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

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OraLabora said:
I get a bit irked when I hear so much blamed on baby boomers. I am a late baby boomer. I’m no fan of folksy music but I can tolerate it except at Mass.
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I know it’s not really the Baby Boomers’ fault because they were all young during Vatican II and post Vatican II.

The Boomers didn’t have power yet. It was really the fault of the those who were born around the turn of the century.

But reason we Gen Xers and Millennials often “blame” the Baby Boomers is because the Boomers are the ones in power now and often are the ones who either (a) help the parish return to traditional expressions or (b) prevent it. Also, because it’s often the boomer and some very early Gen X priests who currently allow some of the wacky stuff (but the generation before them did too)

So in reality… I know it’s not the Baby Boomers’ fault regarding what happened. But the Baby Boomers were used as a scapegoat by the Silent Generation regarding why the changes were needed.

Additionally, the Baby boomers were often the CCD teachers and Catholic School teachers when we Gen Xer were kids. So the bad catechesis we received was taught by baby boomers. So that’s why we fairly or unfairly associate the Baby Boomers with these problems. Finally, it’s also because the majority of the active dissenters in the parishes are all Baby boomers (since majority of dissenting GenX and Millennials simply don’t go to mass).

God bless
 
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VII changes came in when I was about in second/third grade. I do remember having learned some Latin prior to the changes and it wasn’t until my current church began reintroducing Latin for certain parts of the Mass (ie. the Agnus Dei and Gloria) that it came roaring back in my memory. Also, I still have my little Mass prayer book that I got for my First Communion. Just recently I was going through a box of old things and found it, and I wondered why it was so pristine looking and why I had no memory of it. Well, it dated from the 1950s and was the “old” Mass so I never really got to use it.
The biggest thing I experienced as a child, being otherwise clueless, was the sudden change in the nuns (Sisters of St. Joseph) who, it seemed, overnight went from their habits and cardboard-framed faces to ugly street dress with girdles and stockings. The next stage was that many of them left the convent. I was a pious child and no one at all encouraged me to consider a religious vocation; it seemed significantly unattractive and something many of the women were most eager to leave at the time.
 
“power” Wrong word. Dissidents inside the Church in the late 1960s and early 1970s did all they could to wreck Catholic education.

Vatican II, not ‘baby boomers,’ is the scapegoat. Like a magician showing people an object in one hand and doing something unseen with the other. Vatican II did nothing wrong, and this fake idea of ‘boomers’ doing this or that needs to end. When some lay people came into schools to teach students the wrong things, yes, they fit the age group, but a lot of faithful people around that age protested against what was done. That is why, over the last decade, Churches have decided that all of the unauthorized changes are to be rejected. Put the statues and other things, back where they belong.
 
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This has been a fascinating thread. Thank you all for your contributions and stories.
 
godisgood77 said:
I would say it is not different today for restorationist priests… at our parish, the pastor has imposed several major changes - altar rail, additional prayers before and after the mass, statues, statues,
statues… and he won’t take any feedback from the parishioners.

This is the way we’re gong to do it … like it or not.
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“Like it or not” is not exactly a pastoral approach. If I were a priest making such changes, I would catechize the faithful as to why abandoning the traditional forms of prayer and spiritual art was a mistake, and what we lost when we abandoned these. I would also offer to hear people’s point of view on what makes the newer innovations (folk and contemporary music, banners, etc.) conducive to prayer and devotion. “Both/and” and “win-win for everyone” are very good methods of resolving conflicts.
 
Any changes need to be approved at the highest level. Granting an indult, or exception, can’t be done by anyone. The Vatican has heard from priests in the past and I’m sure Pope Francis is open to hearing from people.
 
So you are saying I am lying? Masses where we sung were rare and mostly the singing was done by the choir. I remember I was shocked when my mother sang with them from the pew. It just wasn’t a common occurrence. The altar boys responded not the congregation as a whole. Recently we had a priest who said a Latin Mass he stressed that we were not to give the responses as that was the job of the server. People have different memories that doesn’t mean they lie. .@edwest211
 
I don’t recall the length of high mass as they were rare for me to attend. I only remember them in school. Sunday was an hour long. People rarely went to communion unlike now. I remember a joke from that time. Maybe offensive now but they were common when I was growing up.
Why did the moron take a ladder to Church? Because he wanted to hear a high Mass.
 
Edwest may have had a dialogue Mass in his parish, so neither of you would be lying 😉

They weren’t that common but did exist apparently.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
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.
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Short answer, costs were artificially low because the Church would not pay a just wage to religious. Church authorities were exempt from practicing the social principles they preached.

This was a factor in the decline in vocations, so it may look like the (unexplained) decline in vocations undermined the schools. They are both symptoms of inequities in the system.
 
That is false. Priests and nuns left because they wanted to get married or for other reasons that indicated their commitment to their vocation was not really there. There was a lot of agitation at the time. In 1967, Pope Paul VI was responding to those who wanted optional celibacy for priests. He issued an encyclical that was the opposite of what some wanted. Time magazine ran a cover story in its February 23, 1970 issue, which not by coincidence, marked the start of a greater push for change in the Church by dissidents. The cover read: “The Catholic Exodus. Why priests and nuns are quitting.”

For average Catholics at the time, this was seen as an anomaly. Again, another attempt at pushing optional celibacy was made. The Sexual Revolution demanded such things. But the Church stayed the course.
 
We have to keep in mind that before the council, many entered religious life for the wrong reasons: pressure from family, for example, or in Quebec where families were very large and dirt poor, to escape poverty and insecurity. At least in a convent or monastery, they would have an education, solid roof over their heads and three square meals a day (except on fast days, or unless they joined a really ascetic order like the Trappists or Carthusians… the latter never had a foundation here), and all the necessities of life. To some, it probably seemed a better prospect being dirt poor and uneducated in a merciless society that did not have many of the social benefits we have today.

Many social changes happened around the time of VII, most quite independent from VII, that probably influenced many religious to leave.

That said, the reasons for the decline in the Church in recent years is clearly multifactorial and would probably be the stuff of a PhD candidate’s dissertation.
 
Dovekin said:
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HomeschoolDad:
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.
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Short answer, costs were artificially low because the Church would not pay a just wage to religious. Church authorities were exempt from practicing the social principles they preached.

This was a factor in the decline in vocations, so it may look like the (unexplained) decline in vocations undermined the schools. They are both symptoms of inequities in the system.
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I’m sorry, but what do you mean by “inequities in the system”?

The parishes gave the religious sisters (or brothers) a house to live in when they were running the schools. That’s why there are a number of parishes with convents or former convents on their property.

Also, many sisters & brothers also live a vow of poverty.

Ultimately, what I really think happened was that the elementary schools were an unintended casualty of the decline of the Religious Orders.

When the sisters left the teaching orders, many of the sisters who were left were called upon to handle the other jobs that were vacated. Whether it was teaching at the order’s college(s), teaching at the schools that belonged to the order, handling administrative tasks at the college(s), etc.

For example: near me, the Sisters of St. Joseph run a college and girls high school. A lot of the sisters who have not reached retirement age are involved with the college or high school. At least a few are still principals at a parish elementary schools they used to run (the sisters still have a small convent at those parish too), work as parish administrators, and/or work in other ministries the order has. But a lot of them work for the college and/or high school they run.

(cont)
 
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(part 2)

But in general, there are not enough sisters to completely staff a parish elementary school. The order’s first priority is to the schools & colleges that actually belong to them - not the ones where they are helping a parish or diocesan school.

In other words, when there were lots of sisters & brothers in teaching orders, the orders could “outsource” their younger teachers to parish schools for training.

But today, they don’t have enough sisters to outsource to the local dioceses. PLUS, teaching credentials are far more important today (even in private schools). A lot of parents of Catholic school kids don’t want their kids taught english, social studies, math, science, etc by someone who doesn’t have a college degree.

Before, the sisters who taught at the parish schools often did NOT have college degrees - so the costs were far less. But after Land o’ Lakes, most of the colleges that were owned by Religious Orders were legally turned over to an independent Board of Trustees. So some of the free training that the sisters may have received at their colleges went away. So if the order was going to pay for a sister to receive a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Education, that sister would need to teach at a school owned by the order, not be outsourced for free to the diocese.

Point: it wasn’t “inequity,” like you say - it was economics - the rule of supply and demand.

At least this is my understanding of what really went on.

God Bless
 
edwest211 said:
Vatican II did nothing wrong, and this fake idea of ‘boomers’ doing this or that needs to end.
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Wow! I almost agree with Ed!

The changes were orchestrated by those who lived through WW2. They were not dissidents intentionally “wrecking” the Church” or naive people accidentally jettisoning valuable customs. The experience of war called out for a change from forcing customs on one another irrationally.

I was the youngest of 4 children, and when my sister and I were confirmed in 1965, that was largely the last gasp of Catholicism in my family. My older siblings felt it was pointless. My parents did not care that much and continued catechesis was pretty much worthless.

However, I became interested in religion as a result. Seeking to find meaning in life, I discovered the Church was doing the same thing. The liturgy changed from an obligatory act to something with meaning. It was not always clear what the meaning was, but it was affirmed as meaningful. Changes were enforced with the older “We say so” attitude of an earlier era, but looking around uncovered they whys usually. The objective ultimately was a world where God would be glorified by people coming together, rather than being divided into warring factions.

I welcomed the changes in liturgy because they represented a religion that was significant for how we lived. We understood the language and it helped us understand our lives. The message of sacrifice was always mediated by a shared meal, instead of by arcane rituals that were alien to us. The ritual that I knew in my early years, the Latin Mass, was given new life by Paul VI, giving it a meaning that gives order to my disordered life. I find it hard to understand why anyone would want the riuals I endured as a child, instead of the liturgy that brings God to us, in our midst, in our language, and inour hearts.
 
No Ph.D. required. A recent investigation into some Women Religious occurred. A snapshot:

"But about a year into the process, Cardinal Franc Rode, then-head of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which was handling the investigation, told Vatican Radio he had been alerted “to some irregularities or deficiencies” in the way some of the U.S. religious sisters were living.

“Above all, you could speak of a certain secularist mentality that has spread among these religious families, perhaps even a certain ‘feminist’ spirit,” Cardinal Rode said.

"The tilt toward secular liberalism by some orders has oftentimes included open support for abortion, contraception, divorce, and homosexuality, and while there has been some pushback from the left regarding the investigation, many faithful Catholics have expressed appreciation for the attention paid to what is viewed by many as a major crisis in the U.S. Church.

"Along with the move toward radical feminism over the last 40 or so years, their numbers have dropped drastically. Thousands of sisters left convents in the 1960-70s and recruits since have not replaced them. Numerous communities have merged or even been shuttered. This left the average age of US active sisters around 70.

“The exception to the rule is found in the communities that have upheld the Church’s traditional religious life, with young, vibrant members and growing numbers.”
 
edwest211 said:
“power” Wrong word. Dissidents inside the Church in the late 1960s and early 1970s did all they could to wreck Catholic education.

Vatican II, not ‘baby boomers,’ is the scapegoat. Like a magician showing people an object in one hand and doing something unseen with the other. Vatican II did nothing wrong, and this fake idea of ‘boomers’ doing this or that needs to end. When some lay people came into schools to teach students the wrong things, yes, they fit the age group, but a lot of faithful people around that age protested against what was done. That is why, over the last decade, Churches have decided that all of the unauthorized changes are to be rejected. Put the statues and other things, back where they belong.
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Yeah, I know. I said that I know it really wasn’t the baby boomers’ fault because they were young back then.

Also, I think you are totally mis-understanding what I’m saying about the “baby boomers” being a scapegoat. I’m talking about how people back in the 60s said “we need to do x, y, and z in order to attract the young people.” Back then, the young people they were talking about were the Baby Boomers.

Then in the 1980s and 1990, the Baby Boomers said the same thing … “we need to do x, y & z in order to attract the young people.”

That’s why I said the Baby Boomers are a scapegoat (note: I said "a scapegoat, not “the scapegoat.”)
They were NOT the ones that instituted the changes after Vatican II. But their generation typically gets all the blame from the non-baby boomers (whether older or younger than them).
 
It was a subversion of the rule of supply and demand. The supply of teachers was expanded by enlisting persons who were not concerned with the economics of it. Rather than settle on a just wage, or one reached by market forces, employees were paid an amount supposedly in line with their “poverty.”

This process went against the social teaching of the Church. Unions were kept out of schools. Just wages were, and are, denied in many Church jobs by owners (bishops) crying poverty themsleves who are unwilling to build schools based on a market system, let alone the economics the Church teaches.
 
Pope Benedict told us that many wanted the liturgy that was dear to them. And he told us about deformations to the liturgy. Those deformations were hard to bear and drove some from the Church. From 1952 to 1962, overall Church attendance was high, then it leveled off and began to decline.

There were no warring factions. There were cloth banners that showed the various groups parishioners belonged to like the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart. But total strangers came into our communities to scatter. And scatter they did.
 
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