“It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet has so much concern been shown for the material needs of all humanity as that displayed by the Catholic Church in this present century.

All over the world selfless priests, members of religious orders, and lay Catholics have established countless schools, hospitals, orphanages, homes for old people; wherever need existed Catholic relief agencies could be found ministering to the hungry, the homeless, the victims of famine, pestilence, or earthquakes.

But in the pre-conciliar Church there was never any confusion about what the prime duty of the Church was, to preach the Kingdom of God and when the Kingdom of God is preached all else will follow. And there can be no doubt that the service rendered to the material needs of men, incalculable though this most certainly was, pales into insignificance beside the spiritual solace brought by the Church to hundreds of millions of men and women of all races and all nations:

… the beauty and comfort of her liturgy, the grace of her sacraments, the inspiration of her teaching these gave meaning to a life which for millions would otherwise have been meaningless; they gave the strength to endure in a life that would otherwise have been unendurable.

And above all, the Church was concerned with the truth, the truth that is Christ, the truth that is His Gospel, the truth that we have a Father in heaven Who loves us. Who sent His Son to die for us so that we can live with Him for ever in the happiness of heaven.” — Pope John’s Council, Angelus Press, 1977, p. 15

All are welcome, we are taught, who come to believe in Christ, the Sacred Scriptures and tradition; who come to repent of sins  and become “new creations in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17). But the Church also ever ministers to any in need whom she can help in time of need, not just Christians, and not just those friendly to her teachings.

+ Very much earlier… Listen to the BBC’s Melvyn Bragg on the Dissolution of the English Monasteries