At the close of
Vatican II, Blessed Pope Paul VI remarked that Christianity, the religion of
God-Incarnate, had encountered the religion of man-made God. He was of the
opinion that much of the Council was given over to demonstrating the
compatibility of Enlightenment
belief with Catholicism. Several years hence, on June 29, 1972, Paul delivered another assessment of
the state of the Roman Catholic Church since the close of Vatican II. As Cardinal
Silvio Oddi recalled it (in an article first published on March 17, 1990,
in Il Sabato
magazine in Rome) the Holy Father told a congregation:
We have the impression that through some cracks in the
wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt,
uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come
about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in
free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a
power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. We thought
that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of
the Church. What dawned instead was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, ofsearching and uncertainties.
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