Abstract
The passage devoted by the pastoral constitution of Vati can II, Gaudium et Spes, to atheism can be considered as the exemplary place of a change. We assist at the spectacular abandonment of a position of condemnation. This abandon ment is carried out by a series of displacements : the passage of communism in the singular to atheism in the plural, of politics to anthropology, of rejection to negotiation. But this change has limits : the survival of anti-communism, restrictive conditions for dialogue, the persistance of ecclesiocentralism, a perennial natural theology and a constructed opposition between religion in its essence and atheisms in their historical forms.