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July 28, 2004
Living Vatican II
From the latest issue of Crisis, a good article by George Sim Johnston
Traditionalist Catholics who blame all the Church’s recent problems on Vatican II should ponder a few questions: If the Church was in such good shape before the council, why did things fall apart so rapidly in the 1960s? How do you account for the fact that the rebellion was the work of bishops, theologians, and priests who came out of the Tridentine system? Had all those priests and nuns who suddenly wanted to be laicized received adequate formation under the old system? Why was there so much dissatisfaction? It won’t do simply to rattle off statistics about the decline of the Church since the council. There’s no question that there were good and holy Catholics in the old days—even some saints—and that since the council we have lost much that is good. But there were also problems waiting to erupt. Might not the Magisterium have been correct in addressing them in the council’s documents?Called by the council to full spiritual adulthood, a significant number of priests and religious instead broke out in adolescent rebellion, a discharge of decades of narrow, rules-based formation and institutional frustration. It seemed that the preconciliar Church had produced legions of clerics who were incapable of intelligently and prayerfully studying the council’s documents. And their bishops certainly weren’t going to insist. Imagine Father Burner in J. F. Powers’s devastating short story “The Prince of Darkness” (1947) picking up Gaudium et Spes; he would quickly fix himself a drink and turn on the television.
And please...read the entire article, not just this quote, before you enter the discussion!
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Just in case I'm not the last person in St Blog's who hasn't seen this Crisis article by George Sim Johnston, exploring how it wasn't quite all Vatican 2's fault.... here's the link to After the Council: If the Church... [Read More]
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Comments
Good article? I'd say it's a great article! The best thing I'v read in years. I had let my subscription to Crisis lapse but I'll renew it today based on the strength of that one article.
Posted by: thomas tucker at Jul 28, 2004 11:03:08 AM
AMEN! You tell it brother! As a Catholic born the year after Vatican II closed, this is the way I have felt for a long time, but have never been able to articulate nearly as well as this. Whenever I bring the point up to people that Catholics went wacko in a few short years, so how could have been so good in the 1950s, they have no answer.
Here is the answer. Many Catholics in the USA, particularly, in the the 1960s, hit puberty and decided to go into rebellion, quietly or no.
Posted by: Chris at Jul 28, 2004 11:24:35 AM
He makes several great points. My only criticism would be his labelling of Pre V II Catholicism as the "Tridentine System", as though the problem was the Tridentine Mass itself (perhaps he did not intend that implication). Seems to be the reverse V II argument - Vatican II was not the cause of the Church's problems post V II; the Tridentine Mass was not the cause of the problems of the pre V II era. In fact, much like V II is probably what keeps (and has kept) Catholicism limping along until it gets running again, the Tridentine Mass may have prevented everything from going completely kablooey before hand. V II and the N.O. were not inextricably intertwined - we could have had V II w/o the N.O. and possibly have been the much better for it.
Posted by: c matt at Jul 28, 2004 11:37:46 AM
It's pretty good, and to good effect offers up the best counter-argument to the traditionalist position: if the pre-council Church was in such great shape, why was it so easily shattered, and by those who were raised in it, no less? I have yet to hear a coherent reply to this that doesn't involve a great deal of question-begging.
Further, his point about the roles of secularism and affluence/integration of Catholics is inarguable as well.
But I also think he's a bit off on his criticism of the pre-1965 Church as well. It held strong currents of reform in everything from liturgy to biblical studies to the lay vocation (Catholic Action, the Catholic Truth Society, Catholic Worker, etc.). None of the trajectories of these movements continued on remotely the same path in the wake of the council.
Moreover, he goes way too easy on the Conciliar documents themselves. The "liberals" did more than "commandeer a few phrases"--the prolixity and ambiguity found in more than a few of the documents lend themselves to radical interpretations, with all that entails.
Still, a worthwhile essay, and hopefully one that provokes much discussion.
Posted by: Dale Price at Jul 28, 2004 11:47:43 AM
Let me begin by stating that I am not a radical traditionalist. I am, perhaps, a neo-traditionalist. I have no memory of the preconcilar Church, and am not the sort who goes around yelling "down with Vatican II!"
That said, this article seems to be largely an exercise in sophistry. It sets up a straw man (that traditionalists claim the preconcilar Church was flawless), and then promptly knocks it down. I don't know anyone who would make such an absurd claim.
Of course there were problems prior to Vatican II. Pope St. Pius X warned of the increasing influence of modernism in 1907.
The criticism of Vatican II, or at least the "spirit" thereof, is that rather than once again warning against modernism, it seems, again, at least in spirit, to have embraced same.
Mr. Johnston repeatedly criticizes Catholics of the prior era as "rules-based," but not living the full Faith. What have we now? Some might say that we have a generation of people who don't live the full Faith and ignore Church teaching (the "rules" he apparently is dismissively speaking of).
That is not to say that all that has come from the postconcilar Church is bad. On the contrary, we can see a cleansing and restorative trend right now. But to dismiss valid criticism as some sort of misty-eyed nostalgia for the preconcilar Church is hardly telling the whole story.
Posted by: B Knotts at Jul 28, 2004 11:50:00 AM
Excellent article. It could be pointed out that Vatican II may have saved the Catholic Church from an even greater crisis. I think that Pope John XXIII had great foresight in realizing that there were deep issues that needed to be addressed. The problems that we faced after the council may have in fact been muted because of the Vatican II.
Posted by: Badly Drawn Catholic at Jul 28, 2004 11:50:39 AM
Here's a link to a New Oxford Review article offering Alice von Hildebrand's thoughtful but critical response to the Johnston piece.
Posted by: Rod Dreher at Jul 28, 2004 11:52:42 AM
C Matt,
Why would the expression "Tridentine System" refer to the Tridentine Mass in particular? It seems to refer to the state of affairs after the Council of Trent. I don't think Vatican I really changed much, so one can think of the brief post-Vatican I era as part of the much longer post-Tridentine era.
Posted by: Hamilcar at Jul 28, 2004 11:58:16 AM
I think he nails it. I wonder if the Council in fact was held too late. What if it had taken place in the 1950s or between the World Wars? I guess it happened when the Spirit wanted it to but I still wonder if the Church was running on empty.
Rod, I think the von Hildebrand piece is in response to Johnston's previous piece on Vatican II which ran in the spring.
Posted by: Conor Dugan at Jul 28, 2004 11:59:36 AM
Reminds me of a dog I once had. I vicious pit bull. One day at the park I removed his muzzle and took him off-leash (quickly climbing the nearest tree) and he proceeded to tear around the park, eating all the children and more than a few parents. Eventually he grew tired and while he was resting some of the parents began suggesting violent things against my dog. But from up in my tree I defended him saying, "You down there wallowing in pessimism and negativity, how dare you bring your legalisms and uncharitable accusations against the vicious hunk of killing flesh lying before you! Open your heart to the great experience of the universe and know that the road to freedom is fraught with perils and detours and only be navigating these, and occassionally tripping and stumbling and becoming lost, can a murderous beast become the man's beast friend that he longs to be."
To which some silly man responded, "Dude, why didn't you just train your dog not to eat children before you took off his muzzle and let him off leash?"
And I castigated that man for judging me. And for failing to have love in his heart. And for being legalistic. And a pessimist. Silly mean-spirited fool.
Posted by: Loudon is a Fool at Jul 28, 2004 12:03:33 PM
No offense intended, but that's a fairly abysmal analysis. And I say this as someone who's known nothing other than the Vatican II Church (born after the Council, and after the Change in the Mass), and yet still serves weekly at a Novus Ordo.
Why? Because it posits a fissure between one "epoch" and the following one, describing a "reform" which doesn't seem supported by the documents themselves.
In a recent article in the New Oxford Review, responding to this, Alice von Hildebrand points much of the difficulty with this approach out, but a few elements bear underscoring.
First of all, the aim of Vatican II is to the world, to something that is lacking in the World, not in the Church. To portray the Pre-conciliar and post-conciliar churchs at odds with one another is to misrepresent the council's understanding of itself.
This is a frequent tact of the neoconservative Catholics, though, because it aids in the presentation of the Council as a vindication of certain aspects of dissent which they may have been flirting with (in ecumenism, primacy of conscience; in "gender" relations, feminism, and a reinvisioning of the universal call to holiness as a particular call to this or that profession; in political matters, classical liberalism) prior to the council, and one thing all repentant sinners know is the lure of the temptation of vindication--being told that we were not so wrong after all. . . .
This notion of the universal call to holiness as a particular, rather than a general call (the particular vocation being to the Priesthood, religious life, or duties of marriage) is particularly pernicious, and not fully conceived because it exalts the protestant derived notion of the individuality of religious experience, at the expense of the corporate, "universal" call to holiness as a part of the Mystical Body, with its mystical division of labor.
It does so for the sake of vindication, to try to reassert for Martha that her part is in fact as good as the better part that Mary chose, and that Jesus meant something else in his rebuke. But in attempting to exalt the active over the contemplative (again, ignoring Testem Benevolentiae) and the individual over the corporate, this ill considered move strikes at the very heart of Christian solidarity. Take the example of Maritain--how much is the ressertion of the stultification of the preconciliar Church, simply apologetics for having been wrong about contraception??? Are those of us who've repented enough to want to embrace the docility of a Mary learning at the foot of Jesus, still to be held hostage to this quixotic tilting at Trent?
What do we have now, even amongst the "conservative" Catholic movement, but a bunch of autonomous individuals, running around, frenetically working out their repentance and salvation, all the while shirking the fear and trembling which comes along with knowning one is intimately implicated in the Church suffering--through patience, patior, not doing something so that our suffering can be added to Christ's, and so that we don't, by doing something ill considered (changing something, criticizing someone, expressing our dissatisfaction with not being the center of attention) add to someone else's suffering.
So when the author says: "but it wasn’t spiritually creative. The council offered the difference between a minimalist, rules-oriented Catholicism and full discipleship, especially for the laity" is this by any means demonstrated? I wasn't there for the preconciliar church, so you can accuse me of naivete, but you can't accuse me of nostalgia.
And what every Catholic who's grown up in this environment, particularly in America, is that the exaltation of the individual over the corporate conception of the Church, by pitting one against the other, as this article does by positing a reform, has produced a Church in which you must go out and discover everything for yourself, because every one is enjoining "conscientious" mistakes, which allow you to fully "embrace" your faith (translation, that they have fully embraced their faith because of their disobedience. . . unlike all those excessively docile rosary praying old matrons, then they can sit in judgement on what constitutes authentic faith), and if you simply wish to know what you "ought" to do, as the rich young man asked Christ, and was rewarded with the answer, not a rebuke, then you are part of the problem.
Of course as we're all navigating these profoundly individualistic paths of discovery (ie. loving and doing what we will, after having chucked the collected wisdom of the medieval and counterreformation "accretions" on just what loving is) what we get is misery, that we inflict on ourselves, and on others as we betray the solidarity of the parish, family and Church community life by individually going our own way.
This is what these prophets of the "spirit of reform" (rather than the "spirit of Vatican II") never bother to tell us amidst all the indictments of the cant and wrote of the preconciliar devotional life--how do we avoid the needless (as opposed to needful and solidarity encouraging) suffering these idiosyncratic quests for authenticity occasion? How do we get back the insights of St. Thomas into the human condition, and its purpose, after we've chucked it all cause someone found a given theological manual "boring"?
Even now, we're still getting in this piece that we don't know how to establish this continuity--with the Mystical Body, and with tradition, but we're darn lucky for having shrugged off stultifying Tridentine Catholicism. Even without imputing all the catastrophes of the last 40 years to the Council itself (its documents), is it permissible to demand now an answer to this question, without all the slights and sophistries about excess "devotionalism" and what not, as to what the lesson of the Council actually is?
What aspects of "science" are herein endorsed?? Of philosophy?? Is Descartes only our whipping boy when we need a convenient straw man, or is there a disjunct here elided for the purpose of giving these "neoconservative" adepts the power to interpret to us what parts of tradition are still valid?
Posted by: al at Jul 28, 2004 12:16:58 PM
The image that keeps returning is one that the late great Frank Sheed reported witnessing in the late 60's: seeing a priest tear apart a rosary with his own hands (in front of a cafeteria full of Catholic high school students), dash the beads to the floor and loudly proclaim: "I'm glad we're through with this s - !"
This priest was almost certainly raised with May day crowning of our Lady; a few years previously he might have led one. And now he was doing, with adolescent bravado, what no one had ever truly internalized devotion to Mary or honoured her in any real way would ever do.
I have often pondered the lives of the great pre-Vatican II lay apostles (Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Frank Sheed & Maisie Ward, Catholic Worker movement, etc). These were giants who had wholly integrated their faith into their hearts and minds and whole lives. The pre-Vatican II Church nourished them but also set them apart. They were not the norm. From our perspective, it is difficult for us to grasp how dramatically they stood apart from the vast majority of the lay Catholics of their era.
American Catholicism of the late 19th and early 20th century was the great institution-builders. Most of our bishops were "bricks and mortar" men and their energy was put into new parishes and schools and hospitals, etc. And the institutions did an enormous amount of good. But we also looked to those institutions (and a protected all-Catholic environment) to automatically and successfully enable Catholics to deeply internalize the faith. For some, it worked very well. For many, it did not and Catholicism remained for them, as Johnson points out, "externalized and rule-based". The 60's just made this painfully obvious.
What the Church is calling us to now is the long, hard work of fostering the "hearts, minds, and souls" of men and women instead of brick and mortar; of intentionally putting our best pastoral energies and resources into nurturing the next generation of apostles and saints first. If we proclaim Christ, evangelize and nurture our own as disciples, and enable them to discern and live God's call, they will build and sustain the institutions. If we "build" the people, the institutions will follow.
Posted by: Sherry Weddell at Jul 28, 2004 12:20:41 PM
And also what "Loudon is a Fool" said, much more pithily.
The neoconservative Catholic establishment is the first to demand that their critics provide an alternative to the obvious calamities of the current status quo when they advance a specific criticism. What would you do different? they always say.
Well, proponents of the notion that Trent rather than Vatican II is to blame for the post conciliar ills, now is the time to explain, specifically, what you would do differently. Because supposedly we're doing that now.
And if we're not, then you're just running interference for the Devil.
Posted by: al at Jul 28, 2004 12:28:00 PM
Although I liked Johnston's article, I suspect a Traditionalist would simply retort that Vatican II was "infected" with the same spirit of heresy and license that plagued society in general during the sixties. He'd say that a legitimate council would have fought back harder, instead of capitulating.
(How many times have readers on St. Blog's come across a similar argument from Sulpicius Severus and his ilk?)
Posted by: Rich Leonardi at Jul 28, 2004 12:31:38 PM
Sherry writes: "For many, it did not and Catholicism remained for them, as Johnson points out, "externalized and rule-based". The 60's just made this painfully obvious."
Ironically, many Catholics on the Left take a Bare Minimum approach to the Faith that's still just as rules-based. We see this when posters write things like, "unless you show me a contrary document by the CDF, I'll continue advancing [fill in the blank]", even though it makes a hash of other elements of Church teaching.
And, yes, I know that "Right-thinking" people often do the same thing.
Posted by: Rich Leonardi at Jul 28, 2004 12:41:12 PM
The most important and original point in Johnston's brillant essay- the strong influence of Pope John II on Catholic thought- even as a seminarian. Talk about the right man for the job at the right time. Or that West, Bonnacci, Smith are enthusiastically teaching one of his most important lessons- The Theology of The Body. Might even have been the Holy Spirit's influence in these matters.
Posted by: Gerard E. at Jul 28, 2004 12:44:47 PM
Peace, all.
Interesting article indeed. I think Johnston overstates John Paul II's role at the council, but there is no doubt this pope's philosophy and theology have been steered in large part by it.
Interesting comments, too. I would add:
1. Vatican II might indeed have come too late for Europe. 1870 would have been the perfect time for the Church to assist people in dealing with the political and scientific upheaval of those times. Instead they rammed through papal infallibility and left the laity to twist in the spiritual wind for another century. What a criminal waste.
2. Greeley and others think Vatican II saved the Church in many places from an even greater crisis. The promulgation of Humanae Vitae would have chased more Catholics away were it not for liturgical renewal. Say what you will about heterodoxy and dissent and not being real Catholics and all, but fewer clergy and closing parishes would have been about five to ten years ahead of where they are now if this had happened.
3. I'm pleased to see a rag like Crisis address the question openly: why would changes be afoot if the Church weren't so screwed up in 1959-62?
4. The "You Do Something About It" mentality could be a key. Conservatives would not have expected to do anything: they would have waited for leaders to lead. Progressives filled the power vacuum where pastors were unprepared to go. Clearly, mistakes were made post-1965. One would expect this of mortals. I think the post-conciliar period is better described as adolescent enthusiasm rather than adolescent rebellion. Maybe late 60's traditionalists sat on their hands instead of standing up for the values they saw as important. The problem is that they would have had to embrace the same attitudes of involvement and leadership they fumed over when liberals exercised it. And now they want to blame a liberal cabal taking over? Isn't that a lesson on playing the victim card?
Posted by: Todd at Jul 28, 2004 1:05:37 PM
"Instead they rammed through papal infallibility ..."
Let's remember that "ramming" was guided by the Holy Spirit.
Posted by: Rich Leonardi at Jul 28, 2004 1:18:10 PM
"1870 would have been the perfect time for the Church to assist people in dealing with the political and scientific upheaval of those times"
My point exactly. How would this have been done, other than it was? By endorsing some of the monumental falsehoods of the period, about philosophy, science, and man's nature, perhaps?
Posted by: al at Jul 28, 2004 1:28:56 PM
The audience here also largely lacks an experiential context for responding to this question.
Vatican II happened in the immediate wake of two existential challenges to Christian spirituality in the developed world:
1. The collapse of the European order in the World Wars, most especially the first in western Europe, and the Holocaust and subjugation of central-eastern Europe in the second. The scope of these events revealed the Church to appear small to many, shall we say. US Catholics participated, but did not experience these events in the same way.
2. The advent of mass communications and the struggles of peoples in non-Western parts of the world raised legitimate questions in the minds of many about how good Christianity really was compared to the spiritualities of other peoples. Gandhi's riposte that Christians should try Christinity was a profound a-rational challenge that leaked into the Western spiritual imagination much more deeply than the rationalism and anticlericalism of the Enlightenment and later science and philosophy.
There was a profound sense that the Church could not simply repackage its stock answers to satisfy the legitimate questions which the modern world posed after WW2. Or just shout louder and decry the apostasy and stupidity of those who disagreed with Her.
Posted by: Liam at Jul 28, 2004 1:44:04 PM
Todd,
I don't mean to sound flippant, but in your point #2 are you really saying that all sorts of Catholics said to themselves, "I don't like the Church meddling in my sex life, but those new guitars in Mass are groovy so I'll keep coming and just ignore what the Church is saying"?
And as to whether the Church is better for it, it is at least debatable that it is better to have folks who ignore doctrine remaining in the barq of Peter receiving what graces they may, or having them venture out of the boat to feel the wind and rough sees and realize their dependence on Our Lord.
Posted by: Matt W. at Jul 28, 2004 2:01:42 PM
Liam,
Gandhi's line may have resonated, but it was hardly a line the Church had never heard before. St. John Chrysostom preached that if every Christian acted like a Christian there would be no pagans left in the Empire.
Posted by: Matt W. at Jul 28, 2004 2:06:31 PM
To the many young comentators with no experience of the pre-Vatican II church, an anecdote from an American novitiate, 1960s:
Novices singing around the campfire on a cool summer evening. Bell rings for night prayer. Director of Novices dispenses with a return to chapel with the phrase: "Night prayer on your own this evening." Novices ironic response to each other: "It goes without saying!"
Nominal response, in other words: "Of course we'd say night prayer on our own if we didn't do so in common." Subtext: "It (night prayer) goes without saying." Believe me, it went without saying. When in subsequent years the structure disappeared, all haywire inevitably broke loose.
I believe that James Hitchcock wrote in 'What Really Happened in the 1960s' that large numbers of seminarians and religious had very little sense of the spiritual. We conformed to a structure that was indeed "externalized and rule based" on behalf of admirable service and adventure goals.....like Peace Corps volunteers of subsequent generations.
So I welcome non-romanticized discourse about the pre-Vatican II era that helps contextualize what has happened since.
Posted by: Mike McG... at Jul 28, 2004 2:08:55 PM
Hold on there, Matt C. As Liam has made abundantly clear, this is a subject for old Europeans who have experienced the struggles of third world pagans. Please present your bona fides before commenting further.
Posted by: Loudon is a Fool at Jul 28, 2004 2:12:34 PM
"Instead they rammed through papal infallibility ..."
Let's remember that "ramming" was guided by the Holy Spirit.
Also remember that the Council Fathers had intended on covering other issues, but were driven out of town by the Franco-Prussian War -- and the Holy Spirit.
Posted by: Chris at Jul 28, 2004 2:17:15 PM
