they contain the real presence of the Lord himself and so are required to be received with the same adoration due to God himself? It means to deceive man, to suffocate him even more within himself and delude him finally to the point of the blackest desperation. The immense crowds who go to listen to the Pope are pushed by that existential void which takes them towards the desire for God, only to be elated by the false externals of this world which will leave their hearts and their lives emptier still, though they may be in a state of pharisaic exaltation.

These various absolutes — economic, technological, political, social and religious — that the Pope of Rome brings together, he ratifies and idealizes by sanctifying them in his own person: these absolutes in which modern man seeks security, and by which he seeks to establish his own self as the point of reference for his own life, are the modern equivalents of what Paul called 'the works of the law'. This is why The Augsburg Confession of 1530, though drawn up in an age which cannot be said to have been troubled by currents of secularization and atheism as is the case in our age, affirms that of himself man is incapable of having a faith in God and is animated only by the love of self, even though this turning inwards upon himself seems at times to manifest itself in noble garb. And it is this turning inwards that will usher man — though he conquers space or the entire universe — to death in the anguish of the absence of God.

The situation can only be resolved by an event which brings about the creation in man of a radically new mentality, a change so great as to produce a complete reversal in his existence. This event brings man out of himself and effects a transition from attachment to the values that he builds up for himself in order to resolve the problem of life, to a living faith in the living God. What is the cause that produces such a decisive transformation in the life of man? There is one cause alone — contact with the Word of God. When this Word comes savingly to a man as the gift of the true God, there is born that faith through which his entire life will be a life of grace. Only in this way, dispossessed of the basis of 'the love of self, is man freed from himself'. And simultaneously is he therefore liberated also from a purely utilitarian and economic view of life, from the ideas of the world and from ideologies prevalent in his historical period, from man-made religion with its pseudo-assurances and its will-o'-the-wisps, from pseudo-Christian churches and their institutional, sacerdotal and sacramental claims, from legalisms, from his own religious psychology and from other vain hopes. It is sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura which guarantee the Christian's freedom with respect to all the collective and individual absolutes of history. In turn, this freedom produces a critical capacity which results in the assumption of one's own responsibilities, the exclusion of conformist, 'hanger-on' attitudes and a willingness to engage in active participation in Christian service inspired by a vocational spirit. The Word of God alone creates free men.

As Luther said:

Laws cannot be imposed on Christians for any reason, excepting inasmuch as they wish it. We are in effect free of all. If a thing is imposed on us, we must tolerate it, while maintaining our conscious­ness of freedom intact.

Only grace, only faith, only scripture, because man's salvation is outside of himself. It is in God, who regenerates him in Christ. This radical reversal, the only complete salvation for the human situation, does not lie within man's power and certainly it is not effected with his co-operation. Man only has it in him to co-operate in maintaining his own kingdom, and in no way will he tolerate being dispossessed of it.

The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.1 Corinthians 2:14

The Reformation, echoing God's Word, affirms with all its strength the paradox that the Spirit of God alone, through the instrumentality of the Word, creates faith, when and where it pleases God, 'Fidem efficit, ubi et quando visum est deo' (Augsburg Confession, Art V). Faith is not the product of any predisposition in man; it is not the result of his goodness, or his moral or religious qualities. It is 'not of works, but of him that calleth' (Romans 9:11).

The question, then, of why God does not 'call' all men to faith is a question which cannot be formulated in a context of faith, but only arises when mere men attempt to rationalize the action of an infinite God. As Calvin observed, quoting the words of Jesus,

No man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father.             John 6:65

Why is it given to one and not to another? I am not ashamed to say that this is a profound secret of the cross, a secret of the righteousness of God which I know not and into which it is not lawful for me to investigat.Calvin's Institutes, III 2, 35

Indeed it is only by faith that it is possible to confess the love, the righteousness and the power of God without apportioning his actions according to our own schemes and criteria. The mystery of the cross remains until the end of history. We are instructed to announce 'the Lord's death till he come' (1 Corinthians 11:26). It is not given to us on any level to explain in our terms what can only have its being in God's terms or to bring within the realm of our competence what God has kept within his own competence. Without sola fide all our proposals are arbitrary and mere wild imaginings — things which have no right to exist among those who profess to know God through the saving power of his Word and grace.

Today there is a profound change of another kind in the Roman Catholic world. This change may not be apparent on a cursory or superficial inspection because it is taking place inside many consciences and its translation into new words and deeds is still weak and frag­mentary, and it is being resisted by the hierarchy with every possible means. But change it is! It is an irreversible, organic process which is now modifying, from within, the state of awareness of the Roman Catholic world. I refer to the existence of numbers who are passing from a static faith (that is an adherence to what the Church proposes to be believed) to a dynamic faith, a confrontation with Jesus Christ as we find him in the Word of God. In this contemporary phenomenon consciences are being awakened and taken beyond the old networks of definitions and placed in loving struggle with the Word of God. Here is faith acting without the conventional mediations of the church, be these dogmatic or liturgical. For such persons to belong to the church no longer guarantees belonging to Christ. In fact this metamorphosis of faith seems to be born of the conviction: it is belonging to Christ which secures inclusion in the church and not inclusion in the church that secures inclusion in Christ.

The new age we have entered demands of faith that, as it takes account of the fundamental questions of our times, it should also take stock of its own content, that it should re-examine itself critically in every respect. This it can only do if its primary and deciding test is not the word of the church but the Word of God. We have to make catholics understand that it is reborn men and women which the church needs today and that this can only be through believing contact with the Word of God.

Today, all of us must get to know Christ anew (Ephesians 4:20) so as to be able to answer the evangelical question: What is Jesus of Nazareth to me? It is very simply, but seriously, a question of making sure that we know the Jesus Christ of Scripture. Already in the apostolic age there began to be preached 'another Jesus' (2 Corinthians 11:4), that is, a Jesus other than the real one. Today we must ask if the Jesus the church offers us corresponds to the Jesus of the Gospels. And we must certainly ask ourselves whether the Jesus we know is in very truth the ever-blessed and eternal Son of God who died in our room and stead, and is alive for evermore, to deliver and rule his people. He, and He alone is the constituent element, the main distinguishing mark, the constant reference point of the church. As Luther said, 'Tota vita et substantia ecclesiae est in verbo die' (The whole life and substance of the church is in the 'Word of God'). The very reason for the existence of the church is that the holy purposes of God as revealed in Scripture must be fulfilled. Believers are saints. To be a saint, in the biblical sense of the term, means to be set apart for the exercise of a specific function.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God.1 Peter 2:9-10

The community of believers is a community of men and women dispersed amongst other men and women, with no specific ethnic or cultural peculiarities to distinguish it from others, but a community which is different from all others in its direction in life and in its missionary activity. The accommodation of the church in 'church-buildings' derives from the practical need of having a meeting-place for the Christian community, but when a building takes on sacred character­istics that distinguish it from other buildings it is an indication of a degeneration into pagan thought (Luther). It is pre-Christian and non-Christian religions that have buildings in which to house what is supposedly sacred. Stones, hewn from the earth, are not the church. Believers are the 'living stones' which, founded on Christ, the 'living stone', 'are built up a spiritual house' (1 Peter 2:4-5). Christian temples must be made, not of stone and cement, but of flesh and blood. So, the true church is the church of the Word, in which the Word of God is the element which determines all the other elements. At the centre of the church is the gospel, no longer some object of adoration or veneration: no longer the sacrifice, the ritual, the liturgy, the symbolic gesture, the sacrament that transmits the divine, the priest-mediator of the Deity and dispenser of grace, pardon and absolution. The members of the church are not minors dependent on their teachers' instructions, but adults in faith, and as such are all charged with bearing witness to the gospel. The apostolic succession is not a successio episcorum but the successio fidelium, not a succession of bishops, but a succession of believers in age after age. It is the church as a whole which is commissioned to transmit the gospel to others. It does this by fulfilling the office of teaching, of consolation, of freeing from sins, which before Christ was exercised by the priests.

From age to age the church is tempted to stop being the church, to lose the reference-point (the Word of God) which endows it with its existence as Ek-klesia, that is to say, 'called out' (or forth) by the Word of God. This temptation is manifest in history in three ways, all of which are present and highly developed in the Roman Catholic Church:

1. The first form of this temptation is institutional sacralization, in which the church holds that the prerogatives of the proclaimed Christ should pass to the body which proclaims him; his powers are assumed by the institution which bears his name and professes to do his work in history. The church is no longer seen as the brotherly communion of believers but as an institution for the administration of grace, redemption and God's forgiveness. It subordinates everything to its own perceived function. Its ministers are styled visible representatives of Christ. They act 'In Persona Christi'; they put men in contact with the divine, exer­cising the magisterium of truth on their behalf and subjecting them to obedience to the pronouncements of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, cele­brating the sacramental functions. The people of God are thus divided into dispensers and beneficiaries of grace. The dispensation is mainly carried out through the sacraments which, it is taught, contain the divine, instead of referring to the divine. This produces on the one hand the legalization of the relationship between God and man which comes to be regulated by ecclesiastical functionaries, and on the other a sacralization of ecclesiastical structures, of offices, of symbolic gestures and even of the buildings used for worship and the objects kept in their secret recesses. The consequence is that the gospel is emptied of its original content and what is propagated is empty religiosity. The 'faithful' are thus deprived of all objective truth and brought, by virtue of this empty religiosity, to obtuse obedience to the wishes of the hierarchy. But all this produces a people without a conscience and if, out of religious terror, they obey the hierarchy (which they nevertheless hate and despise) they evade their social duties of work and diligence. Where such conditions prevail in a country there can only be a dictatorship or chaos.
    
2. The second form of this temptation is spiritualistic sacralization. In complete contrast with institutional sacralization of the kind involving the majority, the spiritual experiences of small groups of converts set aside from this lost world are sacralized. They are often founded on a biblical literalism which countenances no exegetic probing, and they are bound to a closed ethical legalism. The heart is set against reason, the internal experience against theological doctrine. Any interest in culture, politics or sociology is precluded. Everything is to be shut out of daily living except what is conducive to the practice of faith and life in a constant striving after a supposed personal perfection. The concentration of all interest on the subjectivism of religious experience ousts any understanding of the objective contents of the Word of God and, with it, all possibility of a critical correction of one's own opinions.
   
   The dominant characteristic here is sincerity and sentimental fervour, the life-giving compassion of the heart, and separation from the lay world. Amongst other consequences is that of relativising confessional doctrines and undervaluing their agreement or otherwise with the Bible. The important thing is the formation of a 'spiritual' church wherein participate fervent 'regenerates' united by their common zeal for piety, independently of the theological background in which they were nurtured. The centre of gravitation ceases to be the Word of God which calls men to break with their own self-centred conceptions of life in order to form a community of believers oriented towards God and his service. It consists, instead, of the ideas of men who having but partly received this Word devote themselves exclusively to the cultivation of inward sentiments and feelings. They find the basis of their certainty in their own subjective experiences. A number of present-day ecumenical attitudes may be viewed in certain respects as an up-to-date edition of this pietistic position. Thus, a fundamental unity between members of different confessions is felt at the moment when they discern in one another a sincere and lively religious zeal, no longer according any prominence to the fundamental question of the avowal or disavowal of biblical truth.
    
3. The third temptation is the secularization of the church. No longer concentrated on itself in a kind of institutional or spiritualistic sacraliz­ation, the church absorbs from the surrounding world the ferments capable of deciding its own orientation. It conforms to the age (Romans12:2), granting the right of citizenship and the honour of government within its bosom to the cultural and political currents of ideology which surround it, to the myths and utopias of a given historical moment, conferring a mere Christian overlay to the requirements, needs and fashions which emerge in its environs. It allows its preaching to be influenced by the world around, instead of seeking the salvation of sinners with its preaching. It ascribes a religious and Christian value to the convictions of contemporaries under the illusion that it is thereby spreading the gospel on a wide scale. It does not see that it is being taken in tow by the world and used for the world's own ends. Instead of being a church which makes reference to the Word of its own Lord, and calling upon the world to face the problems posed by a reference foreign to it, it transforms itself into a church framed according to the fashion of the age. At the same time it is convinced that it is fully a part of reality and effective in the mission with which it is entrusted. It does not realize that it is a church which bows to, and venerates the idols of men, idols which are still around, albeit in a different form, in a society which considers itself modern in its desacralization, and intent only on a rational, scien­tific conception of reality. Modern man is not a man who believes in nothing. Inevitably he remains religious. The issue today is not between the Word of God on the one hand, and science or technology or politics on the other. It is between the message of God and man's perennial religions, now set in a very up-to-date framework. Instead of a delivering wholeheartedly of the message with which it has been entrusted, the Christian church too often supports the natural man in his adherence to these religions.

The struggle of the prophets of Israel against priestly sacralization and idolatrous secularization is not over. Faced with the sacralizing and secularizing temptations which have always threatened it, the church is yet once again called to reform itself — ecclesia semper reformanda — in the fullest sense of the terms. That necessitates more than mere correction or adjustment; it demands thorough-going reform in herself and conformity to the Word of God. The true church does not live from her own resources, nor from those of the outside world. She finds her own true point of reference outside herself in the Word which God addresses to her and which was manifested in the covenant established with Israel in Old Testament days and in the coming of Christ. 'Ye ... are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone' (Ephesians 2:20); 'For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ' (1 Corinthians 3:11).

It is therefore very simply but very seriously a question of verifying which Jesus we know and proclaim. In the New Testament gospel Jesus upsets, scandalizes, unmasks, frees, cures, overturns hierarchies, inverts precedents and creates new brotherhoods. Does not the church's real crisis today derive from the fact that Jesus is unknown? The fundamental duty of the Christian of today is not to stop at any ecclesiastical image of Jesus, but to yield obedience to the pure Word of God under the banner of 'Faith alone, Grace alone, Scripture alone'. Here do we find also our true mission and our life-long vocation. Upon this ground we may respond to the old, yet ever new, question: 'Who do you say that I am?' Any movement for the unity and the reformation of the church must begin from here.

This inner desire is present in many Roman Catholic people today notwithstanding the Pope's efforts to destroy it, and it will not come to an end, because it is not a matter of liturgy but it is a matter of faith!

The pathway that the Word and the Spirit of God set out before us is the one taken by the prophets, by Christ, by the Apostles and by the saints of all ages. It is the way of Faith, Grace and Scripture. Today, as in the times of the Reformation, this way passes between the great apostasies of institutional Catholicism and lay, secular humanism. It must be admitted that it is a narrow way! Even more so today than yesterday. But it is a way, not a blind alley! A way opened not by us but before us by God himself. Let us come together then, in joy, and in the zeal of the sons of God, because the Lord has called us and has made us share his cross and his glory.                                               

He rose! Alleluya!
He rose from the dead, alleluya!