Chapter 15. The Marriage of the Church and the Revolution.

The revolution, it has been said, expresses the hatred of all order that has not been established

by man, and in which he is not both king and God. At its origin, we find pride, which had already been the cause of Adam's

sin. The revolution within the church can be explained by the pride of men of our times, who believe

they are in a new age when man has finally understood his own dignity and has acquired an increased awareness of

himself to the extent that one might speak of a social and cultural metamorphosis whose efforts

have had repercussions on religious life. The very pace of history is becoming so rapid

that one is hard pressed to keep up with it.

In short, the human race is passing from a mainly static conception of the order of things

to a dynamic and evolutionary conception.

The consequence is an immense series of new problems which call for new analysis and new synthesis.

These wonder-struck phrases which, with many others of the same sort, occur in the introduction to Gaudiame-Metz-Bez,

the pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world, and are of ill omen for a return to the spirit of the gospel.

In so much change and transformation, it is hard to see how this can survive.

And what is meant by the statement, an industrial type of society is spreading little by little,

radically transforming our ideas about life in society.

Except that the writer is prophesying as a certainty what he wanted to see appear,

a concept of society that will have nothing in common with the Christian concept expressed in the social doctrine of church.

Pre-suppositions of that nature can lead only to a new gospel and a new religion.

And here it is, Gaudiom-Ez-instructs, The faithful, therefore, ought to work in close conjunction with their contemporaries

to try to get to know their ways of thinking and feeling, as they find them expressed in current cultures.

Let the faithful incorporate the findings of new sciences and teachings and the understanding of the

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