They come to talks by speakers like myself. They hear about the new liturgy, about the new understanding of the layman’s role, about collegiality, about the Church and the world, about a thousand and one new and exciting ideas. They are duly impressed. But who will speak to them quite simply about God, as of a person he intimately knows, and make the reality and presence of God come alive for them once more?
Before such need, how superficial, pathetically superficial, is much of the busyness of renewal. We reformers know so much about religion and about the church and about theology, but we stand empty-handed and uncomfortable when confronted with sheer hunger for God. Holiness is less easily acquired than fluency in contemporary thinking. But people who, after listening to our enthusiastic discourses, quietly ask us to lead them to God are, thought they do not know it, demanding holiness in us. I fear they may find everything else but that.
- Charles Davis, “A Hidden God”
America, January 29, 1966
