Vatican II: The Catholic Revolution
Vatican II: The Catholic Revolution, Part IWelcome to our panel discussion on the Second Vatican Council.
Our discussion is based on a new book written by Andrew Greeley entitled, “The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council.
Andrew Greeley may be more familiar to some of us as the author of cheesy romance novels and mysteries that have found a place in many people’s casual reading. However, he is also a sociologist who has devoted his energy and time gathering data on the life of Catholics in this country and abroad.
In this particular book, he his statistical research has shown that, since the Second Vatican Council, Catholic thought and practices have changed in some very dramatic ways. The changes have been for better and for worse, leading some churches to a new vitality and energy and leaving others empty, disillusioned and longing for some sense of restoration of the “old church.”
As he states, his book is about the revolutionary impact of the Second Vatican Council on the Church in the United States. The impact of this revolution is still being felt some 40 years after the Council concluded its work and it has been felt in liturgy, church teaching, parish ministry and in the way Catholic in this country think about their faith and their Church.
Greeley does a good job in this book showing that, along with such changes, there was very little in the way of preparing clergy and laity for the changes that occurred. As a result, there is still today, confusion and ambiguity about the state of the Catholic faith. Greeley is both complimentary of some of the changes that have occurred but he also indicts certain elements within the Church for abusing those changes and sacrificing much of the beauty of the Church.
Our panel this evening will deal with three specific questions that follow the first few chapters of Greeley’s book.
Greeley begins by describing some aspects of the “old Church” — this is- the Church many of us knew in our childhood and leading up to the Second Vatican Council. He calls this church the “confident Church” This was a time when Churches were very crowded on Sundays and holy days. New parishes and new schools were opening everywhere. Men and women were enrolling in seminaries and novitiates in large numbers. Catholic organizations were thriving. Resignations from the priesthood and religious life were infrequent. People waited in long lines to go to Confession. Young people postponed sexual relations until marriage. Pastor’s administered parishes with an iron fist and the laity were obedient even if they disagreed. Ecumenism was largely unheard of and Catholics were firmly entrenched in Catholic culture, sometimes defying the sensibilities of the modern world.
This was, according to Greeley, a church of rules. And the good Catholic was the one who obeyed all these rules and, if they didn’t, they went to Confession. Rules, according to Greeley, were what Catholicism was all about and people tended to keep the rules because they wanted to remain Catholic (page 27).
Many of us can remember some of those rules which defined our Catholicism.
We’ll begin our panel discussion by asking each of them to speak briefly about some of the rules they remember in their youth which defined their sense of being Catholic.
Greeley then goes forward to say that, following the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, the rules began to disappear or, at least, people stopped looking at the rules as essential for remaining Catholic. He likens what happened to the metaphor Jesus uses when new wine is poured into old wineskins. Greeley hypothesizes that, once the Council began placing less emphasis on the rules, it became “over confident” and many of the old practices and disciplines of Catholics began waning. There was a shift in attitudes and practices among Catholics. He shows some of these changes in a table that you have before you. The greatest change, perhaps, in the way post-Vatican II Catholics thought was that now, the Church could change and that it was, perhaps, more diverse and fallible than was previously thought.
Greeley, briefly discusses five areas that demonstrate the possibility of change in the Church: the liturgy, ecumenism, meat on Friday, birth control, and priests and nuns [pages 54-60].
Here is an overview that he offers about each of these areas:
Liturgy:
For the first time in a thousand years, the priest said Mass facing the congregation.
Altars were turned around and the priest said Mass, first, partially in English,
then completely in English. The Latin liturgy was basically abandoned after being in use for 1000 years.
Ecumenism
The Council admitted that Protestant churches were, indeed, churches that Catholics
should strive to understand and have dialogue with. Heretics, schismatics, Jews and
infidels were now “separated brethren.”
Meat of Fridays
The most visible and distinguishable sign of Catholics was the prohibition of eating meat
on Friday. The American bishops lifted the prohibition except for Fridays during Lent.
Greeley calls this the most unnecessary and devastating change in the way it impacted Catholics.
Birth Control
There was strong sentiment among the Bishops to address birth control. Prior to the Vatican Council,
Catholics accepted the reality that birth control was sinful. Even if they practiced birth control,
they confessed it. Pope Paul VI appointed a commission to look into this discipline. The commission
almost unanimously recommended a change to this teaching. However, Pope Paul VI turned down the
recommendation and penned his now famous encyclical, Humanae Vitae in 1968, which attempted to
strengthen the Church’s teaching against Birth Control. Greeley sites this as one of the most
confusing attempts for reform, then counter-reform, during those years. As a result, some teaching
authority of the Church was lost as people began focusing on their right to follow their
consciences in this and other matters.
Priests and nuns
Following the council, more priests and nuns were receiving official dispensations from the
Vatican so that they could leave their clerical or vowed state and enter valid marriages.
Prior to the Council, men who left the priesthood and women who left the convent had to go it
alone and often times without dispensation. Suddenly, the issue of married clergy was on the
front burner as was the issue of mandatory celibacy and chastity for religious.
All of these examples point to Greeley’s contention that the structural integrity and central authority of the Church lost its credibility due to these and other changes.
I’d now ask our panelists to share briefly which of these crucial areas had the most profound affect on you.
Greeley comments that, the primary affect of the Second Vatican Council was the sweeping away of old structures. Many bishops went along with these sweeping changes, caught up in the ‘effervescence’ of the council. He says this may have been an example of collective behavior but that it was attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. Pope John XXIII and Paul VI went along with these changes as well as did many liberal-minded reformers who now saw hope for change. Specifically, he attributes the ongoing effervescence to the lower clergy and laity who were caught up in a state of euphoria following the council. Even so, core matters of religious doctrine survived— something that conservative Catholics don’t often admit. Nevertheless, the old wineskins had burst and there was no way to stop the changes that were occurring in the liturgy, in ecumenical relations and in other disciplines of the Catholic faith.
Looking at the current state of the Church, Greeley states that the old wineskins which burst cannot be repaired nor can the “old church” be restored. American Catholics have moved on since the Second Vatican Council. They are more educated and not willing to give blind obedience to Church authority. Finally, those who dissent from Church teaching are less likely to leave the Church. In fact, dissidents believe that they can remain in the Church while rejecting church teaching on various issues.
Greeley describes two major “glacial shifts” that have occurred in the Church today: “First, a shift away from appeals to an institutional Church leadership and towards appeals to God, and second, a conviction that God does not want you to stay away from Church because you reject a specific teaching of the Church.”
He notes that primacy of a person’s conscience (although it must still be an informed conscience) is seen by increasing numbers of Catholics as being more important than magesterial authority. One can, therefore, disagree with the teachings of the institutional Church and appeal to their conscience which defines their personal relationship with God.
Secondly, many Catholics now believe that God does not want them to remain apart from the Church even if they reject a specific teaching. God is seen as being more lenient than the Church itself and that, it is the lesser of two evils, to remain connected to the Church and practice one’s faith even if one finds him/herself in opposition to certain teachings. No longer does a “good Catholic” mean one who obeys all the Church rules.
We now turn to our panelists and ask them to comment on how these shifts in thinking have affected the way they view and practice their faith?
Discussion questions for September 22 panel:
1. Greeley describes the “chaos” and some of the unhealthy consequences that occurred
after the Council and how “ill-trained and frequently emotionally prophets” who have created a
“beige Catholicism” [pages 81-89]. What are some of the abuses and extremes that he includes?
Do you agree with his assessment? Why or why not?
2.Greeley says that four out of five persons raised as Catholics have chosen to remain in the Church despite chaos and confusion and disagreement with some Church teaching [Vatican] over the past decades. He says that, basically, Catholics like being Catholic for a number of reasons-- among them: the stories and metaphors, sacramentalism [especially the Eucharist]; and their religious “imagination.” What aspects of Catholicism keep you in the Church?
3. In the section of Greeley’s book entitled, “The Search for New Wineskins”, he discusses the fact that there was much that seemed to be left by the wayside in the years since Vatican II and that we need to recover the beauty of our Catholic heritage--everything from embracing a new appreciation of traditional devotions and practices to more worthy use of art and music in liturgy. In your opinion, what are some areas that should be addressed to make Catholicism a mor vital religious experience?