During his Wednesday General Audience, speaking on the topic of Divine Providence within creation, Pope John Paul II affirmed: “The Bible's mode of expression refers the government of things directly to God. Nevertheless, the difference between the action of God the Creator as First Cause, and the action of creatures as secondary causes is sufficiently clear. Here we come up against a question which very much occupies the mind of modern man. It concerns the autonomy of the creature, and therefore the role of efficient cause in the world which man thinks to carry out. According to the Catholic faith, it pertains to the Creator's transcendent wisdom to ensure that God is present in the world as Providence, and at the same time that the created world possesses that ‘autonomy’ of which the Second Vatican Council speaks. On the one hand, God, by maintaining all things in existence, makes them what they are: ‘For by the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order’ (Gaudium et Spes, 36). On the other hand, because of the manner in which God rules the world, the latter is in a situation of real autonomy, which ‘harmonizes with the will of the Creator’ (Gaudium et Spes, 36).”