peace it sheds about you any less sweet because a Pope is opposed to
Christian Democracy?

"My friends, you say 'We have rested in the shade of this tree, but now
its bark is splitting, is being dried up, the tree will die; let us seek
another tree.' The tree will not die. If you had ears you would hear the
movement of the new bark which is forming, which will have its span of
life, which will crack, will be dried up in its turn only to be replaced
by another coat of bark. The tree does not perish, the tree grows."

Benedetto sat down, exhausted, and was silent. There was a movement
among the audience like the shuddering of waves surging towards him.
Raising his hands, he stopped them.

"Friends," he said, in a weary, sweet voice, "listen to me once more.
Scribes and Pharisees, elders and princes among priests, have striven in
all times against innovations, as they strive to-day. It is not for me
to speak to you of them; God will judge them. We pray for all those who
know not what they do. But perhaps those of the other Catholic camp, the
militant camp, are not entirely without sin. In the other camp they
are intoxicated with the idea of modernity. Modernity is good, but the
eternal is better. I fear that there they do not esteem the eternal at
its just value. It is expected that the Church of Christ will
derive much strength from united Catholic action in the fields of
administration and politics, action resulting in strife, through which
the Father will suffer insult at the hands of men, while not enough
reliance is placed on the strength to be derived from the light shed
by the good deeds of each individual Christian, through which light the
Father is glorified. The supreme object of humanity is to glorify the
Father. Now men glorify the Father of such as possess the spirit of
charity, of peace, of wisdom, of purity, of fortitude, who give their
vital strength for the good of others. One such just man, who professes
and practises Catholicism, contributes more largely to the glory of the
Father, of Christ, of the Church, than many congresses, many clubs, many
Catholic victories in politics.

"A moment ago I heard some one murmur: 'And what about the social
action?' The social action, my friends, is certainly salutary, as a work
of justice, of fraternisation; but like the Socialists, some Catholics
put upon it the seal of their own religious and political opinions, and
refuse to admit well-intentioned men, if they