Why did so many Religious leave after Vatican 2?

[Captain_America]

IF Vatican 2 was such a great thing for the Church, why then did so many priests and nuns, sisters and brothers, leave the Church and get laicized?

Wouldn’t this suggest that Vat. 2 was a negative thing?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Assuming they did, it’s because they don’t like change in their processes. Truth hasn’t changed, but the way we go about finding is altered a bit.

People have been doing something one way for their whole lives and then were told to do it differently. I could write in support or against that thinking…

In support, this is something that always gave them comfort, doing the Mass “just so” and changing it pulls out the one constant thing they had in their possibly turmoil filled life. They come to Mass for more than obligation, but out of comfort to the one thing they never thought would change. What if we got up today, for example, and there were no Internet? No CAF?

Against them, it seems they have fallen in love with the process instead of the objective – so they equate going through certain motions with their relationship to God. Their faith is not deep enough that simply changing the way we celebrate Mass and they jump ship. Their eyes were on pomp and circumstance, not on God.

Personally I think without Vatican II, the Protestants would have cut in on our turf way more than they did, and we would have fewer Catholics. This is only my opinion and is not likely to be shared by all others. Some think it’s about having a “smaller but purer” Church, with which I disagree because the very people who have the most problems are the ones Jesus would reach out to. Plus, nothing in the Church has to be pure except the sacraments and their teachings. Nothing else is assumed to be pure, including the lives and theology of her members.

Alan

 

[triumphguy]

IF Vatican 2 was such a great thing for the Church, why then did so many priests and nuns, sisters and brothers, leave the Church and get laicized?

Wouldn’t this suggest that Vat. 2 was a negative thing?

Alternately it might not suggest anything negative about Vatican II at all. It might, however, suggest that the process for entry into religious orders and/or seminaries before Vatican II was not conducive for many young men and women to a free act of their will, and/or that their faith wasn’t mature enough to decide freely to enter religious life, and that with Vatican II they finally felt free to leave rather than remain confined in a lifestyle they were not called to.

Young boys were sent to junior seminaries at age 12. Many were ordained who ought not to have been.

It’s important to remember most of the clerical child abusers in the church were ordained BEFORE Vatican II.

 

[Joe_5859]

We cannot assess complex historical events in such a simplistic manner.

There are several implicit assumptions in the question:

• It was a net negative for these people to leave priesthood and religious life
• That these people left because of Vatican II
• That less people would have left had Vatican II never took place

Even granting the first point, I think it’s difficult to prove the second point and impossible to verify the third point.

Further, we do not look at one negative phenomenon and use that as the sole basis for evaluating something. We have to look at everything. And there are great positive things that followed in the wake of the Council. A place like CAF probably wouldn’t even exist. without it. We have numerous lay apostolates promoting the faith. We have the new Catechism. And on and on and on.

 

[Oneofthewomen]

Br. JREducation has posted about this frequently. If you do a “search” you might be able to find out some more answers, but one big reason the Chruch saw a many religious leave after VII was because all the orders we called to go back to their original charisms, and for some that joined orders in the US between the 1920’s until the 1960’s, that was not what they “signed up” for.
For example (from what I remember Br. JR saying) the Franciscans were founded to serve the poor, yet, during this time frame, many Franciscans were serving what had become the middle/uppper middle class, so many of them pulled out of parish work and went to minister to the poorest of the poor.

If you read this document from Vatican II, it will give you a better idea of what the Chruch had in mind.

 

[tafan]

IF Vatican 2 was such a great thing for the Church, why then did so many priests and nuns, sisters and brothers, leave the Church and get laicized?

Wouldn’t this suggest that Vat. 2 was a negative thing?

Why do you assume there is a causal relationship between Vatican II and so many religious leaving their vocations? Many people assume there is, but I think there is little evidence to support this theory.

Here is why I think it occurred, along with many other problems in the Church starting in the late 60s. It was not due to Vatican II, it was due to a massive breakdown of society, and in particular societal mores. This happened in all walks of life, not just the Church. It happened in the corporate world, it happened in the military, it happened in academia. Every segment of society saw major upheavals which resulted in very negative changes.

To be blunt, it is giving the Church too much credit, as regards Her influence in modern society, to suppose that Church actions precipitated the changes in society, or even in the Church. The Church was ignored. The people adopting the radical agendas within the Church often involed the spirit of Vatican II, and the Church certainly did things that made matters worse. But the disruption in the Church was going to happen, one way or the other.

 

[LotusCarsLtd]

I recall hearing a story from an older priest who said that before Vatican II some priests and religious entered seminary/the monastery/the convent not because they were genuinely called but because of outside pressure.

Someone mentioned how many priests started their studies at very young ages (long before they could reasonably be considered truly capable of making such an intense and life-changing decision). I also heard stories of people who joined because of intense family pressure and/or expectations that they would do so. It can be hard, for instance, to disappoint your mother when she adamantly prayed and hoped for her son to grow up and become a priest.

 

[triumphguy]

And religious life and the priesthood was also an opportunity for education and a way out of poverty for many before the 60s.

 

[Burdensome1]

For example (from what I remember Br. JR saying) the Franciscans were founded to serve the poor, yet, during this time frame, many Franciscans were serving what had become the middle/uppper middle class, so many of them pulled out of parish work and went to minister to the poorest of the poor.

…with the effect of collapsing religious education among regular Catholic communities and the attendant collapse of parish life. This was wrapped up in political ideology. The regular Catholics, gathered in ethnic parishes, had become the Bourgeoisie, and the “restored” mission of many religious communities was to serve the Proletariat.

Of course, now they’re not serving the Proletariat, either…

 

[system]

No one is really answering the question. There is loads of evidence that Vatican II saw an exodus of religious. A number of religious orders in Aust look as if they will not exist in the next ten years when prior to the 1960s they were thriving. I came here looking for better answers than these.

 

[mdgspencer]

I was in my 20s when Vatican II began. The departure of many priests and religious afterwards then was constantly in my attention. I always thought this resulted from the chaos in Catholicism in the years following the council. This included chaos in religious thought and theology, and the assault of the new sexuality and ways of looking at reality which invaded the Church then. Perhaps some of the mechanisms suggested on this thread to explain the loss of priests and religious are on the mark, and I will have to consider what people here have said.
It is possible that whatever is causing some religious orders, orders of women in particular, to implode at the present time (which is occurring because young people will not join them and the sisters are old and their number shrinking dramatically), resemble the causes of the departure of priests and religious after Vatican II.
Vatican II either was a good thing at the right time or a good thing at the wrong time–I have never been sure which. Would this chaos been avoided, or lessoned, if it occurred another decade? I don’t know. But however the Church is recovering well from the chaos that occurred after Vatican II–one sign of this are orthodox bishops and younger orthodox priests. I think this is happening not only because of Pope John Paul II but even more that the Holy Spirit lives in the Catholic Church and the Church has a vitality that comes from the vitality of God. It is a vitality that results in a Church healing as if from wounds, just as it has recovered in other centuries from terrible wounds it has suffered.

 

[system]

Sorry did not mean to be so insulting/direct with previous post. It was my first post on this website too.

What I am after is an answer as to what caused faithful people who obviously wanted to devote their lives to God to suddenly reverse their decision on being a nun or a priest?

By the way I have friends who dispute that vocations have fallen away. That in fact they were turned away by the convent. I have a particular friend who is very holy and all she wanted to do was to be a nun and a teacher. She joined the convent and they turfed her out when her mentor went off to study the languages of a developing country. She says that she has heard of this happening often over the last ten years.

 

[fhansen]

IF Vatican 2 was such a great thing for the Church, why then did so many priests and nuns, sisters and brothers, leave the Church and get laicized?

Wouldn’t this suggest that Vat. 2 was a negative thing?

Not at all. Society underwent some serious changes, not necessarily for the better but probably inevitable at the time, and Vat II actually anticipated that shift, IMO. For the religious who were laicized Vat II simply didn’t go far enough; but nothing would’ve satisfied them anyway.

 

[Pablopedro]

Not at all. Society underwent some serious changes, not necessarily for the better but probably inevitable at the time, and Vat II actually anticipated that shift, IMO. For the religious who were laicized Vat II simply didn’t go far enough; but nothing would’ve satisfied them anyway.

I believe this is the correct answer. People seem to forget that when Vatican II happened, television was starting to really boom, rock had just entered the scene, the hippy movement/ sexual revolution was covering Europe and North America, etc.

Note how the Church has been largely unaffected in most 3rd world countries. In fact it has grown there and thrived, even the religious orders have.

So have the changes been because of something the Church did? Or because of significant changes that occurred in first world countries?

 

[Blessed_is_He]

I feel because Protestantism mixed with Catholicism it became watered downNot the Mass of the saints anymore

 

[Indyann]

I can think of about 5 or 6 priests just offhand that left to get married right after Vat.II. They were all married within a couple of years.

One hospital chaplain married a patient.
Two priests married Benidictan Sisters.
I don’t know who the others married, but I heard they were married.

So perhaps many priests were hoping that there would be a married priesthood after Vat.II.

Also, as another poster mentioned, many boys went to a pre-seminary school their freshman year in high school.

 

[Megan7]

Alternately it might not suggest anything negative about Vatican II at all. It might, however, suggest that the process for entry into religious orders and/or seminaries before Vatican II was not conducive for many young men and women to a free act of their will, and/or that their faith wasn’t mature enough to decide freely to enter religious life, and that with Vatican II they finally felt free to leave rather than remain confined in a lifestyle they were not called to.

Young boys were sent to junior seminaries at age 12. Many were ordained who ought not to have been.

It’s important to remember most of the clerical child abusers in the church were ordained BEFORE Vatican II.

At 12 ? That seems so young…
Interesting thread. Thanks.

 

[TheWarriorMonk]

Some of my older associates have talked about that time. They say the same thing. One of them (Irish Catholic, and almost became a nun) talked about how it was common for larger Catholic families to “give up” one of their children to the Church. They became priests or religious whether they liked it or not.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

IF Vatican 2 was such a great thing for the Church, why then did so many priests and nuns, sisters and brothers, leave the Church and get laicized?

Wouldn’t this suggest that Vat. 2 was a negative thing?

I was not aware that many resigned as a result of Vatican II. I do know that quite a number resigned when the church refused to accept any contraception other than abstinence. That ruling took place in 1968, only a few years after Vatican II.

As an Australian I know the lack of priests is an issue. I went to an ordination two weeks ago in the local cathedral, and both ordinands were Africans - Nigerian and Sudanese I think.

I’ve read a bit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings, and he writes at one point of “secular Christianity.” I don’t think he had a clear idea himself of what he meant at the time, but I wonder if God isn’t pushing us towards what might be called a Church from below, rather than a hierarchical model, with the laity taking more and more responsibility rather than leaving it all up to a clerical elite.

I think for example God is going to push us off the planet, when we learn to teleport (we’re already doing it in a small way). Suppose for argument’s sake this is the case - how would the church go about training priests for a galactic church? I think you’d need a well informed and perhaps authorised laity, which would be a lot easier.

Personally I think Vatican II was a positive thing, despite the negative spin given by some conservatives. I was a kid when it was happening, and not interested, as I was not Catholic, not adult and had no sense of its significance.

Had it not taken place, I suspect the Protestants would have made even greater inroads than they have, as someone else has pointed out.

On the other hand, my old **Protestant **pastor though the religious orders underpinned the church, with their endless prayers and dedicated religious life. So their dwindling is a concern. I wonder if there’s not some way of getting lay people involved in “religious” life wiithout having to go the whole hog, and become “religious”. If, as I think, God is going to drive us off the planet, this might well be the only way religious orders survive - through their “secular” members.

 

[fred_conty]

I have a relative of an inlaw who was a nun and left. She said the reason for her leaving was that she joined an order to have prayer life in common and support of the other sisters in her work. Then suddenly, they were told to wear out the shoe leather instead of their knees. This pushing the individual out on their own was not what she wanted or needed so she left. If she wanted to be out on her own, there are orders of nuns in the church to do this very thing. But she chose her order who didn’t do this, but now is told to do it.

Today we celebrated St. Benedict who started out as a hermit. But he was so admired for his holiness that others wanted to have what he found. Eventually he accepted others and formed an order of spirituality, which was just like the story of this woman who became a nun and left, wanted. So is she so wrong wanting what St. Benedict wanted? Yet her order said that they are going to pound the pavement alone, and if not intending to say this, in effect that is what was interpreted.

I have another relative who is a priest. It seems in the late 60’s there was an identity crisis among priests. By this it seems they didn’t know what there place in the church was since all the emphasis was on the place of the laity in the church. There was very little said about the role of the priesthood, but a lot said about the laity. The question was, were they really in that much need now? Especially since confessions had dropped off to a trickle of what they had formally been, no longer hours of confessions. And it also seemed as tho they weren’t going to be needed for communions either, since the laity were going to do this. The emphisis was seemingly from priesthood to laity. There was also talk of sharing all the former pastoral and financial work with the laity as well. This too was in the direction of the laity. It somewhat diminished and downplayed the priest’s importance and his need.

Not to mention the back and forth legitimacy of birth control, whether this delema was wanted or not, it was unsettling to everyone. Then the emphasis on one’s own conscience as the determinator of sin. Really. What kind of position does that put the priest in? Many started to become protestant in thinking, that is a spiritual type of mutany. It was a mixed up time and very confusing to all. I feel sorry in particular for the bishops trying to be the engineer of a train out of control.

Less someone get the wrong impression, I do not blame the Vatican II. What I am saying is that these were difficult times for everyone, but more especially for the priests.

In passing I would like to add that noone entered the seminary at 12. They had to be going into highschool. And when they entered, they were free to leave the seminary at any time without pressure to stay. I personally think that this is a good thing. Remember Samuel in the Old Testament, a young boy who heard God calling him and said, “speak Lord for your servant listens.” David a young boy also who was called by God. It is a good thing for someone to give the best years of their life to God, the years of their youth.

Just some thoughts.​

“The love we have for you O Lord, is only a shadow of your love for us.” (hymn)