Pope's warning

on temptation of Christians
FROM A ROME CORRESPONDENT
CHRISTIANS must transform the world, the Pope said this week. They should not adapt themselves to existing social and political conditions. "The mind of man, drenched with ideas sweeping throughout our profane world, is ever more secularised, distrusting everything that goes beyond the sphere of conscious experience and scientific proof."
The temptation for Christians, the Pope added, "is that of forming their own idea of a secular Christianity which does not have a precise doctrinal content and is deprived of the vital force which is alive, true and sacramental in our Christianity. They become converted to a world which they should themselves convert."
Pope Paul was speaking on Sunday to a crowd in St. Peter's Square. The sphere of "sacral" activity, he continued, had to be purified of abuses and superstitious accretions, but that sphere "has its own legitimate and sovereign existence, and it is only with faith, of which Christ is the teacher, that men can enter it."
Earlier, in an address to Cardinal Roy, Archbishop of Quebec, and the Lay Council meeting in Rome, the Pope had said: "In the crisis now shaking the world, in the changes that threaten well-established institutions, there is a certain giddiness that overwhelms the steadiest spirits, even those who have lived in the lap of the Church, even those who have generously devoted themselves to her exclusive service."
Chamberlain to marry
Pope Paul's comments followed the resignation of a minor official of the Roman Curia, Mgr. Giovanni Musante, who has secured the Pope's permission to leave the priesthood and The 52-year-old priest had worked for ten years in the Roman Vicariate, the office that runs the Pope's own diocese. More recently, he became a Papal Chamberlain, taking part as such in Papal ceremonies.
Mgr. Musante is reported to be planning to marry a 38year-old widow. On Tuesday he said: "There have been false and injurious judgments on my person as though I were crazy or abnormal."
Cardinal Dell'Acqua, the Papal Vicar for Rome. had already criticised the Press for playing up the case. He has corrected some of the injurious judgments, and I am grateful to him for this," Mgr. Musante said.
Press criticised
The Cardinal expressed "painful surprise over the behaviour of some newspapers in connection with a painful episode which is not new in the history of the Church."
He sharply denied a suggestion that many priests left to marry during the reign of Pope John because the Pope allowed them to stay on in the Church as laymen.
At a Vatican Press conference he took special issue with the Rome newspaper it Tempo which printed the suggestion. "It is not correct to attribute to a Pope who won so much admiration among Catholics and nonCatholics, Christians and non-Christians, a procedure which substantially was in force before," he said.
"The only difference is that the Press then was perhaps more aware of the serious responsibility it has for public opinion."