Two Faces

Pope Pius XII recently bemoaned the fact that many Catholics in Rome are in a state of “spiritual inertness.” The pope said he is made “anxious and almost sleepless” by the fact that Rome has two faces. One is “luminous with ancient glories,” he said, while the other is “mediocre and inglorious and almost like that of other places sadly known for religious apathy and moral insensibility.”—New York Times, February 19, 1958.