Just in case I’m not the last person in St Blog’s who hasn’t seen this Crisis article by George Sim Johnston, exploring how it wasn’t quite all Vatican 2’s fault…. here’s the link to After the Council:
If the Church was in such good shape before the council, why did things fall apart so rapidly in the 1960s? How do you account for the fact that the rebellion was the work of bishops, theologians, and priests who came out of the Tridentine system? Had all those priests and nuns who suddenly wanted to be laicized received adequate formation under the old system? Why was there so much dissatisfaction? It won’t do simply to rattle off statistics about the decline of the Church since the council. There’s no question that there were good and holy Catholics in the old days—even some saints—and that since the council we have lost much that is good. But there were also problems waiting to erupt. Might not the Magisterium have been correct in addressing them in the council’s documents?
…As for the Catholic laity: Do not underestimate the role of rising affluence in the troubles since the council. The post-conciliar mischief was initiated by disaffected clergy, but during these years, an increasingly wealthy and assimilated laity was perfectly happy to follow the path of least resistance marked by dissident theologians. In 1937, the Protestant thinker H. Richard Niebuhr drew attention to a soft-core spirituality among Americans: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Was it likely that Catholics would be immune once they emerged from the ethnic ghetto, moved to the suburbs, and joined the mainstream? The Book of Revelation’s warnings to the Christians at Laodicea—who “say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing…’”—no doubt find application in every age but have particular relevance for the contemporary Catholic who has made his comfort zone the ninth Beatitude….”
This comment by Sherry Weddell (on Amy’s post discussing this article) made my blood run cold:
The image that keeps returning is one that the late great Frank Sheed reported witnessing in the late 60’s: seeing a priest tear apart a rosary with his own hands (in front of a cafeteria full of Catholic high school students), dash the beads to the floor and loudly proclaim: “I’m glad we’re through with this s – !”
This priest was almost certainly raised with May day crowning of our Lady; a few years previously he might have led one. And now he was doing, with adolescent bravado, what no one had ever truly internalized devotion to Mary or honoured her in any real way would ever do.
And yes, I have met Trads who fiercely insisted that It Was All Vatican 2’s Fault.