Perhaps, for some people, the problem of Joy is just a speculative one; theological, philosophical, or perhaps purely literary. But they would be wide off the mark, for Joy is not just a concept of some importance to the New Testament framework; it is essential to it.

     The Good News of the Gospel begins with the proclamation of Joy: I bring you good news of  great joy which will be to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord (Lk 2:11). And Jesus Christ, for his part, tells his disciples that everything he has said to them and taught them has just one purpose: These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full (Jn 15:11; cf 17:13; 1 Jn 1:4).

     Therefore it has been very rightly said that the Church would have nothing to say to men if she forgot to proclaim Joy. Thus also the prophetic character attributed to this celebrated passage from Bernanos:

     "The opposite of a Christian people is a people grown sad, a people made up of the old. Perhaps you will object that that is not a very theological definition. I agree; but it would make some of those think, that yawn all through Mass on Sunday. Yawn they certainly do! You don't expect the Church to teach them joy in one wretched half-hour a week, do you? And even if they knew by heart the whole catechism of the Council of Trent, probably they would not be any happier" (Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest).

     Many years have passed since Bernanos wrote these words, and a lot has happened since then--including the important fact that the Church, weary maybe and apparently shocked by her children's boredom which Bernanos had already denounced (in reality, Nietzche had also alluded to the sadness of the Christian people), decided to touch up her pastoral and preaching programmes. She made these changes with an eye on the pressing needs to emphasize the importance of certain subjects and to deal with others which had been somewhat neglected. And it might have done some good, but for the fact that Joy was not included in the packet of important subjects to be given priority.

     Rightly so; for it was approximately from the first third of the twentieth century onwards, coinciding with the great expansion of Marxism, that the Church became increasingly concerned about social questions--so much so as to cause a sea-change in her pastoral preoccupations. This phenomenon had such an effect on the Church's Pastoral Policy and impacted so much on the history of the Western world at the time that it can be considered an ideological revolution. It is generally agreed that these social concerns got up a head of steam in the years before the death of Pius XII. The worker priests and the famous Mission de Paris belonged to that period. It does rather look as though the Pope, with the best will in the world, yielded to ideological pressures which became quite strong around that time. But soon enough, the turn of events caused him to pull back.

     A brief parenthesis: As regards the Mission de Paris and the anxieties which led to its birth, a short comment is called for. It seems indeed that either the present problems of evangelization in the French capital are not particularly grave any more, or that they are no longer a cause for a special concern. Since all was going to change as a result of priests giving witness as workers, and given that that was not at all what happened, someone might feel inclined to think: would it not have been better if they had just given their witness as simple good priests?

     The phenomenon of worker priests and the like, which had a very considerable influence on the Catholic clergy, practically disappeared toward the end of the 1980's. Already existing during the time of Pius XII, it derived from a background of Marxist ideas which were to become fully developed after the Second Vatican Council. Later on, the Fall of the Berlin Wall contributed not a little to the vanishing of the social fever in the Church.

     Unfortunately, though, not for the better. On the contrary, something far worse came of this situation: the invasion and propagation, within the very bosom of the Church, of the Modernist heresy.

     Some took advantage of the winds of the Second Vatican Council to spread throughout the Catholic world a new deception: the New Age and the New Pentecost; both of which would give rise to the New Church, which would appear sharply at the beginning of the third millennium. But the wave –a tsunami in fact—of great optimism and of Renewal that flooded the Church was unfortunately founded neither on the fundamental truths of the Gospel nor on the idea of a need for an authentic Reform in the Church Organism –in Capite et in Membris. This Reform, in turn, would have to be determined by the imperishable values forever taught by the Church..., and by the desire for true holiness, the only thing that leads to a genuine love of Christ. Instead of this, Joy (which had never been a part of the Modernist package), was now not only forgotten, but purposely buried, it seemed, by the new Religion; the religion that proclaimed, above all, the values of man  as man, with absolutely no path of transcendence outside himself. A grave and mortal mistake was committed: rather than having the Church conform itself to the eternal principles of the Gospels, it was believed that she should adapt to the values of the World; with the hope, the greatest of ingenuities, that this attempt would produce abundant fruits. It certainly did; though these fruits turned out to be poisonous. Since, as it has been well proved time and again throughout the entire History of Humanity, no one who has surrendered his own principles, when they are, in themselves,  irrevocable, has been able to reap anything but failure.