What do people blame Vatican 2 for and why?🤔

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I take it you may be too young to have experienced what parishes were like for a few decades after Vatican 2?

It’s generally blamed for
  • people leaving the Church and declining attendance at Mass (IMHO there are several reasons for this, not all related to Vatican II)
  • a general weakening of Catholic morals and traditions in favor of a less formal and “anything goes” approach
  • the undesirable remodeling of many old Catholic churches and undesirable design of new ones built post-Vatican II
  • vocations falling off and the people who did join the priesthood or religious orders being undesirably “modern” in their approach and often quitting the priesthood or the order within a few years
  • religious education of children becoming very muddled and fluffy with emphasis on “Jesus loves you” but almost no concrete training in catechism, sin, or Church precepts
  • a decrease in Mass attendance, confession, prayer, and Marian devotion as these things were no longer emphasized as important
  • a decrease in reverence generally
As one who grew up in the post-Vatican II era, it was a weird time to be Catholic and all of the above did happen to a noticeable extent and the older people in my family were bothered by it. At the time you did not have the option of going off to a “traditional” parish, as they didn’t exist. Tridentine Latin Mass was generally not permitted then as the Vatican wanted everybody to get on board with the new form. I remember a couple times the priest at my mother’s old parish gave Communion with people kneeling at the altar rail and the older folks talked about it with great astonishment afterwards.
 
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It’s blamed because all the changes I listed were thought to have come about as a direct result of changes in policy and directives made by Vatican 2.

Basically a whole bunch of stuff was changed all at once in a very short span of time. The Mass itself was changed in a major way. The Mass music was changed. The way churches looked and were set up inside was changed. What people wore to Mass and what priests and nuns wore daily was changed in a major way. The way priests and religious were expected to behave changed. The way kids were taught the faith in Catholic school or CCD was changed. The expectations for what a good Catholic would be doing to practice their faith in daily life were changed.
Whole lot of change and all of it stemming from Vatican II.

I’m not sure why you’re asking “why is Vatican 2 blamed”. Priests and bishops don’t get to just change all this stuff themselves. You need a big Vatican directive for this much change, which is what Vatican 2 was.
 
@Tis_Bearself, the church I came back to a couple of years ago seems to be trying to get back some of what was lost (compared to the church as I left it in the early 90s). Responses were changed to be better, more consistent translations. It seems that Marian devotion are up. Heck, my parish even has bells at communion. Not having left, did you notice anything concrete that precipitated this change? When it started happening?
 
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I think it started happening some time in the 1990s when all the old hippies who were mostly pushing the changes started to age out and new younger people interested in traditions began to take their place. It also helped that the FSSP came along, who were able to promote traditional Catholicism without being in schism like the SSPX had been. Then later on in the 2000s, Pope Benedict issued Summorum Pontificum, which made it much easier for Tridentine Latin Masses to be celebrated. Now there are options for traditional Masses all over the place. Back in the 70s and 80s you didn’t have that, and when you saw a Latin Mass being offered, many times it was being said by some schismatic group, so people would avoid it because they didn’t want to risk committing a sin by going to a schismatic Mass.

By the way, I was a sporadic Mass-goer from about 2000 to 2013, though I didn’t consider myself to have “left”. i did have to get back on board with all the new responses when I started going semi-regularly again.
 
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Thanks. Been wondering about it a lot but it didn’t seem important enough to start a thread for it.
 
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Some people wrongly blame V2 for everything bad that happened afterwards. But others depict the Church of the 1950s as a nightmare, and claim V2 was the source and beginning of all that is good.

Both are wrong.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
when all the old hippies who were mostly pushing the changes started to age out and new younger people interested in traditions began to take their place.
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The hippies were in charge in the 90s, and didn’t start “aging out” until later. It was the people raised in an authoritarian church who lost power in the 90s. They were largely raised during WW2 and recognized the need for discipline. They were able to suppress the antipathy to the reformed liturgy.

The hippies arose in the 60s and came to power in the Church in the 80s and 90s. They believed in diversity and inclusivity. They allowed the disgruntled few to mount a campaign against the new liturgy (and its proponents.), inculturation, and other values affirmed at Vatican II.

A stable acceptance of Vatican 2 is probably at least another 20 years away. The traditionalist rebellion will find a place for their preferences and will accept the inclusivity and diversity that includes them.
 
The 1960’s were a transformative time for our culture, our nation, our world as well as the Church, and Vatican 2 was a major event designed to address the changes that came down during that era.

People think that if it wasn’t for V2, the church would have remained the same as it was indefinitely, and there is where they are wrong.
 
Pretty much everything wrong in the Church, which is unfair because that corruption was there before. The Church has always had corruption though, the Church has always had disobedient priests and Bishops, like Judas Iscariot for instance. The reason that people blame Vatican II, is because it took place around the same time as the sexual Revolution, and what happened, was instead of people actually reading what Vatican II documents say, they decided, that the Vatican apparently approved of some of the ideas of the sexual Revolution, which isn’t even close to true. I do believe, however, that some of those ideas got in to seminaries, so you ended up with a whole generation of priests, that not only didn’t know basic sexual morality, but didn’t even know what to Church teaches about it. As for the Liturgy being in the vernacular, that’s really not a new thing. I’m not even sure why that
is such an issue with people, given that the reason that the Mass was in Latin in the western church for such a long time is because Latin was the vernacular, eventually, it became the lingua Franca, but not the vernacular, but it became at a point where most people could still understand at least some of it. I hope I’ve given my two cents, I hope I used my words wisely, and I hope you read them
 
Dovekin said:
The hippies were in charge in the 90s, and didn’t start “aging out” until later. It was the people raised in an authoritarian church who lost power in the 90s. They were largely raised during WW2 and recognized the need for discipline. They were able to suppress the antipathy to the reformed liturgy.

The hippies arose in the 60s and came to power in the Church in the 80s and 90s. They believed in diversity and inclusivity. They allowed the disgruntled few to mount a campaign against the new liturgy (and its proponents.), inculturation, and other values affirmed at Vatican II.
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Something about the way you have framed this seems off.

What do you mean by saying the WW2 generation suppressed antipathy toward the new mass? It certainly doesn’t seems like they did. What does discipline have to do with it? They allowed a lot of changes they were not at all in keeping with the V2 documents to gain a foothold in the church. Popes JPII and Benedict had to spend significant time addressing these issues.

What do you mean when you say the hippies allowed a campaign against the new liturgy? Seems counterintuitive. It also ignores the fact that people who were opposed to the changes of Vatican 2 were never suppressed and never fully went away.
 
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By the 90s, the hippies were on their way out in my parishes. They were hitting their 60s and the new people wanting to start groups and things were the 35 and 40 year olds who were post-baby boom/ Gen Xers. Can’t speak for your parish.

Also, the old hippies of which I speak did not believe in “inclusivity” when it involved older people or someone who wanted to do Marian devotions instead of reading Scripture and going on a protest march. They were just as single-minded (I’m putting it nicely) as the traditionalists sometimes are today. From what I’ve seen of them, they still are.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
What do you mean by saying the WW2 generation suppressed antipathy toward the new mass? It certainly doesn’t seems like they did.
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They didn’t. It was the people born during and just after WWII pushing for the New Mass. They liked it, or went along with it for the most part.
 
Society went through a kind of “paradigm shift” at that time which is heavily responsible for the world we have today. An experiment, so to speak, in human freedom began to take place, challenging authority of any kind, including God. “If it feels good, do it” was the mantra, and the doors for concupiscence to rear its tempting head were thrown more broadly open.

One result is that fewer and fewer participate in any kind of religion. And many within the Church took Vat II as a sort of license to dismantle the structures of the past and promote their own agendas, in line with the thinking of this brave new world. Vat II may have anticipated this change, but did not cause it; that was a societal phenomenon that infiltrated people’s minds, upsetting generations of accepted cultural values. Vat II has the potential to cause real, positive change in our world, and will. This will take centuries to work out.
 
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From St. Pope John XXIII’s opening address:
THE UNITY OF THE CHRISTIAN AND HUMAN FAMILY MUST BE PROMOTED

The Church’s solicitude to promote and defend truth derives from the fact
that, according to the plan of God, who wills all men to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth (l Tim. 2:4), men without the assistance of the whole of revealed doctrine cannot reach a complete and firm unity of minds, with which are associated true peace and eternal salvation.

Unfortunately, the entire Christian family has not yet fully attained this
visible unity in truth.

The Catholic Church, therefore, considers it her duty to work actively so
that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Jesus
Christ invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father on the eve of
His sacrifice. She rejoices in peace, knowing well that she is intimately associated with that prayer, and then exults greatly at seeing that invocation extend its efficacy with salutary fruit, even among those who are outside her fold.

Indeed, if one considers well this same unity which Christ implored for His Church, it seems to shine, as it were, with a triple ray of beneficent supernal light: namely, the unity of Catholics among themselves, which must always be kept exemplary and most firm; the unity of prayers and ardent desires with which those Christians separated from this Apostolic See aspire to be united with us; and the unity in esteem and respect for the Catholic Church which animates those who follow non-Christian religions.
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There were wonderful truths that flowed from the Council regarding those outside our faith, that have prepared the way for greater unity. Quite a few resented the “ecumenical movement” and vehemently opposed it. I see the move toward ecumenism as a good fruit of V-II.
 
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With the partial exception of the doc on the Liturgy, the documents of V2 mostly reflected developments
already in progress in the decades before the Council. Laity were far more active in the 1950s than anticipated at Vatican I or Trent. Religious orders were already going through “renewal”. Education and media were already different than they were a few decades earlier.

The problem is that after the Council, anyone who had an agenda would present it as in the “Spirit of Vatican 2”. Because of this misleading stuff, people blamed the Council for everything bad.

To sum up, the Council did some good things. It did not cause, but also did not anticipate some of internal problems (attack on doctrine) or external (advance of secularism).
 
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I’ve been involved with more than a few churches. I also have a different perspective since my spouse is a Lutheran Pastor. A lot of this is cultural. The same pattern is playing out in other “mainline” protestants; many of whom have a liturgical form of worship. In my opinion it’s not really Vatican II, but it represents and obvious inflection point for change that other mainline Protestant Churches don’t have.

Why do I come to this conclusion? For one you have to remember that the 50s represented one of the highest points in American church attendance, the good old days weren’t as good as we like to think. Second, post War Americans were joiners. They joined churches, they joined bowling leagues, they joined the Lions, they joined the Rotary Club, and on and on. All of these organizations are having membership issues and are clearly not necessarily religious. These organizations take a lot to maintain and were frankly established for this generation. You have to remember that the white experience of church was heavily influenced by the white flight to the suburbs. The churches they attended were founded by this generation and the church culture was established by them.

Additionally the social stigma of not going to church has disappeared. People that weren’t that religious showed up because it was part of the local community’s social backbone and the respectable thing to do. I think a great example of this is how racy “All in the Family” was considered in its day. The first episode specifically introduced the character of Archie Bunker as one who disliked church. It challenged the social farces of the time in a way that rankled more than a few of the WWII generation. I find it interesting that a veneer of church attendance was the first thing the writers chose to introduce their central character with.

I think that the WWII and prior struggled to honestly pass down their faith. Yes, a good portion actually absorbed the faith. But, church at the time also represented your cultural identity. Think of the initial experience of the Irish and Italians in the United States. The opening up of this identity, which I believe was totally necessary for the development of American culture, is part of the issue.

In short, I think you really have to look beyond there being some war against Christianity or Catholicism in specific. You can’t practice your faith and not look around. Religion in general must be explained to have a purpose. Put aside all the things you take as an affront to Church teaching, explain why religion even matters to you.
 
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