This is a translation of the address delivered Dec. 7 by Pope Paul VI to members of the special missions sent by more than 80 countries to the close of the ecumenical council. The audience was held in the Sistine Chapel.
Your Excellencies, members of the extraordinary missions:
This incomparable sanctuary of art and piety, which for almost half a millennium has received the most varied audience, today is witness, thanks to you, to a spectacle of rare breadth and unusually significant character.
While the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council draws to a close more than 80 countries have delegated highly qualified people to be present at the closing ceremonies, and to testify by their presence to the interest they have in this event and to the importance they attribute to it.
And still one might think: Why would the world’s political opinion, even on its noblest and highest plane, be interested in a council? Is it not a question of an act of the Church’s life and therefore a purely spiritual and religious phenomenon? The Church assembles, consults itself, inspects itself. It recaptures its energies, purifies its ways of thinking and acting, proceeds to a renewal, but above all to an interior renewal, which concerns a Christian’s relations with his God.
Certainly. But who does not see the immense social importance of the whole event? If millions of Catholics throughout the world were at a given moment to adopt the same attitude on this or that problem, who could deny the repercussions of such a fact upon society as a whole? And history is there to prove the influence of councils, not only upon ecclesiastical history but on the general history of men and peoples. The chief purpose of these vast assemblies is always the interior renewal of every Catholic and the renewal of that social body which is the Church. But the entire human family derives a fresh beneficial influence from it. If this influence is, for instance, exercised toward affirming equality among races, collaboration among classes, peace among nations, it is easy to realize the immense good all mankind can draw from it.
Your presence here, gentlemen, proves precisely that those who at present hold temporal power have understood the significance of the council and that they give it their attention.
For its part, the Church is alert to the problems of this world but it judges them from its own point of view. It points out for example how necessary it is today for the fate of humanity that all energies be directed toward peace. But the Church knows that the dynamism of peace cannot show its full force unless fed from within by a deep, real conversion of hearts. The Church strives forcefully to achieve this; this was among the principal aims of the council which is coming to an end before your eyes. Certainly, it has dealt according to plan with questions of faith, morals, discipline, government and ecclesiastical organization; but what inspired it in all this was above all the anxiety to return to the pure sources of the Gospel and found thereon a renewal of life and fresh fervor in putting into practice the message of Christ, which is a message of love and of peace.
Was not this council a living sermon? Was it not a stupendous spectacle of love and peace, this assembly of 2,000 council Fathers who flocked from five continents to gather around the Bishop of Rome in study and prayer to try in a brotherly way to tell the world again the revelation of the Gospel message? Was there not an even more impressive spectacle in the harmony and unity of so many men from such different horizons belonging to nations with such different cultures, traditions, ways of life and social forms?
From this peaceful and serene confrontation of so many diversities, there emerged, as you know, after long and patient work, texts of great spiritual and human wealth. They were promulgated by us after they had achieved a large majority and often virtual unanimity.
These texts, gentlemen, are undoubtedly known to you already. You will note, studying them closely, that more than once they deal with temporal power and its relations with spiritual power. The Church of the 20th century, the Church that emerges renewed from this conciliar assembly, appears to you preoccupied above all with the real welfare of men. She presents herself to the world not to dominate it but to serve it.
In various fields—domestic, social, economic, political, international—the Church endeavors to give an equitable judgment on situations and problems, to deduce general principles for their solution that may be in accordance with the moral law carved in the hearts of men, and to discover the hidden dangers in the vast transformations of the modern world and bring them to the attention of those concerned. All this is the subject matter of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the greatest documents of this council.
In the Declaration on Non-Christian Religions the Church urges her sons to consider the positive values contained in every creed and to erase from their hearts sentiments of aversion against this people or that, sentiments out of harmony with the spirit of the Gospel. It is easy to see what happy results this would have for social peace.
In this light, the Church appreciates everything the public powers put into practice in various countries for the temporal well-being of mankind, and professes the most sincere respect for the authority of the state. In a declaration which will also undoubtedly remain as one of the greatest documents of this council, the Church makes her own the aspiration, so universally felt today, for civil and social liberty in religious matters. Let no one be compelled to believe, but likewise let no one be impeded in believing and professing his faith, a fundamental right of the human person which is after all recognized today by the large majority of laws, at least in theory if not always in practice.
In the same spirit the Church asks governments—and this is the object of a paragraph in the Decree on the Pastoral Duties of Bishops—to recognize and render it its full and integral liberty in the selection and appointment of pastors.
To the Church’s way of thinking, this clearer delimitation of respective competences and dominions can only be advantageous to the one power as well as to the other. Indeed, whatever judgment may be passed on historical situations that have arisen in the past in some nations, the Church asks nothing for itself today except freedom to announce the Gospel. Its inner dynamism, whose origin is not within it but above it, enables her to accomplish her mission among men so long as she is granted the possibility of doing so.
In that way the Church, far from taking competitive or antagonistic attitudes toward the state, on the contrary contributes eminently and according to its own principles to promoting the common welfare, which is the object of and reason for temporal power. Thus the Church’s attitude favors the state’s good as well as its own.
Gentlemen, many statesmen who nurture sentiments of respect and friendship for the Church are convinced of all this today. And allow us to consider as a shining and luminous testimonial to this fact the welcome which the highest Areopagus of representatives of the people of the world, the United Nations, gave to our humble person when we decided recently to visit it in the name of the council and the whole Church, bringing it the support of our moral authority.
Allow us to say that the almost unanimous consensus of public opinion, together with that of governments, has been a powerful encouragement for us in our task.
We declare with all the sincerity of our heart: We ask only to help those whom you represent here, help them in everything that can contribute to the well-being of humanity. The hour is too serious to try to shirk duties which the world’s present situation imposes on every man of feeling. We offer our help to all. And in exchange we tell them: We trust that you will allow the Church all the freedom she needs and that far from obstructing the realization of the conciliar decisions, you will instead favor them as far as you are able. You may be sure your countries will be the first to feel their benefits.
At this moment of leave-taking, gentlemen, allow us to express our deep gratitude for your presence here. We ask you to relay this gratitude to the governments that sent you. On them, on yourselves, on your families, on your countries and on the entire human race, in this moment we implore with all our heart the protection of the Most High, and abundance of divine blessings.
Vatican II: 50 years ago today 