What were the post-Vatican II changes like to live through?

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HomeschoolDad said:
The Traditional Latin Mass movement in the Church has done a lot in the past 30 years to bring these things back. Very thankful of that.
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Did you ever play with a flexible ruler on a desk in school? If you put it on the edge of your desk and pulled the ruler back and let it go it would go up and down before finally coming back to rest. Rubber bands do the same thing. I feel like the same thing happens in society with abrupt changes. The changes following Vatican II was the ruler being pulled back and everything changed drastically really fast. Now it seems to be going back in the other direction in some ways. Latin masses are popping up everywhere kneelers are being brought out, women are choosing to veil, people are kneeling to receive on the tongue. It seems all of this was unheard of 30 years ago. So what’s going on?
 
nightshade said:
Latin masses are popping up everywhere kneelers are being brought out, women are choosing to veil, people are kneeling to receive on the tongue. It seems all of this was unheard of 30 years ago. So what’s going on?
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It wasn’t “unheard of”. The Latin Mass was suppressed in a lot of places or was associated with SSPX so Catholics were leery of attending them.
But some women (especially older or ethnic women) still covered their heads, and from time to time you’d find a priest giving out Communion at a rail, and people have used kneelers consistently in virtually every parish I’ve been in except for 2 that didn’t have kneelers, which were an anomaly as the vast majority of churches I’ve been in have had kneelers.

There were plenty of parishes around that I’d call “traditional OF”. Like I said, any neighborhood with older ethnic people would have them. As I did not grow up in some new rich suburb, these churches weren’t hard for me to find.
 
I am a millennial (and new Catholic) quite fond of the Latin mass.

But they can keep their gross craft beers. Yuck.

I am also quite content with my little parish that seems to combine the best of both worlds- altar rails, guitar music, some Latin depending on the priest, and quiet reverence of Eucharistic Adoration and a rosary before every mass.
 
Most of what I am saying is anecdotal based on conversations with older ladies in the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama. There seems to have been many parishes around here that ran away from everything “traditional”. Several that removed altar rails and kneelers. People were also discouraged from receiving on the tongue (according to our RCIA directors).

Now granted it may have been a bigger push for parishes around here to seem more protestanty since almost everyone around is Southern Baptist. So it may vary geographically.
 
One day, I went to mass and there was a smaller altar in front of the high altar with a simple cloth with an edge. The priest faced the people and spoke in the vernacular. We were told this was coming. It was no surprise. We obeyed Holy Mother Church as we had always done.

Speaking generally, that time of transition was just that, a transition. What the Church established was not up for debate. But for reasons that were unclear at the time, things were gradually added that were secular in character. At one mass, Let it Be by the Beatles was sung. This was totally wrong in the House of God.
 
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Memories:-

I remember the Mass being in Latin. I can remember quietly asking my mother if I could sit up now only to be told quietly but firmly No! Obviously a low Mass.

I remember being in a school Mass and being shocked to see the new altar, with Father facing us! And even more shocked when it came time for the consecration to realize that we were going to witness such a great mystery - the transubstantiation of the bread and wine. Where was I too look?! I’d been in the habit of looking at Father (Latin Mass), and so not “seeing” the transubstantiation take place - so I quickly looked down. It was so uncomfortable. To my mind back then it was so wrong.

I remember heading out the door to walk up to Mass with my parents only to realize my mother had forgotten her gloves!! I prepared to run back inside to get them for her, only to be told something along the lines of “we don’t need them anymore or we don’t have to wear them anymore”.

I also remember being shocked to see hardly any ladies in Mass wearing hats or veils, and having to have that explained to me as well.

Also remembered Father announcing from the Altar that this is the New Mass and how this will be how Mass will be celebrated from now on. There were print out sheets to help people adapt to and follow the changes and participate in this new form.

Regarding the Sacrament of Penance - I can remember when it changed from going into your side of the confessional and kneeling down and confessing behind the grate/grill/screen to sitting opposite Father and having a friendly “chat”. Dreadful! How embarrassing. To me this new way of reconciliation rooms, did not feel like I had received a Sacrament at all, that I had approached the Tribunal of Mercy seeking the forgiveness of my sins. In stead it felt like being a naughty child in the principals office, to give an example.
 
Pre-Vatican II there was no participation in mass. We had our missals so the Mass was not a mystery. I understood what was going on. The priest would ring a bell as he entered and we would stand. Many would say rosaries. I remember having a prayer book that I would say prayers from. I hated the high mass because it was longer. The Catholic college near me had multiple masses. Back then priest had to say mass every day. Often there would be three masses going on at once and started at different time.
I was in high school when the changes came. The priest at our school told us they were coming and what they would be. I would go home and tell my parents who respond it will never happen. I don’t recall when it finally did. I was sad that they changed the way the Kyrie was said :
Father Lord have mercy
parish Lord have mercy
Father Lord have mercy
parish Christ have mercy
Father Christ have mercy
parish Christ have mercy
Father Lord have mercy
parish Lord have mercy
Father Lord have mercy

I guess it was to complicated so it was changed

In the 70’'s, my parents wanted to attend a Latin mass. I was anxious to go with them but nostalgia soon disappeared when there was no participation. It killed any attachment I had to the “old” mass. I still love the Latin prayers especially the Agnus Dei which our priest has often.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
What was it like to be a Catholic from the period from 1965 (end of the Second Vatican Council) to the mid-1970s?
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Watch Sister Mary Stigmata’s comments to Jake and Elwood… It was from 1980, but Jake had been in jail for awhile, so it all started back around the time you are asking about… not that much had changed…


God knows - I miss those days… 😞
 
When did Catholic schools start getting more expensive? And what was the cause? Is that also a geographic thing?
 
nightshade said:
And what was the cause?
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One cause was having to hire almost entirely lay teachers at salaries that are at least somewhat competitive. In years past, religious sisters (and to a lesser extent religious brothers and priests) taught in the school, and they were not nearly as expensive to staff a school. Short answer: decrease in vocations coupled with retirement and passing of older religious.
 
I started Catholic school at about the time that the first Masses in English were starting to be held. For my first few years we attended Mass daily. (Eventually the school added some extra grades and there were too many students to comfortably fit inside our Church so we switched to having the various grades attend Mass once a week.) But in any case, our diocese had a bishop who was fairly conservative when to came to doctrinal issues and canon law but he was not particularly concerned about traditions such as the use of Latin. The hymns sung at Mass were almost always in English (even if everything else was in Latin) and at least at daily Mass, English became the norm for all the parts for which it was permitted. I was not aware of any adults taking issue with the Mass being in English. In fact, years later (in the 200xs) I remember hearing my mother conversing with friends and saying that she and her peers welcomed Mass in English.

In school, we practiced the responses in both English and Latin. I distinctly remember practicing for my first communion. We were told that we should say, “Ah-men,” if the priest said, "“Corpus Christi,” and “Aay-men,” if the priest said, “The Body of Christ.” We didn’t know until the day of our First Communion that the Mass would be in English. (That would have been in 1966.)

Other than Mass in English, I do remember that our relatives in Minnesota were seeing changes in their dioceses/parishes much sooner than we would see them in Southern California. As the 1960s grew closer to the 1970s we would learn that their parish altars had all been moved away from the walls and had been turned around. Their girls were told they HAD to stop wearing hats to Mass. The priests in in California diocesan parishes were still facing liturgical east and we were still being told our women must wear hats.

There was a Dominican Friary/retreat center located in a nearby rural area. The Dominican friars tended to have a more liberal outlook on Church matters than was typical for diocesan priests and the Sisters of Notre Dame. A number of parishioners (and this included some of my classmates) started to regularly attend Sunday Mass at the retreat center. They normally had guitar Masses. I really don’t think our pastor was thrilled about such music but most of the young people my age were quite enthusiastic. I often see people here at Catholic Answers reminiscing for for the days of Gregorian chant. I never experienced those days and I suspect there really weren’t all that many people who did, unless they lived in an area with a strong classical music tradition. In any case, some of the changes in the Mass, both official and unofficial, grew out of Mass attendance at some of these places which may not always have been under the direct authority of the local bishop.
 
nightshade said:
When did Catholic schools start getting more expensive? And what was the cause? Is that also a geographic thing?
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Back when there were many religious sisters and brothers, Catholic schools were much less expensive. In some places they were even free. Some of this is definitely geographic.

There are a number of reasons Catholic schools became more expensive. The first was probably the drop in the number of religious. Lay teachers usually demanded a higher salary. Other things are growth in the cost of buildings (more stringent building codes, higher land costs, etc.) and higher costs for such things as science equipment.
 
I’m 28 so I obviously didn’t go through the changes. However, as I’ve said before, I attend the Latin Mass and have done so since I was 11. None of my family attend the TLM, my grandmother attended the NO but the rest of my family now only go for Feast days and occassional events.

From what I gathered from my grandmother, the changeover was pretty violent in this diocese. The Irish bishops were pretty conservative at the time of the Council and ours basically ignored it until 1970. The first thing that changed was the use of Irish Gaelic in hymns. Before the council, Irish wasn’t really used in liturgical hymns and most people only knew Latin hymns. The priest told the choir, which my grandmother was the director, that they could now use the religious songs people sang as part of their home devotions in church. That was very welcome and was warmly recieved. In english speaking parishes they got the English Mass but in Irish parishes, they stuck to a hybrid Latin Mass for a time and it mostly went on as it always had.

In the early 70s the Irish translation of the Mass was introduced. The thing was that it was written by clerics who had learned Irish but weren’t native speakers. To the people in the pews it was really clumsy stuff that sounded very peculiar. The Gaelic antiphonary was also introduced and people were not happy with it for the same reason. My grandmother told the story of how one of the hymns had a typo that caused a lot of confusion; the hymn talked about Our Lord curing the blind. In Irish, the word for blind is “dall” but the book said “gall” which means foreigner or viking. The people thought that Our Lord had been going around curing the vikings but no one said anything because things were changing so quickly and thouroughly that people just thought this was another change to accept.

When the altars were demolished, the people took particular offence at that. Likewise, they weren’t happy in my parish because the priest took away all the statues save for one of Our Lord and the people were not happy about loosing their saints. The thing was, my grandmother said, everything was changing so fast and it was hard to keep up with it, but the world was changing so fast and the Church demanded these things so people obeyed unquestioningly, as they had always done. The mass in the vernacular was largely welcomed eventually, and people were particularly happy about the priest facing the people but there was so much craziness going on that confused and bewildered a lot of people. The loss of Benediction, the processions and other ceremonies were hard on people but they obeyed because thats what you did. The Church was always right, always.

I have to say, going to the TLM is a joy for me and I now find it very hard to attend the NO.
 
I was a teenager when the mass was changed. Everyone that I know was happy including my grandmother.
 
Just curious, did they ever put the statues back?
There are a lot of churches in USA nowadays that have re-introduced a significant number of statues. Even in some cases, a LOT of statues. Not all have done this - especially if the church was newly constructed to be very bare to begin with - but the older churches that had statues are putting them back.
 
I found it jarring, and the change was sudden, with wild swings toward sometimes bizarre innovations. Priests and nuns deserted their vocations in droves. Catholic schools found themselves suddenly without teachers as religious went off to work with drug abusers or get married. And in some parishes, it was considered just as well because the sisters had gone pretty secular anyway.

I was young at the time, and the “God is love” thing got out of hand and, to young people it meant sexual liberation among other things. I guess it did to a lot of religious too. “Encounter” became all the rage, with real nut-case people leading it.

I don’t dislike the N.O. and I think it has improved and stabilized for the most part. But in truth I don’t see a whole lot of good results from VII. Maybe someday.

But I don’t think the moral relativism that characterized the Post VII era started with it. I knew some kids from Jesuit schools, and they were talking that way even before.
 
I know of a parish where the large sculptural stations of the Cross disappeared. Years later they were found chopped up and buried, in the parish cemetery. 😟
 
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I’m too young to be of direct help with your question. I was born in 1971. My parents were politically quite liberal but I think theologically they were traditionalist. My mother especially welcomed in principle that Vatican II meant more openness and willingness to change, but when it came to the real visible changes that occurred, she was less happy. I think she espcially missed the prayers that she knew by heart, and gelt it wasn’t a proper mass without them As a child we switched parishes several times as my parents thought the different parishes were too modern. We finally found one that was pretty much staying the course and pushing back. They didn’t do ad orientem, but the Mass was entirely in Latin. This went on until maybe 1985 or thereabouts.

Then that priest was put under some pressure by the bishop and announced very unexpectedly that the Latin Mass was being discontinued forthwith. I was an altar server at the time and there were lots of changes. We had a practice session on a Saturday to practice the new stuff. But i never used that as the congegation switched, almost unanimously, to a church in a neighbouring diocese that was still doing the Latin Mass. That church too stopped doing it about three or four years later when the priest retired.

I think after that my parents finally made peace with the new stuff.
 
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That’s too bad. Most dioceses these days seem to have warehouses where stuff like that from closed churches is sent and either another church can take it, or in some cases it has gone to a museum. There is a museum of statues in my hometown that operates in a closed, deconsecrated Byzantine church and it’s quite popular. My pastor back there has also “adopted” some of the statues from the closed churches. The name saint from said Byzantine church showed up in our church one day.
 
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