Paul VI

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Excerpts from Statements by Pope Paul VI

On the Church Crisis

1968 - 1975

"Self-Demolition" of the Church

"The Church is in a disturbed period of self-criticism, or what would be better called self-demolition. It is an acute and complicated upheaval which nobody would have expected after the Council. It is almost as if the Church were attacking herself."

Speech to the Lombard College in Rome December 7, 1968

"Division & Disintegration"

"The division, the disintegration, which has now unfortunately entered various circles within the Church (...) the re-establishment of spiritual and practical unity within the Church is today one of the Church's most grave and pressing problems."

August 30, 1973

Worldliness & Admission of Guilt

"The opening to the world became a veritable invasion of the Church by worldly thinking (...) We have perhaps been too weak and imprudent"

November 23, 1973

The Death of the Church

"To a superficial observer, the Church seems an impossible thing in our day, and even seems doomed to die out and be replaced by a simpler and more experimental, rational and scientific conception of the world, without dogmas, without hierarchies, without limits to the possibilities of enjoying existence without the Cross of Christ"

September 11, 1974

Plea for an end to Disunity

"Enough of internal dissent within the Church! Enough of a disintegrating interpretation of pluralism! Enough of Catholics attacking each other at the price of their own necessary unity! Enough of disobedience described as freedom!"

July 18, 1975