Following is the text of Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan’s Wednesday talk to the Hungry Club:

There is so much going on inside the Catholic Church today that nearly everybody is curious. Instead of Latin, much of the Mass is in English. Instead of ignoring Protestants, we now say the Lord’s Prayer with them, and on certain occasions join in Bible services in their churches. Instead of a silent laity, our people are singing out, speaking out, giving advice and criticism to their priests and bishops when needed. No wonder that Protestants are puzzled, and uninformed Catholics are confused.

When all the bishops of the Catholic world, some 2,400 from all continents, left for Rome four years ago, they had many things on their mind, but few thought that Pope John’s revolution would turn the Church in a new direction, towards new horizons. Now, as we look back, the changes are tremendous. Like an iceberg, only a small part is visible to many Catholics - the English at Mass, the increased friendship with Protestants, the “emerging layman.” These things have entered into their lives. Now comes the real beginning. It is the hour and the burden of informed and responsible Catholics, plus of priests and bishops.

It is our task to open up new approaches to Protestants and Orthodox churches, and especially to the Jews, and to other non-Christians. We admit our share of the blame for the Christian division, and we pledge a genuine cooperation with them as we explore the bond that holds us to Christ. In a recent TV interview, I was asked by a friendly minister: “How can we be sure? Could this be another Catholic trick?” I replied that if I were a Protestant, I might ask the same question. But, as Al Smith used to say, “Look at the record,” I too asked him to look at the record since the 2nd Vatican Council began. Pope Paul has joined with Protestant and Orthodox observers in a deeply spiritual Bible service in St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome. Here in Atlanta, we have doubled our ecumenical efforts by helping to initiate a Unity Octave, eight days of prayer in which we all attended each others’ churches. Guidelines for Religious Unity have been issued, and we are now working on a Ecumenical Center, for the use of all faiths, in our new building project at Baker and Ivy Streets. We see Jews more clearly as our brothers, Moslems as believers in One God, people of many faiths and no faith as sincere persons looking for answers.

But the Christian also is a part of our human society, a spokesman to the world of government, industry, labor, education, science and the arts. “The Church must speak,” Pope Paul has often said, “because she has something to say.” That is why there are Catholic schools and organizations, a Catholic press. The Church speaks from a central core of divine facts and moral law, guaranteed by Christ, but these must be applied to a thousand new situations, - all in the spirit of the Gospel. Has a man (or a nation) lost the faith? The Church must have compassion on him. Have states and nations shut their eyes to God’s law? Patiently, firmly, consistently, the Church like John the Baptist must protest. Is a family in need, -- of food or housing or a decent wage, or an equal share in education? The Church must take its part. Is a whole people deprived of the inalienable rights of their citizenship, and worse, their very dignity itself? The new Church cannot remain silent.

Now is there an “official Catholic stand” on each and every issue? Obviously, no. There is one body of truths transmitted by Christ, but as these are applied to cases, there can be dozens of “Catholic responses” possible within that framework. In her long history, Christianity has never been monolithic because her members differ in background, temperament and taste. But it is the unfinished task of a Catholic today to search out his own opinions and behavior, and square them with that central core of Christian truth. And it is our unfinished task (bishops, priests, teachers) to relate these given personal and local situations to Christ’s Word and the authentic teaching of His Church.

If you are a reader of my favorite newspaper, the Georgia Bulletin, you are well aware that almost any editorial will find a dissenting reply in one of our syndicated columns and especially in the Letters to the Editor. But it is our job to take a stand, to provide Christian clarity as well as charity. It is to point out the element of Justice in Unionism, of Purity and Decency in movies and paperbacks, of Peace in support of the United Nations, -- and of freedom, equality and fraternity in the treatment of race.

The Council spoke on race too. In the document On the Church Itself, the bishops spoke clearly.

“At all times and in every race, God has given welcome to those who fear Him and do what is right...” “There is in Christ and in the Church no inequality on the basis of race or nationality, social condition or sex...”

“All men are called to belong to the new people of God.” And in another document, the Council looking beyond the Church itself, at a human society that is flaunting human rights, proclaimed:

“With regard to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and rooted out because it is against God’s law.” The Vatican Council has ended, but the work has only begun. Catholics must awaked to a new awareness of what the Church is: the renewal and the reforms must go on; the movement toward Christian unity must rise above the difficulties of 400 years; and efforts to permeate the work with justice, the mercy, the unity and the peace of Jesus Christ must receive a mighty thrust.

There is something of a parallel between the Catholic renewal and the American awakening to the urgency of civil and social rights, human dignity and fulfillment for all citizens, regardless of color. It took Catholic prophets like Pope John XXIII, and American prophets (both Negro and white) to alert an isolated people to action. As Lillian Smith said recently, we must put away our efforts “to change the situation without changing ourselves, our deeper natures, our second and third layers of mind.” From 1962 to 1965, the Catholic Council and its examination of conscience continued, the struggle and the setbacks. From 1954 to 1965, the American struggle went on, north and south, black and white, and some found guilt and others found agony and death. As of the beginning of 1966, the victory for right seems to be won, releasing for the Church the liberating forces of faith, and for our nation the mighty dynamic of justice.

Is the victory really won? Can Americans, white or Negro, become complacent over the Negro’s rights? Will the work of the churches underscore man’s need of his “inalienable rights?” Can the Catholic Church rest now, having spoken through her bishops, acted through her schools and hospitals, opened her doors wider to the Negro layman, the Negro nun, the Negro priest (like the excellent young priest teaching now in one of our high schools, fully integrated), the Negro bishop like Bishop Harold Perry of New Orleans. To help throw some light on these questions, and point up our other unfinished task, let me ask several more, and give my honest, personal replies as an archbishop of the Church:

(1) Has the Christian church a duty to proclaim, in season, out of season, justice for the Negro? Yet, by a courageous Sunday sermon in a northern Georgia town the day after Lemuel Penn was murdered, - by the frequent voice of the Georgia Bulletin, spotlighting the ugly incidents of discrimination and violence, - by sermons and school instruction, by interracial meetings and neighborhood projects, by conferences and pastoral letters. The answer is, yes.

(2) Has the Church a role to play in direct action? Yes, - by six of our priests witnessing their moral convictions on the streets of Selma, with the approval of our own church authorities, - by programs of voter registration such as one priest undertook in the lonely area around Crawfordsville, - by integrating all our schools not by token placement, but across the board, -- by opening our hospitals on the basis of need, not race or creed.

(3) Should the Church speak out in matters of controversy? Yes, if the case is clearly moral, and the facts are on the table. Most contemporary problems are complex, and the current issue of an elected member being refused his seat in our legislature certainly is. Like many Negro citizens, including a prominent Negro newspaper, like some legislators and like Lillian Smith, I totally disagree with this man’s statements, his whole point of view on our nation’s foreign policy, and his reflections on this country’s honor.

But I disagree, with convictions just as strong, with those who voted to exclude him from the place he won in our legislature. He almost certainly hurt the Civil Rights Movement here in America; he may well have given comfort to the foreign enemy. But he was duly elected, and he should have been sworn in. I regret that this has become in the minds of white and Negro extremists a racial question. Too I regret even more that the majority of our legislators have pushed our progressive state backward and served the old unchangeables with another round of racial moonshine.

(4) Finally, with much of the civil rights legislation in shape, can the churches retire to the quiet sanctuary, and let the government and individuals do the rest. Laws are necessary. So is good education in racial justice. Direct action with due care and proper timing is needed too. But where in this picture is the unique contribution of Christianity, -- the brotherhood, the love, the charity that is the greatest of the virtues? This is our responsibility. And we are just beginning.

I invite you to look into the results of Vatican II and the earnest work of other great church assemblies. They have given a menu for a hungry people. Your name as an organization has a double, indeed a triple meaning. You meet to eat with the elite, -- because you are hungry for food after a morning’s work. But secondly you are hungry, too, for information and for facts and new insights and for truth. What is the third meaning? We know it from the Gospel. The place was a mountainside; the speaker was the Lord: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness; they shall have their fill.” (Matt. 5,6)