Question 4.62

4.62 Finally, do you, like Benedict XVI, consider that the absence of God from society was at the heart of the reform intended by the Council Fathers?

Absolutely! Although the religious crisis of the West was less visible at the beginning of the Council than it is today, many Fathers sensed the urgent need to bring their faithful back to God, who for them was becoming a more and more distant reality. During his various missions as apostolic nuncio, John XXIII had come to understand how distant contemporary societies were from God. In France, where he had represented the Holy See, he was able to observe how the “Eldest Daughter” of the Church, and many other Western countries, were little by little turning away from Christian ideals. Pope Roncalli wanted to go back to the basics so as to combat this crisis by placing the relation between God and mankind at the center of the Council’s work. In particular, he fostered a great devotion to the beauty of the liturgy. The successor of Pius XII knew that when man is in the presence of God, he enters into the mystery of what is sacred; then a relation is established that once again gives him a profoundly divine structure. Finally, John XXIII wanted to restore to man his dignity, so that he might attain the unfathomable grandeur of God. He wished to offer the contemporary world the possibility of rediscovering its capacity for praise, adoration, and wonder in the presence of God. The major message of the Council remains that of affirming in a new way that God dwells among us.

With deep bitterness, Pope John deplored the fact that much of the world’s population was distant from the Church and indifferent toward her. In his address at the opening of the Council, he said: “It is a source of considerable sorrow to see that the greater part of the human race-although all men who are born were redeemed by the Blood of Christ-does not yet participate in those sources of divine grace which exist in the Catholic Church.” Fifty years later, how right Benedict XVI and Francis are to insist on the tragedy of societies that want to get rid of God so as to live without him! The elimination of God within Western cultures is a tragedy with unsuspected consequences. John Paul II was the first pope to experience the disaster of societies arbitrarily deprived of God, through the cynicism of atheistic Communism in Eastern Europe and then its brutal replacement by unfettered materialism. The lack of a connection with God has remained the major concern of all the popes since John XXIII, an abyss that continues to yawn ever deeper.