« Feast of St. Joseph | Main | Food for Thought »
March 19, 2004
Bad Catholic/Good Catholic
A bit of elaboration on my point below, buried deep in the midst of scores of comments...
First, let me point out that I was born in 1960, so that means my direct experience of pre-Vatican II Catholicism is.....nil. I know what I know through what people tell me and what I've read.
Second caveat: as a person very interested in history, I try to nurture an illusion-free vision of the past. I am anti-nostalgia and own no rose-covered glasses. When you know your history you know what a weak and tragically compromised witness the Christian Church has been to the Gospel since the beginning. We seem to always run up against our humanity. The mystery is that this seems to be the way God wanted it - the humanity that is, not the compromised witness.
So, you're not going to tell me, for example, the Church today is in the worst shape it's ever been. That's nonsense. You're not going to tell me either that up until 1965, everything was great. The chaos of the post-Vatican II years, the violent pendulum-swinging, didn't come from a vacuum. All the people who were responsible for the post V2 chaos were formed and educated before V2. As David Carlin has written and mused over - something was going on in those years. I know not what, but something was obviously missing.
But the topic today (sigh) is labels and identity - a topic I usually try to avoid because I despise naval-gazing and think it's not what Jesus calls us to do. But in times of division, I guess it's inevitable and important.
As I said, I have no direct experience of the preV2 Church, but what I know I know from books: Flannery O'Connor, Frank Sheed, Graham Greene, Chesterton, Knox, Waugh, Merton...etc., etc. etc....
And what always strikes me when I read them is that as wildly different as they are, they all express a sort of unified and rather easily identifiable Catholic identity. There simply weren't the labels - oh, there were the "Catholic Worker" Catholics, sure, and ultramontanists, etc...but as a whole, looking at the Church in the West...there were simply...Catholics.
The most frequent label that I find is, as I said below, that of the "bad Catholic." And it's my impression that most people, to some extent, put themselves into that category. The really, really, good Catholics were few and far between, in the popular mind - the pious lady down the street, the saintly 90-year old nun....etc.
It's not that everyone thought that they were rotten and worthless and undeserving - it's that everyone was clearly aware that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
This, perhaps, had its negative consequences - what doesn't? So does the surfeit of self-described good Catholics we have now.
And if you doubt me, and if you doubt the worth of reclaiming this sense of humility and realism, I invite you to look in two place: Paul's letters and the lives of the saints.
In Paul, we find this perfect balance: between understanding how precious we are in God's sight, embracing the presence of Christ within us, yet always aware that we are weak and that it is not I, but Christ within me who is responsible for what is holy in me and the good that I do. We are loved immeasurably by God, but we are not God.
In the saints - canonized or not - you simply find none of this healthy self-esteem, I'm a great Catholic, God and His Church have to just accept me as I am because I'm special, and ultimately I'm the only judge of my life and faith. NONE. THEY DON'T BELIEVE IT. THEY DON'T LIVE THAT WAY. THEIR FAITH ISN'T ORIENTED THAT WAY.
And they are saints. They have healed the sick, embraced the abandoned, lived with the poor and seen Christ there. Because they know that as disciples, they are accountable, not to themselves and their own good feelings, but to God for how they have used this life, and they are always acutely aware that holiness is opening one's soul more and more to let God fill it, not to be self-actualized on one's own terms in one's own comfort zone.
Sure, it can lead to neurosis and extremes of self-abdegnation, and forgetfulness of God's mercy and a scrupulosity that is quite damaging. As I said, every perspective has its risks. But as a whole,If we've got to label ourselves, the understanding that in baptism, we are all Catholics, and we are unified as Catholic Christians through baptism, but that most of us - clergy and laity alike - are, to some extent, rather bad Catholics, even as we try to grow in holiness, seems a much more realistic, humble and firmly-rooted way than the alternative of "We are all good Catholics now."
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451be0d69e200d8345ecb3469e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Bad Catholic/Good Catholic:
Comments
Preach it!
Posted by: Mark Wyman at Mar 19, 2004 9:13:54 AM
Amen.
Heading out now to a novena at Our Lady Of Self Esteem, where we will use the psalm that goes "Have mercy on me, Lord, for I made made a mistake in judgement...." and dicuss the doctrine of Original Okay-ness.
Posted by: Geri at Mar 19, 2004 9:49:24 AM
So, you're not going to tell me, for example, the Church today is in the worst shape it's ever been. That's nonsense.
1. With all due respect, then, what is your explanation of the facts showing clear decline in Faith post-Vatican II? And the "spirit of the 60s" doesn't wash.
All the people who were responsible for the post V2 chaos were formed and educated before V2.
2. Of course, but that's no argument against the pre-Vatican II Church being the One True Faith. Yes, Bugnini, Teilhard de Chardin, Kung, Schilbexx, Mahony, Keeler, Law, Weakland, Bernardin, etc. all pre-Vat II formation. Doesn't that make them all the more culpable? Shouldn't they have known better? Wojtyla got a doctorate at the Angelicum under Garrigou-Lagrange, a preeminent anti-Modernist. JPII should definitely know better.
they all express a sort of unified and rather easily identifiable Catholic identity
3. It's called Catholicism, pre-Vatican II. It's what catacomb Catholics still practice. Go into a CMRI, SSPX, SSPV, independent, and perhaps even Indult chapel any given Sunday and you'll see unity of Faith and Charity. Any child can tell you they're practicing the same Faith. Can the same child say the same for the Novus Ordo Missae churches?
we are all Catholics, and we are unified as Catholic Christians through baptism
4. Ms. Welborn, even taking Indult vs. Novus Ordo Missae congregations -- they don't even have the same sanctoral cycle. They don't have the same MASS, the central act of Catholic worship. If you ask a protestant to go to an Indult service then go to a Novus Ordo Missae service, is he going say "you guys are all Catholics"?
Face it, conservative U.S. Catholics. You're going to have to pick; if not today, then in the very near future. The modernist church, or the Church of All Ages. UIOGD,
Posted by: Sulpicius Severus at Mar 19, 2004 10:13:09 AM
I've just finished writing an article for Crisis regarding the post-Vatican II chaos. Most of the mischief was the work of bishops, priests, nuns and theologians who came out of the Tridentine system. Many of them had received an inadequate, rules-oriented formation, and the eruptions after the Council were a rebellion against the whole business. Maritain saw it all coming before it happened. Vatican II was a call to spiritual adulthood, and what we got instead from many clergy was adolesent rebellion, where everything smacking of pre-Conciliar Catholicism had to be turned on its head. Conservative bishops like Cardinal Spellman of New York were partly responsible for the post-V2 mess, because they refused to implement the teachings of the Council, thereby allowing it to be hijacked by liberals. The mess in the Church after the Council is proof enough that there was a need for a Council, paradoxical as that may sound.
Posted by: George Sim Johnston at Mar 19, 2004 10:13:53 AM
What's a santoral cycle?
Posted by: Brian Lester at Mar 19, 2004 10:28:55 AM
GSJ,
Vatican 2 a call to "spiritual adulthood"? What does that mean? That the Tridentine mass had to be reformed to make it less infantile? That Catholics had to get away from childlike "rules" like the Baltimore Catechism and move on to -- something else? What teachings of Vatican 2 did Cardinal Spellman "refuse to implement"? I look forward to reading your article when its published, but from your comment I fear you may be smearing the "Tridentine system" in order to excuse the pastoral failure of the Pastoral Council.
Posted by: Bill at Mar 19, 2004 10:30:05 AM
Mr. Lester: The Ecclesiatical Year is composed of both
the Temporal Cycle: Christmas Cycle (Advent, Christmas, Time After Epiphany), Easter Cycle/Redemption Cycle (Septuagesima, Lent, Passiontide, Paschaltide, Time after Pentecost); and
the Sanctoral Cycle: the occurence of the various feast days of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holy angels, the saints.
Notice even that the Indult (1962 Missal) Temporal cycle is even different from that of the Novus Ordo Missae; the Novus Ordo Missae does away with Septuagesima (it's "ordinary time" in their Temporal cycle), that time of preparation for Lent.
Hope that helps. UIOGD,
Posted by: Sulpicius Severus at Mar 19, 2004 10:40:25 AM
It is quite an eye-opener to read Fr. Rutler's biography of the Cure' d'Ars. I do not know if the Church is in worse shape now, any more than the Church was in the years surrounding the French Revolution (and that was not too long after Trent!).
With all due respect, the saints worshipped in catacombs, not in schismatic cocoons.
Posted by: Mark R at Mar 19, 2004 11:18:08 AM
Having gone through parochial school in the pre-VII days, and not having to face the majority of changes in my own parish until after I was married, I have a clear memory of the time before the Council.
Amy is right. The laity were supremely conscious of sin. I think most of us wished we could go to heaven, but most of us also knew the other option was a daily possibility. We took confession quite seriously and rather often.
The focus of the Mass was always on God. The idea that Mass could be focused in any way on man didn't enter our thinking.
Anti-Catholicism existed then. It still exists now, so any intention on the part of the Council to move us closer to our enemies backfired.
The average Catholic in my experience saw nothing wrong with his parish. Priests were not rotated as often, and there were more of them. Their shortcomings were probably the most frequent subject of gossip. Their shortcomings did not include sex in any pre-VII scandal that I heard about. Drinking, however...
Parishes were not divided into factions. Parishioners belonged to groups such as the circles (neighborhood women's groups) and the Legion of Mary. Mostly these were service groups. The charitable work of the parish was done by the women who did not go off to work every morning.
I can't remember any doctrinal controversy prior to the Council. We all believed the same thing, and we all felt united just by knowing that we were Catholic.
The biggest disagreement in my childhood parish centered on a black priest. Remember this was before de-segregation. It took time before he was accepted. At the time I was old enough to learn that there had been a controversy, it had not dawned on me that he was different in any way. He was just Fr. S., one of the respected priests in my parish.
The priests had time to get to know their parishioners. A priest on the school playground was a familiar sight. He was invariably surrounded by a group of students.
One of the priests taught a catechism lesson in every classroom once a week.
We attended Mass before school began every morning of the week, and we followed the prayers of the Mass in our St. Joseph missals. And we had nuns whom I still remember fondly as the foundation of the Catholic school. The faith I have today I owe to those nuns, God bless them.
Posted by: Carrie at Mar 19, 2004 11:20:40 AM
RE: Spiritual Adulthood
I agree with GSJ that even if Vatican II was intended to transcend the intellectual into the spiritual, what happened in fact was a regression into the merely emotional. I wonder if this was because the ethos of the era was one that rejected adulthood in favour of "celebrating youth culture" or what not. Perhaps what is needed now is not a jump to spiritual adulthood, but rather a rules-based "Tridentinism" just to get us back into high school.
RE: Good/Bad Catholics
I agree with Amy. I have also noticed a strange disconnect in catachesis that actually believes that the big problem today is that we are all so very scrupulous and in danger of forgetting God's love. On the contrary, we are more prone to presumption with the "God's-love-means-never-having-to-say-sorry" attitude. The Orthodox, have a term for the attitude of the saints that Amy describes--Penthos. The saints all seem to believe that they are the greatest sinners in the world because they still sinned even though they had been so greatly graced by God. They understand that every grace puts them further into God's debt and weep because they recognise their unowrthiness.
Thanks for reading,
Han
Posted by: Han Ng at Mar 19, 2004 11:21:38 AM
Sulpicius Severus:
For all its positive features, the culture of pre-VII Church had become in many ways a dissicated, hollow shell: legalistic, ritualistic, and dominated by shallow devotionalism and ridiculous and/or childish self-satisfaction. Anyone who consciously lived through the 40's or 50's knows precisely what I'm talking about. This is what you want to return to? You are apparently living with a fantasy version of the past and enjoying the cozy delusion that you are now among the oppressed, gnostic Elect. How very self-indulgent.
The "facts" you point to as "proof" of the decline of the post-VII Church are indicia of what the pre-VII Church bred and came to fruition post-VII as much as what the post-VII Church has wrought. Consider also that all of the bishops and most of the priests involved in the recent Scandals were born, educated and ordained pre-VII. It was the seedbed of the homosexual/pedophile scandals. Something rotten was going on back then in your One True (i.e., Tridentine) Churchy culture, and it wasn't do to modernist theology.
Until Trads face up to the gross, pervasive, and infantile clericism and the collapsing, repressive Jansenism that permeated Church culture pre-VII, they have no credibility whatsoever to anyone who lived through those times with their eyes open. These pre-VII problems are at the root of the present crisis as much as the virtually inevitable excesses that occured in reaction to and in fulfillment of them.
Posted by: T. Marzen at Mar 19, 2004 11:23:55 AM
So, you're not going to tell me, for example, the Church today is in the worst shape it's ever been. That's nonsense.
1. With all due respect, then, what is your explanation of the facts showing clear decline in Faith post-Vatican II? And the "spirit of the 60s" doesn't wash.
Did you not notice the word "ever"? That covers an awful lot of ground when you're talking about the Church. The most obvious example of worse shape is the Late Middle Ages/Renaissance era, but there are others. (The nadir of the Papacy was arguably in the middle 900s, for instance).
Posted by: Craig Neumeier at Mar 19, 2004 11:26:36 AM
Han: I have also noticed a strange disconnect in catachesis that actually believes that the big problem today is that we are all so very scrupulous and in danger of forgetting God's love.
Oh man, you have just described nearly every homily in our parish! I'm wondering where all these Christians are who are so obsessed with a sense of their own sin that we forget that God loves us. Our problem -- my problem -- is we love ourselves too much.
Posted by: Rod Dreher at Mar 19, 2004 11:27:46 AM
Speaking from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, I'll only say that the Catholic Church, pre-Vatican II, was a lot closer to Orthodoxy in its spirit and ethos than the post-Conciliar Church. Usually, there is a sense of Godliness that is present at the Tridentine Mass that I've rarely experienced with the Novus Ordo.
Intricate rubrics, statues, high altars, more severe fasting rules, etc. They're all part of the package that, for all their supposed problems that just happened to pop up in the 1960s, make Traditional RCism close to Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, many Trad RCs have a severe view of the Christian East-the Orthodox are not schismatics! (One good thing to come out of V2!).
Posted by: Michael King at Mar 19, 2004 11:34:04 AM
I think my friend George is onto something. I'm always startled when I read the actual documents of Vatican II to discover how conservative they really are. Startled, because I always hear the Council described by liberals as (effectively) license for all of us to be good Protestants now, and by traditionalists as the End of the World.
As George and Amy point out, something went seriously wrong in that generation before the Council, else we wouldn't have had such a rapid and complete collapse. I think what George means by "rule-based formation" is the old model of being told what to believe without it being explained to one. The first priest to do my personal instruction (I bailed on RCIA because it had zero content, and was all about feeling good about Jesus) was an elderly Irishman formed in that system. I appreciated him at first because he cared about doctrine. But I quickly saw that he was unable to explain in any depth why the Church taught what it did. He thought it was sufficient to say, "Look, here's what the Church teaches, accept it if you want to, or reject it, but here's the deal." You can imagine how frustrating that was for somebody like me, who had great sympathy for the Church, but really wanted to know where this doctrine comes from. Yet I don't feel harshly toward this good priest. That was how he was raised.
I'm thinking that a lot of folks in that Conciliar generation were never taught the deeper reason why the Church teaches what it teaches, and when confronted with a culture, but within the Church and outside it, that forcefully challenged the Church ... found that they couldn't withstand the blast.
Let me find a political analogy, and see if that helps. I wrote a cover story for Natl Review that examined in part why the Netherlands went from being one of the most religious and conservative countries in Europe to being the most secular and liberal in a single generation. In a nutshell, it's like this: the Dutch are a strongly consensus-oriented people, very averse to conflict. In the 19th-c., leaders of the three blocs in the country -- the Protestants, the Catholics and the Socialists/secularists -- got together and worked out a power-sharing system, called "pillarization." The idea was that the country rested on three pillars, and that maintaining social and political unity depended on everyone trusting the leadership and falling into line. Disputes were worked out at the top, and everybody stayed in their own little pillar. They even had Catholic grocery stores, Catholic soccer teams, etc. Everybody stayed in his own pillar, and got along fine.
The Second World War broke all that up, and by the time the 1960s came, people began to question why they were still living according to pillarization, and all that entailed (esp. religious devotion). The leaders had no answer for them. And lacking the ability to articulate why it was impt to live this way, the old order collapsed. People had ceased to believe in it, because at some point they had grown comfortable in their belief that the world would always be the way they arranged it.
Holland has never recovered. And because the Dutch are strongly consensus-oriented, when the leadership stopped being able or willing to articulate its raison d'etre, the people crumbled too.
I think that dynamic may explain a lot of why the Church collapsed as it did post-Vatican II, even though in America, the 1950s were a golden age.
Posted by: Rod Dreher at Mar 19, 2004 11:41:58 AM
T Marzen,
The Church before V2 had become a "dissicated hollow shell"? I wasn't born until 1966, but your description seems hard to square with Carrie's recollections above, which are similar in kind to many such recollections I've heard over the years. I don't know if SS thinks of himself as among the "gnostic elect", but if he has any sort of devotion to the old Mass, he is certainly among the "oppressed". Don't you see anything problembatic about a church hierarchy trying to suppress its own tradition. As does GSJ above, you seem to be smearing the past to make the disaster of Vatican II appear "virtually inevitable".
Posted by: Bill at Mar 19, 2004 11:50:22 AM
GSJ's article in Crisis is superb. He, and Rod-above- identify some vastly important factors on How We Got To Where We Are Now. As strongly traditionalist as I am now, coming out of the wildest craziest educational and liturgical experiments in the GoGo60s and 70s, I would never argue that there was a golden age of Catholicism between WWII and end of V2. Mostly a lot of dry tinder, ready to burn from the sparks of dissent- or those who misinterpreted V2 for their own lib agendas. Combined with other factors:
1. I'm a precisely mid-period Baby Boomer. The explosion of births in Western nations following WWII will have implications lasting well into our twilight years.
2. Those Western nations, including ours, enjoyed the greatest period of economic growth in human history. More money. More college students. More toys. More time to think/speculate/experiment. More opportunities to go "slip-sliding away."
3. The accompanying horrors of the 60s- drugs, sexual experimentation, etc. George Weigel wisely notes in The Courage To Be Catholic that just as the Church wanted more dialogue with The World, The World was heading into a long dark tunnel with poisonous fumes.
Hey, there's no out-and-out persecution of Catholics. Yet. We still have the freedom to pray, worship, and even blog as we please. Look at the incredible culture-shifting success of TPOTC and related projects,such as the booklet on the Passion co-edited by Mark Shea. We may well be heading into a true Golden Age. Tempered through the fires of the past four decades.
Posted by: Gerard E. at Mar 19, 2004 12:01:03 PM
http://yawpings.stblogs.org/archives/013742.html
http://yawpings.stblogs.org/archives/013741.html
http://yawpings.stblogs.org/archives/013740.html
http://yawpings.stblogs.org/archives/013737.html
I posted a series on something last year that's similar. I put the links to the most important pieces above. Rod, check out the last one. It's beyond just catechesis, but it still applies.
Posted by: Mark Windsor at Mar 19, 2004 12:04:41 PM
Amy--
Right on.
SS--
I converted as an adult in 1981 and never set foot in a Catholic church while growing up, so I have absolutely no personal knowledge of the pre-VII Church. And as a typical post-VII convert under the influence of Chesterton et.al., I have experienced the unfortunate but
also typical alienation from the liturgy, psychologism, and all the rest.
So, partly as a result of that alienation, and in search of reverent worship, I've attended Indult masses on several occasions. On none of them have I felt myself to be in the presence of the Faith and Charity you describe. As a matter of fact they were nearly as dispiriting as the typical suburban parish, although in a somewhat different way. The common denominator was the absence of a sense of transcendence. Instead of icky We Are Church sentimentality the Indult Mass was simply dry--a priest muttering Latin that could not be followed because it could not be understood from more than ten feet away, a congregation seemingly off somewhere else mentally.
I am willing to believe that the Church is overall worse off now than it was pre-VII, but not that those days were so very marvelous, or that the loss of the Tridentine rite is the major problem or its restoration the answer.
Having said all that, though, I think the single greatest problem facing the Church, and the predominant feature of the sad shape we all seem to agree it's in, is the very large number of Catholics--priests, religious, bishops, laity--who no longer actually believe, but who continue to use the vocabulary of faith, only with the referents of the words being psychological states rather than external realities. (Many of them of course are not aware of this; many theologians are very well aware of it.) I do sometimes wonder if in this respect we aren't worse off than ever before.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at Mar 19, 2004 12:05:21 PM
Mr. Marzen:
1. I wasn't around pre-VII, so I'll take your word for it. As to whether your personal assessment is the accurate one, I've found it depends on whom you ask, so again, I'll take your word for it (as I'll take Ms. Carrie's word for it that it was how she remembers it).
2. We both can torture the statistics however we want, and tie them to whatever temporal correlation we want. While the Res Ipsa Loquitor will convince most reasonable people, I guess the better question to ask you is: what was the theological view of those who affected the changes? Everyone that formulated and implemented the VII changes was of course formed pre-VII. You're countering what you see as a false correlation with another false correlation (those responsible for the changes were formed pre-VII; therefore, pre-VII = the problem). If the VII leaders had stayed true to the unadulterated Faith, we'd be in better shape.
Let me put it this way: If Bishop X learned 2+2=4, then he came of age and started teaching 2+2=5 after 1962, it's *not* his learning 2+2=4 before 1962 that's the problem.
2+2=4. "Pro Multis" = "For Many". Procreation is the primary end of Marriage. The Jews must convert to Catholicism to be saved. Etc.
3. Ignore the problems VII modernism has caused if you wish. All I and others have "returned to" is the Faith practiced up to VII. I'm hoping you're not one of those people from the older generations that can't see that, yes, your generation might actually have made some mistakes. Regardless of who was/is culpable for the rampant modernism, my eyes are open *right now*, and the VII modernist church that I see doesn't look good. I *do see* that there is a Remnant catacomb Church that maintains the Faith.
Mr. Neumeier:
Point taken. I read Ms. Welborn's comment to mean that VII had little-to-nothing to do with the present state of Catholicism. You're right, Holy Church has been in a bad way in the past, and catacomb Catholics realize that persecution is the rule, rather than the exception, when it comes to Our Faith. However, if the Arian Heresy (for instance) was indeed bad, the Modernist Heresy is even worse.
Heretical hierarchy there have always been, but Remnant Faithful have always been around, as well. UIOGD,
Posted by: Sulpicius Severus at Mar 19, 2004 12:10:09 PM
But Rod, look at the Mass. As Chris Ferrara and Tom Woods have pointed out in their book The Great Facade, the V2 Constitution on the Liturgy was not a conservative document. All of the innovations regarding the Mass are authorized by the Liturgy Constitution and the Church has confirmed that the new Mass is what the Council authorized. As the fruits of that Mass become manifest, it seems that it has become fashionable among some conservatives to say that the Mass was somehow hijacked and that the V2's Liturgy Constitution was never really implemented at all. But this is an attempt to deny the obvious. The new Mass is the Mass of V2 and if its not the "End of the World" it has at least been very unfortunate.
As for the reasons for the utter collapse of the Church in the wake of the Council, I think it may have been analagous to the situation described in Eamon Duffy's Stripping of the Altars, his book on the English Reformation. Duffy describes a well-catechized and devout English laity before the Reformation, which relatively quickly, gave up their faith. In England, it seems that the laity understood too well that the Church is a hierarchy, so when the bishops apostacized, the laity did likewise. Perhaps the laity of the 1950s were too deferential to the hierarchy, in that they accepted the hierarchy's boneheaded innovations, when, in retrospect, they should have mounted the barricades in defense of the faith.
Posted by: Bill at Mar 19, 2004 12:11:45 PM
On the lighter side:
Gee, I thought that the "Santoral Cycle" was eco-friendly transportation utilized by the junior Senator from Pennsylvania.
Posted by: Don Boyle at Mar 19, 2004 12:13:09 PM
Mr. Horton: Thanks your your insights. Have you tried an SSPX, CMRI, SSPV or independent chapel? Your experience with the Indult is similar to mine. A priest begrudgingly going through the motions, a congregation somewhere between Williambsurg-esque tourists and scaredy-cat Catholics, everyone fearful that they're least peep will upset their modernist bishop. Again, just personal experience -- but you're not the first one to relate such an experience with the Indult.
The problems with the Indult can take up another whole thread.
You do see my point, though, that even the Indult and the Novus Ordo Missae themselves are essentially different? UIOGD,
Posted by: Sulpicius Severus at Mar 19, 2004 12:19:34 PM
This is very interesting to me, born in '65, the last year of the V2 council [right?]. I have no firsthand pre-V2 experience, though looking back and comparing masses today w/what we experience in the 70s, we did not lose everthing at once [in spite of felt banners, guitars, etc.--which we mostly experienced at the outdoor Shrine of OL of the Snows]. We had Jesus on the cross, crucified (lacking in many Churches today--no longer in my childhood parish either!); we chanted, though in English; our whole school attended daily masses; we attended Stations as a school during Lent, etc.
It is interesting that perhaps, we [collectively, those who were alive then] pre-V2 perhaps just followed through not understanding what undelay all our practices and beliefs. I found that also in my experience in a 1970s parochial school. I have been eager to know and understand as much as I can since I've been back for 10 years now.
I am wondering if the real legacy of V2 has been the factionalism that has erupted. It seems as thought there was (thought to be) some decentralization, which seems to have gone all the way down to individual conscience, resulting in individualized deism by Catholics. This decentralization and independence of judgment has resulted in much disagreement and a great lack of unity among Catholics in what our most important values are and whether we are really obligated to follow beliefs such as those prohibiting contraception.
Can we return to some level of unity--obviously, not like before, but with true understanding and implementation of the V2 council's intent?
Posted by: Peggy at Mar 19, 2004 12:22:47 PM
SS says "2+2=4...Procreation is the primary end of Marriage". Not quite even in the times before VCII. Take a look at the Roman Catechism and then to G. Grisez's "Living a Christian Life" on how 'Procreation is the end of marriage' without nuance never was as 2+2=4.
Posted by: Ignacio at Mar 19, 2004 12:42:15 PM
