Let them blend new sciences and theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and the teaching of Christian doctrine, so that their religious
culture and morality may keep pace with
scientific knowledge and with the constantly progressing technology...
Thus they will be able to interpret and evaluate all things in a truly Christian spirit,... and priests will be able to present to our contemporaries the doctrine of the Church concerning God, man and the world, in a manner more adapted to them so that they may receive it more willingly.»
Thus the somehow accidental distance of a twentieth - century man, situated in another, a
scientific and historical
culture, reveals an original distance which remained concealed because it was so short; yet it was already constitutive of primitive faith itself.