O
OraLabora
Guest
Without evidence to support your claim, calumny.
- Status
C
Cat
Guest
(quote above shortened by Cat, relevant part of quote posted above)
I disagree with this. I was alive (although just a child) at that time, and there were definitely crises and uncertainties, and there were definitely major contemporary problems that needed fixing, although they were still pretty much under the surface during the actual council meetings. But boy, did they ever explode over the second half of the 1960s–what a time to grow up!
When I was growing up, the Sixties were often called “the Sick Sixties” by decent people.
IMO, the fact that the Pope called for Vatican II is proof that he is (was, RIP) truly the Vicar of Christ, appointed to his position by the Lord Jesus Himself. He obviously saw, with God’s help, what was brewing in the world, and knew that the Church needed to prepare for what was coming.
O
OraLabora
Guest
I agree. The 60s saw the advent of artificial birth control; but besides that there was the Kennedy assassinations, the Vietnam war protests, the Cuban missile crisis, the terrorist groups in Europe, hippies, you name it. In my part of the world we had the FLQ terrorists (Front de Libération du Québec) with bombs regularly going off in Montreal, and the list goes on. We really felt that the world was crumbling around us and that our previously secure institutions (parliament, the Church, etc.) were completely impotent to stop it.
Technologically, things also started to takeoff. By the 60s television, which started to make intrusions in the 50s, was ubiquitous and present in nearly every home; the era of instant visual communications had started. Dollars to donuts it was the latter, TV, that made the Church realize she had to adapt because she could no longer shield us from other faiths, belief systems, and questionable morals.
All of the mainstream denominations went through considerable angst in the 60s. The Anglicans, with the Book of Alternative Services went through something similar to our liturgical changes, though probably even more radical.
The rest, as they say, is history. We are where we are and need to make the best of it. You can’t roll back the clock.
Y
YoungTradCath
Guest
There was no ecclesiastical meltdown, huge heresy to combat (Modernism was already condemned, although that doesn’t mean it was dead), crisis in the Church, heretic to anathematize, crusade to wage, dogma to declare, etc. Catholicism right before and during the Council was arguably doing very, very well. That is what I mean.
I know the world was starting to go a bit crazy at the time, but the Church it seems was rather insulated against it, at least for the time being. Then Vatican II happened and everyone thought–and reality here is not important because the way people perceive the Council for whatever reason is, in this case, far more historically important than what it really says–the Council gave them license to do all kinds of simply crazy things. Very few people see Vatican II as a bastion against the world. Most see it as a marriage license between the Church and the world.
Never mind the fact that I think one of the big reasons Vatican II has been so absolutely disastrously implemented in the first place is because it tried to predict in the future and had far too much confidence in that elusive “modern world” that never came to exist. I don’t know of any Council in the past that dealt with things it thought were going to happen.
It seems to me that you are saying that Vatican II tried to shield the Church from the world.
Isn’t that the opposite of what the Council was intended to do?I mean, I really do not see how it can be said that Vatican II tried to keep the world off of the Church. I mean that in all seriousness. I simply cannot see how Vatican II was intended to be the Church’s response against the problems of the world at the time.
T
TrueLight
Guest
My grandmother’s pentecostal church is the same pentecostal church that it wa 60 years ago. It is just as conservative as it was. There may be little changes like women can wear a bit of foundation or powder, whereas before they weren’t allowed to wear any makeup.
The women are still not allowed to wear pants.
No one is officially allowed to go to parties or drink.
Yet the young people get married and raise their kids there.
Islam is not getting more modern, yet it continues to be a popular world religion.
I agree. I don’t understand how becoming more flexible, more modern and more ecumenical was supposed to help.
O
OraLabora
Guest
I think you have to look at it in the cultural context of each community. The Quebec of my youth was just shaking off the yoke of a very Jansenist Catholicism (many similarities with Ireland of the same period), where the Church was also in very close collaboration with a very corrupt government. I don’t think there’s any going back.
But there’s a big difference, for all their post-Vatican II flaws, the folks that are in church now are there because they want to be there, not because they want to be seen there, nor because they feared not being there (Jansenism played very big on people’s primal fears and played up human depravity with little accent on the positive). Their faith is very real and sincere especially the younger folks that revert. Oddly the younger are also the ones leaning more traditionalist, many many young people come to Mass at the abbey. It’s often their grandparents, and not their parents, that catechize them. The parents are the ones who rejected the Church.
That said, I wouldn’t want to go back to the 50s. I’ll take genuinely faithful people with the ****** music and the liturgical mood swings, if that’s what it takes, rather than our Jansenist 50s, and meanwhile I’ll work on the sidelines to promote Gregorian chant and good liturgy.
C
ConstantineTG
Guest
You have a point here. Can the culture of a Church be changed in about a decade or two? Remember than many of the supposed changes stemming from V2 came within 10-20 years of the council. I think it is impossible for a council to have sudden impact. Anything takes time to take effect. I firmly believe that things were set in motion a long time ago which resulted in what happened in the 60s and 70s. Vatican II just happened to be an innocent bystander passing by when the shooting happened and got caught in the crossfire.
Y
YoungTradCath
Guest
Eh, you’ve mentioned this before. This seems to be a geographically and generationally isolated series of unfortunate happenings. I don’t disagree with you that Jansenistic faith and an overly fearful ecclesiastical climate (side note: I do believe a healthy and well-balanced fear of God is good) are bad. However, “Extraordinary Form Mass/Reform of the Reform Ordinary Form Mass/Sane and good liturgy” or “Good, deep catechesis” does not equal “Jansenistic faith and fear-striking ecclesiastical climate.”
There are plenty of places before the Council that were, of course, extremely traditional yet were not plagued by the things that Canadian Catholicism was. In fact, probably most of the world wasn’t afflicted by such an unfortunate Church climate.
If the older generation of Canadian Catholics for the most part fears or dislikes the EF/strong homilies with deep doctrinal content/good catechesis because they associate it with the “bad old days”–and this is fully legitimate given the circumstances–then I think you will find there is just the same “trad subculture” in Canada as there is here.
Good liturgy and strong catechesis does not mean “going back to the Canadian Catholicism of 1952.” As an example, FSSP parishes in the US prove this, and I’m sure the FSSP parishes in Canada are in the same situation. I don’t deny that there was a problem in Canada, but Latin and deeply rubrical liturgy and deep catechesis didn’t cause it, regardless of whether or not people associate it.
You present a very personal and limited view, which is fine and I respect that, but I just wanted to point out that that seems to be an isolated problem, geographically and generationally. I am confident that canonically normal trad parishes in Canada are not like that.
That is what was so ruinous. The culture of the Church collapsed and something else replaced it, and it didn’t work. I have mixed feelings. Vatican II is fine and orthodox and what have you, but: 1. I believe the documents are far too enthusiastic and optimistic and, 2. I know that the Council happened at just about the worst point in history that it could have happened at.
O
OraLabora
Guest
I need to be more specific, the comments are limited to Quebec (and to some extent as I understand it, Ireland), and NOT Canada as a whole. The Catholic population of Quebec vs. the rest of Canada is not monolithic. Newfoundland and Quebec are really the only provinces founded by largely Catholic peoples; Newfoundland from Ireland, and Quebec from France. There are many similarities between the two. Elsewhere in Canada it’s a mix of Irish and more recent immigrants, the latter being responsible for the growth in Catholicism in Canada (it’s a popular misconception that Catholicism is receding in Canada, it’s growing through immigration). In other provinces with the possible exception of Newfoundland, there’s nowhere near as much bad blood towards the Church as in Quebec. In Quebec, we became like a teenager given the keys to dad’s car for the first time, and went over the top on changing things that weren’t called on to be changed.
I think we need to stop crying over Vatican II. It happened. It happened when it happened. Not all that came out of it was and is bad; in fact none of it was, it was instead misappropriated by groups with various agendas to fulfill. We have to figure out a way to work with what we have, and “steal back” Vatican II from those who misuse it and I think that’s what the Holy Father is trying to do. It will be impossible to put the genie back into the bottle and undo Vatican II completely.
Y
YoungTradCath
Guest
I agree that we need to completely rectify the problems that we have. But perhaps only one percent of what people think Vatican II did and wanted was really called for by the Council. So yes, I agree, let us fix things. My generation is not bogged down with the baggage of the past. However…
I believe it is very important to complain and moan so that our complaining and moaning will become part of Church history, something that future generations hundreds of years from now will remember, so that something like this does not happen again. Complain enough to make it a past error to never repeat. I personally feel a very deep sense of obligation to fixing this mess–for the record, I don’t know why I feel this way–and I also feel a very deep sense of obligation to do my part to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
R
Rich_C
Guest
We need to rebuild the culture, too if we can. Even with good catechesis, I think Catholic are too vulnerable to the snares of the world in the current mainstream Catholic culture in America.
O
OurBeloved
Guest
I think this is a great point. Just telling people right and wrong is not going to allow for people to live moral lives easily. The Culture has to be supportive of such an endeavor. The current culture we live in has been built on doing exactly the opposite.
To give an example, if consider modesty, the culture today is built up on being immodest and encouraging person’s to lead others to sexual temptation. In such a culture, asking someone to simply be modest is not going to work. Even if they wanted to be modest, they wouldn’t know how to start because there are no cultural values to inform them on how to be modest.
So overall, our culture needs to change as well. But as it stands, it is most likely that it will probably only change over a long period of time as people try to live moral lives the best they can. The destruction to our once great western culture has been done.
Y
YoungTradCath
Guest
The first thing we have to do is to build up Church culture. If that means having a fortress culture, almost a “ghetto Church,” then that is what must happen.
R
Rich_C
Guest
That’s more what I meant. American culture hasn’t even bottomed out yet. Within the Church, Catholics need a Catholic culture again. One that grounds its worldview in the communion of saints and economy of salvation (you know “offer it up,” “saints preserve us,” crossing oneself at the thought of danger, etc). It was a bulwark and only a few Catholic have it now, but we all need it. I don’t care if we look stereotypes from the “Bells of St. Mary’s,” it would be better than what we have in most cases.
O
OraLabora
Guest
I disagree. Cutting people off from Grace isn’t the right approach. Some people will respond to that Grace. Others will not. We can’t cut off those currently in error but who ultimately will respond, in order to punish those who won’t.
Sometimes I worry that this is the approach the Holy Father is taking. I hope and pray it isn’t.
O
OurBeloved
Guest
Well, excommunication is biblical. If you read in Scripture, St. Paul once asks the congregation to remove a sexual offender from the congregation i.e. excommunication before it was formally defined as such.
So, this is not about cutting off people from grace. Rather, it is about letting people do their own thing and figure out the actual need for God’s grace and to feel the consequence of what they do. Then they can come back to the Church once they understand their error.
If your logic is accurate, the church could never have excommunicated anyone and St. Paul would actually be suggesting something immoral.
O
OraLabora
Guest
Well, excommunication is usually reserved for very grave matters.
What we’re really talking about is laity perceiving things as error. But it isn’t up to us to say if it’s a matter for excommunication. We may have an opinion, but no actual authority.
Those with authority can decide if someone’s stubbornness is a matter for cutting them off from Grace or not.
P
pnewton
Guest
And arguably it was dropping members steadily. Furthermore, these last two generations are in a unique time of change in the history of man. In any case, arguing is irrelevant as this is the course the Church took. Obviously many saw a need for the council.
E
edwest2
Guest
Your last statement is incorrect and your summary was confusing at best. Catholics need to know precisely how we got to where we are today.
People inside and outside the Church did things and we do not have to settle with anything going on in our particular countries right now. We cannot make the best of it and the clock has nothing to do with anything.
Radicals, anarchists and sexual deviants wanted to change the world into their image and likeness and wanted us to fall into the pit with them. We are to renounce culture that presents falsehood as truth.
Peace,
Ed
R
Rich_C
Guest
I won’t take extra time to look up the source, since you didn’t either, but everything I’ve read (Fr. Greeley’s book on VII was one) says that in 1962 conversions to Catholicism were more common than today and fewer people were leaving than today. Also, vocations were much higher then. So was weekly Mass attendence and attendence at public devotions outside of Mass like vespers and novenas.
The council was not called to address problems with people leaving or with problems finding converts, or with problems of getting the laity to come to Church multiple times a week. Those were not problems in 1962. They are new problems, whatever cause you attribute.
- Status