Post or Pre Vatican II

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JimR-OCDS said:
Catholics are no less informed about Church doctrine than before Vatican II.

I grew up in pre-Vatican II and Catholics followed what the priests and nuns told them, blindly. They could not explain doctrine, just give yes and no answers.
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From World War I though 1960, a large number of lay Catholics were reading G. K. Chesterton, Frank Sheed, Fulton Sheen, and a whole series of books published by many Catholic publishers. Some secular publishers such as Doubleday had Catholic divisions which printed both the classics of Catholic spirituality and doctrine, as well as explanations of dogma. The market was definitely there.

Catholic colleges required about 1/4 of all college credits to be in Theology or Philosophy. Retreats for laity were far more common than they are now. This is not to deny the value of recent renewal movements, just setting straight the historical record. Not everyone was reading Aquinas and Chesterton, or going on a weekend retreat in 1960, but if you were not, you likely were influenced by Catholic laity who were thus informed and formed.
 
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Blanket statements are not helpful. I grew up pre-Vatican II, in a devout family who worked hard to know and teach the faith to their children. We knew the faith as children very well, and were taught it thoroughly in Catholic school as we prepared to receive the sacraments. The big change began to occur when I was in highschool, and religion classes got much more touchy-feely. Despite going to a Catholic high school, my mom insisted on giving us solid religious instruction at home once a week to supplement what we were learning. As an adult I’ve worked hard to build on that solid foundation by not only practicing but continually learning about the Catholic faith.
It is simply not true that those who grew up before Vatican II merely followed their priests and knew little themselves. That was emphatically not my experience.
 
Few people even heard of G.K. Chesterson and Frank Sheed before Vatican II.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen was popular and loved because of his television program, but he didn’t teach doctrine as much as he taught about the gospel itself and philosophy.

Even then, more Catholics watched his TV program than read his books.

Before Vatican II, less than 15% of high-school graduates went on to four year colleges.

In fact, many never even finished high-school because of WWII.

Today, 30% and higher high-school graduates go on to further education.

Jim
 
Knowing the Baltimore Catechism by rote, is a far cry from understanding the doctrine and doesn’t necessarily mean one is more spiritual.

Jim
 
This isn’t a question of necessarily following Vatican II or not. Vatican II didn’t call for women to remove their head coverings. Vatican II didn’t call for the removal of sacred music (in fact, Gregorian Chant was encouraged). Vatican II also didn’t call for altar girls, the priest facing people, communion in the hand, the feminization of the Church, (making it more touchy-feely) moving the tabernacle from the center, total removal of Latin, (it was also actually encouraged) removing communion rails, 10 extraordinary ministers per 40 people at mass, liturgical ministries offered to women such as temporary lectures, and sermons remitted of the second main part of God’s nature: judgement.

Times were changing then and many were all too excited for changes, maybe too excited. Change occurred where it was warranted but not by Vatican II.

I would say stick with what the Church has been most consistent on. That tends to be most obvious in the parishes that follow more closely the teachings of the actual Vatican II council, and prior to it.
 
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Arkansan said:
You seem to be missing the point. If people consistently have a hard time understanding you, that’s a sign that your manner of speaking could use improvement.
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I guess Jesus was a pretty poor speaker then.

His words were constantly misunderstood even by his own disciples, and 2,000 years later they are still incredibly misunderstood.

Jesus is famous for his vague, ambiguous, and easily misunderstood words.
 
@otjm

WOW.

If I could give you all my likes for the day, I would!

This thread should’ve been closed after that comment!
 
misstherese said:
the priest facing people,
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It certainly encouraged it. The Roman Missal was the response to Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the product of it. SC is not by any stretch a rubrical document. The Missal is. It not only allows for it, it requests that free-standing altars be used to encourage it. As such it is an official Church discipline and option, not just something cooked up on a whim.

It may in fact surprise many to know that even the pre-Conciliar rubrics had Instructions for celebration of the Mass facing the people. I own an old 1935 ceremonial from France to back that statement up.

More widespread experimentation of Mass facing the people was in fact carried out at the abbey of Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, the seat of the Benedictine Abbot Primate, in the 1940s, well before the Council. It was one of the fruits of the Liturgical Movement which dates back to the pontificate of Pius X at the turn of the XXth century.

You can therefore be quite certain that the Council Fathers knew about it, and thus implicitly endorsed it by not explicitly proscribing, or even mentioning, it.
 
misstherese said:
I would say stick with what the Church has been most consistent on. That tends to be most obvious in the parishes that follow more closely the teachings of the actual Vatican II council, and prior to it.
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Vatican II did recommend liturgical reform, particularly more active and verbal participation by the faithful. A lot of specifics as to what that should entail were filled in afterwards or outside of the council.

Different communities did look at things differenly, its a big church. But no community, no territorial parish or diocese has remained the same as they were in the 1960’s.
 
I remember the ‘old days’ and I do not believe the 'all too common attitude of laity was ‘pray, pay, and obey’. That to my mind is a canard and an unfair assessment of the faith of my parents, grandparents, and other forebears. I think a lot of what you state as ‘the attitude before’ and the ‘attitude after’ is colored by what you personally were told in your own personal experience, and not necessarily what actually occurred for others, indeed, for the majority of people.

I’ll give you an example from a book called "The Daughter of Time’ by Josephine Tey. in the book, a police inspector in hospital becomes involved in research into the life of King Richard III --a man accused of murders of King Henry VI, Henry’s son, his own nephews, etc. (in point of fact he is certainly not guilty of the first two, and hard evidence acquits him of the latter two as well). But in the course of the event Inspector Grant and his assistant find proofs showing how events ‘proven’ in history were actually made up, and Grant remarks on an example that he himself witnessed --a ‘massacre in Tonypandy, Wales’, in which people were murdered by evil men fighting for their rights, and which is celebrated and ‘never to be forgotten’ but in which the supposed heroes were actually lawbreakers and nobody was killed or even hurt at all!’

The point, of course, is that often what we are ‘told’ happened did not happen in the way it was said to happen, or may not even have happened at all. . .but that even though there are people living who actually know that what is claimed to have occurred did not occur, who witnessed the actual truth, remain SILENT and allow the falsehood to pass into history as truth.

A truly sobering thought.
 
I am glad you have sobering thoughts.

It is not my isolated opinion; there were sociological studies done of Catholics in the 1950’s, There was Altar society (aka who does the wash this week) and the Knights of Columbus. Beyond that, not much. The Social Action movement (started in large part by Dorothy Day) started to pick up individuals here and there across the US; for example, in Portland several students/graduates of University of Portland started a soup kitchen downtown in the area a lot of poor collected. it was, however, a very small minority of individuals who started reaching out directly to the poor. For the most part, it was a few here and a few there, supported to some extent by the Church. There was Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne, started in France as part of the Social Action Movement, and eventually reached the US as Young Christian Students; again reaching a small segment of high school and college students.

But read the documents of Vatican 2 and the emphasis they put on the laity in some documents; apparently I have the backing of a whole lot of bishops of the world as to the importance of the laity in the Church, beyond occupying pews.

Perhaps a quote from Bishop Wright of Pittsburg, during the 49th General Congregation of Vatican 2 might be illustrative of my point:

“The faithful have been waiting for four hundred years, for a positive consiliar statement on the place, dignity and vocation of the layman.” He found fault with the traditional notion of the laity being defined in Church law as being too negative; the layman was defined as “neither a cleric nor a religious.” Once the Council had declared “the theological nature of the laity, the juridical bones of the Church would come alive with theological flesh and blood.” From The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber by Fr. Ralph M Wiltgen, p. 101.

In short, it was important enough to the bishops of the world that a schema on the laity was specifically proposed and debated. Had the Church prior to that openly and actively been addressing the laity, we would not have comments, for example by Archbishop D"Souza of Bophal, India, stating “My brothers, are we - the Catholic clergy - truly prepared to abdicate clericalism? Are we prepared to consider the laity as brothers in the Lord, equal to ourselves in dignity in the Mystical Body, if not in office? Are we prepared no longer to usurp, as formerly we did, the responsibilities which properly belong to them?..” ibid., p. 187.

You may feel that the laity did much. From what I have noted, it is clear that before Vatican 2, there were movements within the Church, led by laity, in the area of Social Action; but it was coming from the bottom up, not from the leadership of the Church. I am speaking, however, of an overall attitude, from the top down, that laity were there to pray, pay and obey; and not much of anything was considered beyond that; Vatican 2 was a watershed in the Church in considering the part that laity have beyond that.
 
In addition to your comment, I would add that anyone who has sat down and actually read the documents of Vatican 2 will figure out fairly quickly that Vatican 2 documents, and all of them, do not in any way list out line by line what they want the Church to do. There are no specifics.

In regards to the liturgy, the bishops clearly stated that they wanted a review of, and removal of, the bits and pieces which had been added on to the Mass over the centuries (they did not detail exactly what) and they wanted things which had been dropped out of the Mass over the centuries to be reviewed and brought back.

Liturgical research had been going on as you noted, since the time of Pope Pius 10th. While the vast majority of it was unknown to the laity, it certainly was not done in a closet. The short of it was that the bishops wanted to move back not to the earliest forms of the Mass, but to the time from around 300 - 500 forward.

Sit down and read the actual documents. They sketch out where the bishops want emphasis and change, but none of them detail out specific changes.

Over the centuries, the church, often of grave necessity, stepped into the world of civil law, and states, and politics. The difficulty was that the world was changing, the Secular world was moving away from the Church and in many instances turning against it, and the Church was slow to cede its influence. The Protestant Reformation was in part fueled by issues other than theology; often it was fueled by the perception that the Church was a major political player; look at the wars and decisions of various governments directed against the Church (and if you need to pick one, read of the history of the Church in England post Henry 8th). Try reading what went on prior to and post French Revolution; I for one highly suspect that at least some of the background to the leaders of the SSPX adopted positions intertwined with the mess that came forth from the revolution.

contined…
 
The Papal States started somewhere in the 700’s, and finally unwound in 1870. And it was in 1929 that Mussolini sorted out pretty much where we are today with the Lateran Treaty. I don’t recall anything in the Gospels indicating the Church was to be a temporal world power, but such was the case until by force, it was removed from such authority.

And 1929 is not all that removed from when John 23rd became Pope in 1958. Memories run long and deep, and too many (particularly in and around the Vatican) still were licking their wounds. Pope John called the Council; Cardinal Ottaviani and others tried to derail, it, and when they couldn’t, they tried to set the direction of the council by preparing the documents to be considered. That was soundly rejected in the first meeting. and the bishops indicated that this was their council, not the curia’s.

Much had gone on in many areas of the world other than within the confines of the curia and well beyond the issues of liturgy.

Within the hierarchy, many, particularly within the Curia were in a time warp of doing battle over the Protestant Reformation, and caught up with 450 year old answers to 500 year old problems. Pope John, and subsequently Pope Paul 6th, along with the bishops of the world, needed to move the focus to today.

Getting back to the liturgy, did every last one of the bishops know every last detail of liturgical research from the time of Pope Pius 10th to the start of discussing that document? Of course not; but when 2,147 bishops approve a document and 4 vote against it, one is dreaming if one posits they were ignorant of what they voted on. They knew very well where liturgical research was at, and signaled they wanted the Mass revised,

And I sincerely doubt a single one voting for revisions ever thought there would be two forms of the rite.
 
otjm said:
That, in part, was why so many devotions were so popular; people actually involved themselves in them. And that is why, in part, so many devotions are far less popular, or in many areas, are not to be seen. Our first and highest participation should be the Mass; and thanks to Vatican 2, we the laity have been invited and encouraged to participate in the other liturgy of the Church - the Liturgy of the Hours.
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The minority of Catholics who haven’t effectively apostatized are certainly much better off now!

Aside from the popularity of devotions and all the other objective measures.
 
Arkansan said:
Mass attendance rates would be an obvious one.
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you are making the assumption that V2 was the big reason for the decline in mass atttendance.

Personally I don’t think so. Attendance at Protestant churches had a parallel decrease, yet they were affected by V2, they never conducted their rituals in Latin either.
 
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