More perniciously, too many clergy not only did not fight against these misperceptions, they aided and abetted them. Some clergy in the wake of Vatican II were free to undermine an institution, the Church, which they actively loathed. When any institution is powerful and well thought of in a society by the powers that be, Judases aplenty join, as well as the holy, or at least the well meaning.
Has any Vatican II document aged worse than “The Church in the Modern World”? It lies tattered and useless with its bland optimism and attitude that all progress will be wonderful. It’s painful to listen to whenever it’s read during the Office of Readings.
It was if, in 1962, it was decided by the new Captain of the Barque of Peter that it would be better served to move the ship to the other pier, only to have a nefarious crew and a tempest called 1968 take the unmoored ship out to sea. Every Captain since has tried to steer it back to any port against the tide with the same nefarious crew.
I think we’ll see how much of an effect V2 really had in the long term with the first couple of popes being elected who were not alive during the council itself or the immediate implementation period.
I did my senior college thesis on Lumen Gentium (Constitution on the Church) and one of the things I discovered while doing the research is how much the “spirit of Vatican II” (as we all understand it) has no presence in the letter. At all.
All this is to say Esolen is right about it being attitudinal – the ones who wanted the revolution were just looking for the excuse to do so, and those who knew better did nothing, or not enough.
Josh-
I agree that those who did know better likely did not do enough. We probably should have fought it out in the 60s.*
So many priests and laity knuckled under or just threw up their hands and abandoned ship, not fully realizing that there IS no other ship. We are still playing nice and going along under the coercive words of unity, obedience, and nice. They hide behind “Vatican 2” like they are the Marquess of Queensbury Rules, when heresy deserves no better than to have itself smacked into a corner post WWE style.
* Caveat: I did not see the 60s first hand. It is very hard for me to “know” what was “possible” in terms of resistance.
As the old maxim goes, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.”
I lived through a bit of the 1960’s. I mainly remember the smell.
The hardest thing to understand about the era is how slow the internet was. A YouTube search in 1965 took literally 40 years to find a video. I kid, but unless you had a lot of time and access to a high-quality library, it was impossible to collect, translate, and compare documents. You just didn’t know the answers. And those above you didn’t know them either. And the only ones who were questioning authority were the ones who were actively opposing what the Church used to say.
If you were part of a religious order, and a church official ordered you to wear plain clothes and throw off your sexual hangups, how were you supposed to navigate that? How would you know how to? A wise-as-a-serpent modern might know how to walk such a fine line, but a nun hadn’t been trained for that, she’d been training all her life for obedience and endurance. It was brutal.
[…] – Emily Torres at Catholic Answers MagazineWhere’s Apology f/Teaching Orders Abandoning Their Mission After Vatican II? – Tony […]
Carl Rogers’ philosophy emptied 80% of the convents and seminaries. “On Becoming a Person” philosophy was taught as religion in some Catholic Schools. God was not mentioned in the series . Hugo Black’s work.
Three generations have not been catechized.
Faith is a gift from God.
Bring back the kneelers, stained glass windows, privacy confessionals, Altar rails and above all respect the Real Presence of Jesus on the altar. Face Him, love Him and be blessed by Him.
Carl Rogers’ philosophy emptied 80% of the convents and seminaries.
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He was implicated in the destruction of a house of IHM sisters in Los Angeles in 1966. Not sure if his influences extended beyond that.
More perniciously, too many clergy not only did not fight against these misperceptions, they aided and abetted them.
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I think the 3d, 5th, and (in part) the 6th item on the list could have been effectively addressed by pastors and administrators; AFAICT, about 85% of them cannot be bothered (or are, perhaps, being bullied by the chancery). Bishops could have addressed those items to a degree and addressed item number 7 as well. Item #1 and #6 in part I think belong to the Holy See (though locals could have encouraged continued fasting). Number 2, 4, and 8 are largely due to developments in popular culture that most clergy pretended were not happening (and, one suspects, over which could have but a weak influence).
Rogerian psychologist Dr. William Coulson (also a student of Abraham Maslow) provided an interview in 2012 (William Coulson: “We Overcame Their Traditions And Their Faith”) to the San Francisco Faith, a Catholic newspaper/periodical at that time, a must-read first-hand account, which was stunningly complete in its description of the group therapy unraveling of Catholic religious orders and institutions. The impetus of this was loosely based on the encouragement of “adaptation” found in the Vatican II decree ironically named Perfectae Caritatis (“On Religious Life”), the purpose ostensibly to adapt “the modern physical and psychological circumstances of the members and also, as required by the nature of each institute, to the necessities of the apostolate, the demands of culture, and social and economic circumstances.” (no. 3). (No. 17 also essentially decrees changing religious habits. We know where that led.)
Coulson and Roger’s team, besides deconstructing the Immaculate Heart Sisters, were also invited to the St. Barbara’s Province Franciscans at Santa Barbara, CA, (OFM’s in California and the western states at that time) where they held a series of very emotionally intense psychotherapy sessions and essentially blew up all the participants’ moral restraints, both heterosexual and homosexual in inclination. Immediately there resulted so many sudden departures from the order that the Provincial at that time, Fr. John David Vaughn, was said to be signing out canonical “exhivit” forms by the many handfuls weekly. And then later came the child sex abuse claims as well.
From a vibrant province of over 600 priests and brothers and many respected apostolic works, the St Barbara’s Province collapsed to approximately its present size of about 100 the last few years and was recently absorbed in the managed decline of the remaining US OFM’s in 3 continuingly downward spiraling US provinces.
I was born in 1963 and remember very little of it related to the Church. I have no memory of attending the Tridentine Mass before 1999.
What I remember of Catholic school between 1971 and 1976 is guitar Masses, felt banners and silly songs.
Vatican 2 was the excuse for all of the agents provacateur to wreck the Church from within, as if by design of the Communist Party, see Bella dodd and her testimony before the US Congress. The Novus Ordo Mass, extolled for its “richness” by the likes of Cardinal Roche and the Charlotte bishop, was contrived by Cardinal Bugnini and it is documented that he lied to Paul VI and to the committee on the liturgy. For all the “richness” of the Novus Ordo, Paul VI rewarded Bugnini with the see in Teheran. The Mass, the most important thing any of us do or participate in as Catholics, has been dumbed down, watered down, abused and trashed. Bad music, poor understanding of the rubrics, and poor preaching has led to a massive decline in Mass attendance the world over.
In recent years, a bright spot, assisted by Summorum Pontificum, saw the spread of the Tridentine Mass. Churches celebrating the Mass experienced growth. Families, often large ones, are commonplace. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life are on the increase. And, the previous Pope HATED it. So, he and Roche did their worst to get rid of it.
The TLM is not a cure all for all that ails the Church. Those of us who attend the TLM are not better Catholics than those who do not. I am a weekly TLM attendee and I am a pathetic sinner who is in need of confession as I write this. As for V2, I believe Bishop Fellay of the SSPX said he has no issue with 95% of it. V2 has been used as a club to beat down anyone who wants to retain any part of the Church prior to V2….even though V2 was never supposed to get rid of it.
The Novus Ordo Mass should be gradually replaced (in the English speaking world) with the Anglican Ordinariate liturgy. In the rest of the world, use the translations found in the TLM missals and retain Latin for the Roman canon. Hand in hand, free up the TLM.