Memories and snapshots
February 5, 2011, 7:25 pm
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
This site will bring you to three articles on the post-conciliar Church published in the March 20, 1970, issue of Life. One illustration of the aftermath of Vatican II. For some it will revive memories, for others perhaps provide a snapshot of the times. For one old-timer, most distressing is that this all occurred forty years ago!
These pieces certainly do bring back memores, good, bad and other. Cogley’s article on Paul VI is particularly interesting (not surprisingly). I wonder if historians in the future might see Paul’s vetoing of any Council reform of the curia as the pivotal event that sealed the Church’s fate, at least for decades, and was at least in part responsible for the ways in which so many men and women have left and continue to leave the Church and the progress of secularization (I’m not overlooking Humanae vitae and its importance).
One preconciliar memory which may be apposite here. On 28 October 1958, I was at a post-funeral reception in New York, and talking to a Benedictine priest from Mount Savior (who had married my wife and me a year earlier), while in the background a radio played softly. The radio broke to announce the election, earlier that day of Angelo Roncalli. The Benedictine put down his wineglass so hard on the table that I thought it might break, and said to me, “Yet another Italian time-server! I can’t stand it.”
He was a wonderful man, that priest, but obviously not endowed with the gift of prophecy. And I have often wondered how many of the cardinals voting for Roncalli thought they were going to get a nice, safe time-server.
They were “discussing the celibacy issue” forty years ago, and again last week…
Maybe things are finally starting to change even in the conservative wings of the Church.
The current Commonweal has an exerpt from a book by Sir Michael Dummett, one of the most important English philosophers of the past century and a Catholic convert. Dummett’s Catholicism used to be of the non-dissenting sort. In fact, he was publicly quite intolerant of dissent in the Church.
However, the exerpt in this issue of CWL presents Dummett’s apparently new view about contraception. He actually gets into the issues of contraception, intrinsic evils, condoms, ends and means, etc. and comes down on the side of reviewing the current teachings of the Church. (Unlike our 600 plus thread on the subjects, he takes only a few paragraphs to get to the same liberal conclusion.)
You can trust his reasoning process. He’s a great logician and philosopher of logic.
I always wondered why we never hear anything at all about Paul VI. (Why are people talking about canonizing the last pope but not his predecessor?) Paul VI was the pope when I was in elementary school, the Pope of the Church I grew up in. I didn’t see the divisiveness; all I knew was a Church that was ecumenical and embracing, one that taught me anything I know about social justice. I liked that Church a lot and feel like some of that spirit is missing today.
Many thanks for an interesting post! Obviously JPII did have a sense of public relations and that has made all the difference.
Irene: I fixed your Roman numerals…. I agree with you about Pope Paul VI. I think he was a very good pope, holding the Church together during a very difficult period. I’ve always thought that since he was so bitterly attacked from both left and right, he must have been doing something right!
How well I remember those years after Vatican II: we were so full of hope for a real “aggiornamento” in the Church! Papa Giovanni was, to the surprise of those who elected him, a man who envisioned what the Church could be when he called the Council.
Although the Council exceeded even his hopes and expectations, Paul VI, who seemed a more cautious and prudent leader (much to the chagrin of us impatient youths, like me, but in retrospect he was a great Pope (as Fr. Komonchak has pointed out, “holding the Church together in a difficult period.”
John Paul ! was with us for all-too-short a time. His successors–JPII and BXVI–although they were present at the Council, JPII as a bishop and BXVI as a theological advisor–have done their best to undo the direction of the Council, in my humble opinion, and to
“restore” the pre-conciliar Church. I do not believe that they will be successful, but that, in the long run, these two papacies will be seen as a “blip” on the screen of Church History.
I once heard a Church historian say that after every major Council (read ‘major shift’), a papacy or two have followed which have sought to “restore” the “old order” … but after these, the Council vision begins to move forward. I think we are living in that interim period.
On another thread, I referenced the latest post by Msgr. Harry Byrne at his Archangel blog and his critique of how JPII undid the work of the Council.
I think not only that he’s right, but that’s why 40 years on, we’re still having the same arguments -discussions is too nice a word.
Bob, are you suggesting that the work of the Council was to “empty the institution of Marriage of its meaning by artificially separating the unitive from the procreative” and that Pope Paul VI was mistaken when he declared that to artificially separate the unitive from the procreative would be a source of division in Marriage as it becomes difficult to discriminate between Sexual Love and sex not just within the Sacrament of Marriage but within Society as a whole? Although one could argue that Pope Paul VI did not adequately predict the nature and scope of the Christianophobia that exists some 40 years later, no doubt, we have suffered because of our inability to discriminate between authentic Love and its counterfeit.
Nancy-did you read Msgr. Nyrne’s post?
Did my post say anyhtning about marriage?
The work of the Council that the good Msgr. points out was to move Church governance away from the highly papl centered Church; he argues against Geoerge Weigel saying that the era of Bernadin, seamles garment and collegialit yis over and lays the balme at the doorstep of JPII.
Issues around the divide in the Church, as Isuggested in naother post, are being exasperated by “Catholic identity thrusts” which are centered on centralizingpower – a power that was broadened in VII and which the curialist and their folowers have fough tvigorously to regain.
I hope that answers your (non)question.
A quick amen to the praise for Paul VI. It was a couple years into my time in Rome that I finally realized that a number of acquaintances in the curia had portraits of Pope Paul on their walls, whereas everything was JPII everywhere else, all the time. Understandably. I had started to imbibe the standard line that John Paul was the strong decisive pope so needed after the Hamlet-like Paul, and friends and further reading changed that view quite a bit. I wonder whether there is as least an open cause for his canonization.
I am old enough to have experienced the pre-Vatican II Church at its peak, and to have participated in the rethinking of the nature of the Church as People of God, which is the theme that runs through the Council two major Constitutions, Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes. By the mid-70s there those in the Church who were blaming the Council–when they really meant interpretations of the Council–for all that ailed the Church. Since 1978–33 years ago–a “Restoration” has been in progress under JPII and BXVI. It looks like “order” has been restored. Still our churches are emptying out. The Archdiocese of Boston announced this past week that it will undergo a “Second Reconfiguration (read: closing more parishes). The Church, with all this restored authority
and laying down of the law by Rome and the Bishops, we continue to hemorrhage. The fact is undeniable. Our leaders are responding by continuing to close/merge parishes.
It will take a John XXIV to reinvigorate the Church Universal with the Council Documents in hand … to call back our people who have walked away … and inspire us all by treating us like we really are the People of God, that we, indeed, are the Church. Our Lord says in the Gospels, “Behold I am in your midst as ONE WHO SERVES.
Perhaps it will be counter-intuitive to some here, but Rembert Weakland in his autobiography has high praise for Paul VI and a whole chapter on Paul’s strong support for monastic reform. Weakland was then the head of the Benedictines.
David,
Had you not seen the Italian bumper sticker around Rome at the height of JP II’s papacy? “Paolo VI, ritorno, è tutto perdonato!” “Paul Vi come back, all is forgiven!”
Having been born in the era of John Paul II, I can only judge those previous papacies through historians and the people who actually remember them. John XXIII, the jovial pope who still is the standing image of the Papacy in the media on shows like ‘Family Guy’, reminds me a little of John Paul II in that everyone seems to have loved him, but few people understood/cared what he believed/taught. As Yves Congar praised him, “This was the secret of his personality: he loved people more than power”
Paul VI on the other hand seems like such a melancholic figure (someone called him Hamlet earlier and there is a passage in the Wikipedia article where Paul himself reflects on it, “What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? On the left? On the right? I do not think I have been properly understood.”) that it is hard not to feel deep sympathy with him. After all, he seems to have angered all the right people, held the Church together while people on both sides tore at it, a true pontiff in the latin sense. But I always think that he must have had his heart broken over Humani Vitae and it’s reception. Having written 7 other encyclicals in his first four years of his papacy, he remained conspicuously silent afterwards. It is unfortunate for Pope Paul VI that he is only really remembered for H.V., whether you agree with it or not.
The reforms of Vatican II will endure. History may well give more credit to Paul VI over John PaulII and Ratzinger. He did not oppose birth control as such. Those who place infallibility over the gospel convinced him that if he allowed birth control he would make a mockery of infallibility. Today infallibility is hardly believed and certainly unprovable. Paul worked to bring the church together and worked with both sides of the conservative/liberal divide. He certainly did not have the arrogance of John Paul II nor the hubris of Benedict XVI. The latter two polarized the church. History will be kinder to Paul VI.
Alan, that’s a great bumper sticker — shades of Robert Morley’s British Airways ad?
“It is unfortunate for Pope Paul VI that he is only really remembered for H.V., whether you agree with it or not.”
As he should be–it was the biggest single Papal mistake in the past 1000 years.
As someone who has lived through six papacies and trained in Church history, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I hold Paul VI in great esteem. He continued the Council. And his audience talks as well as his homilies in the parish churches of Rome, in the late 1960s, on implementing the liturgical reforms reveal a remarkable pastoral sensitivity and wisdom. He clearly regretted the loss of the Latin but saw the vernacular as the surest way forward.
His homily during the memorial Mass at Saint John Lateran for his longtime friend Aldo Moro is so deeply human and achingly heartfelt. It was in many ways his Nunc Dimittis. His own death followed not long after. His Last Testament, written in 1965, is poignant, resigned, yet full of hope. Though this English translation is lacking, I think particularly of that sentence close to the conclusion:”I close my eyes on this sad, dramatic and magnificent earth calling once again still on divine kindness.” There was a saint in that man.
And why too is Pope Benedict XV now so overlooked?
It is always rather galling when venomous haters accuse those they hate and want nothing to do with of being the polarizers, rather than looking at themselves. But that corrosive bile only ends up destroying those who spew it.
Meanwhile, yes, that Servant of God, Paul VI, does deserve an apology too, especially from those who have spit on him the last 45-plus years.
Joe McF. ==
Yes, the part of Humanae Vitae rejecting contraception was a disaster. But ironically the rest of it presents a fine view of marriage that deserves attention. Not only that, in it Paul VI explicitly renounces the notion that couples should always produce all the babies they can.
Most important, he even notes that there are serious questions about the amount of resources world-wide that would be necessary for the unlimited growth of families. No, he doesn’t meet this problem of finite world resources head on, but at least he recognized that there is a serious question to be asked. I can’t think of another Catholic intellectual who has taken the matter seriously.
Re Morley, BTW:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morley
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Morley-British-Airways-Photo/dp/B001MPSQJE
“He clearly regretted the loss of the Latin…”
“Loss” is an odd term to use as it implies an unintentional misplacing of something. Vatican II taught:
“Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” (Sacrosanctum concilium, 36.1)
It would seem that Latin in the liturgy was not “lost”, but rather abandoned. Masses in the vernacular could have been introduced without eliminating Latin Masses (Latin even in the Novus Ordo, as anticipated by Vatican II). Fortunately, Pope Benedict XVI has begun to reintroduce Latin into the liturgy so we can have the best of both worlds.
The Diane Knapp story is quite interesting. I know that quite a bit has been written about the turmoil among the IHMs in the wake of the Council. It would be interesting to know whatever became of her.
I didn’t find the Diane Knapp story very interesting. That she was still so young and, probably not yet in final vows, made her less representative of women religious who had lived many years or even decades in their communities and suddenly found their common lives, for good and for ill, turned almost upside-down. She might, on the other hand, be considered representative of the difficulty of attracting and retaining young women to the religious life.
I remember an elderly woman religious saying to me: “Some years ago, they told us that the Holy Spirit wants us to become a cloistered community. Now they’re saying that the Holy Spirit wants to do away with the papal cloister. Has the Holy Spirit changed his mind? And how do we know?”
Couple of quick thoughts:
HV began a huge crack in the Church to this day, instead of “holding it together.’ That said, Paul was probably much superior to his predecessors.
Was Bender’s post “venemous bile?” Thus how large the (growing) crack is.
As to our nuns, it would be good to hear from them on their experiences post conciliar even til today and the world of”visitation.”
John Page: Actually, there is a good deal of interest now in Pope Benedict XV, especially with the Vatican Archives on his pontificate open to scholars. E.g., a student at CUA is completing a dissertation on his Middle Eastern policy. I agree that he needs much more study (as does his immediate successor). He did his best to end World War I, and he did away with the Sodalitium Pianum, the anti-modernist spy-network.
And let’s not forget Benedict XIV !
Thanks, Father Komonchak, for the update. I hope that a solid biography can now be undertaken, with the advantage of the Archives. In saying “overlooked,” I was thinking too of the opening of his cause.
I certainly agree that the long pontificate of Prospero Lambertini was one of the most important in recent centuries, though I think his decisions regarding the Chinese Rites and the Malabar Rites were unfortunate.
Fr. Joe’s quote about the Holy Spirit wanting us to to this, and then wants us to do the opposite, gets to the heart of the problem, which is the question of authority and the trust the faithful have in that authority. In my view the thing we most struggle with is that for many of us, that old authority/trust is gone gone gone and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up; for others, it still exists, so even talking about its demise/rebuilding seems ludicrous.
Jeanne: At cynical moments I think that the primary purpose of references to the Holy Spirit is to excuse oneself from having to give reasons for what one is thinking, saying, or doing, and this is not by any means a temptation restricted to people in authority, as was illustrated when the convent-reformers invoked his inspiration .
“Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” (SC 36.1)
“But since the use of the mother tongue…” (SC 36.2)
See Christopher Ferrara’s “Sacrosanctum Concilium: A Lawyer Examines the Loopholes” at http://www.latinmas.s701.sureserver.com/ferrara.htm where the author explains why conservative Catholics are wrong for believing that the Novus Ordo does not meet the intent of the liturgical constitution.
JAK
Apart from the rites contoversy I think of Benedict XIV as one who reformed, or at least tried to reform, the Curia and one who was on cordial terms with Voltaire. That might be scored as two out of three. Have I quite missed the man?
Benedict XIV was also one of the greatest scholars in papal history. He wrote a very large book on canonizations and beatifications in which, for example, he tried to set down criteria for distinguishing between sanctity and madness, not always an easy task. Certain quips are also attributed to him: “I know that as pope I have all the treasury of wisdom and knowledge. Now if only I could find the key to it.” Or something like that.
F.Y.I.-
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=766
“…Paul VI explicitly renounces the notion that couples should always produce all the babies they can.
Most important, he even notes that there are serious questions about the amount of resources world-wide that would be necessary for the unlimited growth of families. No, he doesn’t meet this problem of finite world resources head on, but at least he recognized that there is a serious question to be asked. I can’t think of another Catholic intellectual who has taken the matter seriously.”
Worth repeating. I think HV would have been an excellent place to start the discussion. Unfortunately, it has since come to be used to end discussions.
Pope Paul’s discussion in HV of married love is a great first step in the right direction, which is why I won’t ever be seen spitting on his grave.
“Fr. Joe’s quote about the Holy Spirit wanting us to to this, and then wants us to do the opposite, gets to the heart of the problem, which is the question of authority and the trust the faithful have in that authority. In my view the thing we most struggle with is that for many of us, that old authority/trust is gone gone gone and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up”
Similar things could be said about tradition.
Authority almost always seems conservative, in the sense of wishing to conserve the status quo/the way things have always been done.
In the case of liturgical renewal, my own opinion is that by and large it has been a good thing, but that some of the excesses were the result of not giving tradition and continuity – and, I would have to say, authority – their due. I’m thinking of things such as the experimentation that led to the blurring of liturgical roles, or the substituting of other texts for the ones in the books. Trends in church architecture during the conciliar and post-conciliar period can be attributed to the same thing, in my opinion.
On the other hand, doing things as they have always been done has been an unmitigated disaster for church leaders in the instance of the sex-abuse scandals. If ever a problem called for fresh thinking, that is it.
The ability to analyze a situation and discern that it is crucially different from other, seemingly similar situations in one’s experience, and that it therefore calls for a different response, is a rare trait among leaders, and not just in the church.
Ah, yes: tradition. Your heresy is my tradition and vice-versa.
“One of the worst enemies of Tradition is traditionalism. Real tradition lives by changing and dies by simply repeating itself.” Sebastian Moore, OSB, letter to editor, “The Tablet,” 29 July 1989.
“Tradition is the living faith of those who have gone on before. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Jaroslav Pelikan.
“A vibrant tradition is one in which people are constantly arguing about what gives the tradition its identity.“ Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue.
“Tradition is not a single voice issuing orders, but an often-cacophonous conversation between all the ages and all the races of humanity. Their unity comes not from the dominance of one voice over another, but from their common allegiance to the creating and redeeming Word that informs them all. To ensure that the church’s tradition is real communion, a conversation and not a shouting match, requires endless attentiveness, endless reflection, endless mutual forbearance, all of these the opposite of prejudice.” Eammon Duffy, “The Reformation Revisited,” The Tablet, 3/4/95.
Can one say that a conviction that nothing in one’s tradition has every gone amiss is an obstacle if one wants to see things aright?
“conservative Catholics are wrong for believing that the Novus Ordo does not meet the intent of the liturgical constitution.”
I certainly have no problem with the Novus Ordo. It would, however, be interesting to hear it in the Latin in which it was written, the Latin which is the default language for it according to Vatican II. Each vernacular Mass that has been celebrated since Vatican II was done by means of exception; the normative Novus Ordo Mass is in Latin. Yes, either one is valid…i.e., not only vernacular, as progressive Catholics “are wrong for believing”.
They called Paul VI Hamlet. Always in a pejorative sense. Yet sometimes that could be a virtue. He always remembered his removal from the Vatican. As a result he was reluctant to censure or punish other clergy as he realized many times there is revenge or ill will involved. This is the reason he did not act on Cody in Chicago. His body was still warm, so to speak, when John Paul acted against Kung and others.
Paul VI was wise enough to appoint Hesburgh to many important international positions and he always insisted that Hesburgh see him whenever was in Rome. Hesburgh would call Paul directly whenever a Vatican official gave him a hard time. Paul would intervene quickly on Hesburgh’s behalf. He was a pope of the whole church. Not particular factions.
P Flanagan – whatever the merits of liturgy in Latin (and I think there are some), the toothpaste is now out of the tube. The new Roman Missal can’t even be considered to be “received” in the English-speaking countries until it has been translated. The translation, for all practical purposes, *is* the liturgical text now.
Jimmy Mac – I like those quotes.
It does seem to me, though, that tradition frequently isn’t even accorded a place at the kitchen table so that it can join in the conversation. (E.g. sexual morality among teens or single adults). A bias toward technology and “progress” is still a sign of our times.
Novus Ordo or not, English or Latin, I think misses the point. What’s important is the manner in which the Mass is celebrated. Liturgy first and foremost is a sacred ritual to be experienced. Understanding the nature of the ritual, and more importantly understanding its meaning and power in the context of faith, is an entirely different matter than making the liturgy itself understandable, translating the words of the ritual into contemporary vernacular so they can be understood, and amplifying every word spoken from the altar. The problem with doing this is that it assumes liturgy belongs to the domain of information which must be conveyed rather than thinking of it as a sacred event to be experienced, which opens the heart and soul.
Let me try the link one more time:
http://latinmas.s701.sureserver.com/ferrara.htm
Let’s not forget that Rome’s earliest liturgical language was Greek, not Latin. The latter language, a vernacular concession, was adopted ca. 475 during the pontificate of Damasus I.
I usually find that people who are concerned about the liturgy being a sacred ritual (no, this is NOT a slam of Jeanne) tend to mean that it has to be formal, solemn, full of “smells and bells” and generally performance art.
I invite people to listen to the attached and experience versions that, to my way of thinking, are as much part of sacred rituals as anything to which the reform2 crowd want us to hearken back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNb-02n3KY
http://www.amazon.com/Misa-Criolla-Remasterizado-Ariel-Ramirez/dp/B000008NPM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7fcWTciQnw
Also, any major city (and increasingly smaller ones) in the US will have parishes that are predominately African-American or Latino. The worship and musical styles are a far cry from sacredness a la Tridentine format but I’ll challenge anyone to prove that the type of access to the sacred found therein is secondary to anything found in St. Peter’s on any given Sunday.
Jimmy, for liturgy, I would go with formal and solemn, and sure why not smells and bells, but this doesn’t mean a la Tridentine, even thought that has value simply from being such a big part of the tradition. The bits from the Agnus Dei and the El Nacimiento in the Missa Criolla that you linked to were both lovely and solemn.
The point is, if you think the Mass is a prayer service then any kind of music will probably work. If you think the Mass manifests the actual presence of the divine, then what goes on musically and every other way needs to be appropriate to that (but not necessarily Tridentine). It all comes down to what you think is going on at the consecration.
My former cathedral parish had beautiful Sunday noon liturgies that were of the “high” kind with smells (but not bells :-) As our then pastor told us at the time, his goals were good music, good preaching, and good liturgy. On the other hand, we had a more contemporary liturgy at Saturday vigil and Sunday evening services. Excellent music, regardless of style, at all weekend liturgies; the parish had services of professional musicians and a full-time (I think) music director.
What’s important is communal participation rather than the passivity characteristic of the Tridentine service. The latter reinforces the clerical culture by making the mass the domain of the “priest” rather than the communal thanksgiving of all his fellow priests.
I like that quote of Benedict XIV. A man who didn’t take himself too seriously. Nice!
While this thread has bounced around a lot from the 70′s to today, to past popes, tradition, and liturgy, I still maintain HV and Paul the VI not listening to his commision, some of whom were later excoriated, represented a watershed on the trust/authority issue and lots more that followed from that.
A problem that followed then is “the three legged stool” which weakened for many, not strengthened, a sense of tradition as any episcopal/papal, curial utterance became associated with a final word (including,as in past discussions here, CCC.)
Liturgy wars were an offshoot of wanting to go back to the way it was and moving forward – the glorification of Latin and the Latin Mass as somehow sacrosanct was part of the fissure also.
I think the dynamics of those times til now are clear in the current divisions and drift, but how one appreciates them is probably a reflection of one’s own views and tempraments.
Which raises for me at least the issue of how much Paul VI was “holding things together” and trying(under curial duress) to restore power while keeping the promise of the council to broaden collegiality -a promise under attack thereafter.
I agree with Bob. HV is a wound that is still with us. Regardless of its other attributes, it flew in the face of evidence and reason and landed on the side of perpetuating the authority of Casti Cannubi. Yet it came after Vatican II, where the Council Fathers spent four years changing the rules we had all known our entire lives–with good reason, but changed nonetheless in a Church perceived as unchangeable. So either God was losing His Marbles, or the Church had never really been straight with us on that whole “unchanging” thing to begin with. Then came HV. It tipped the inclination that many Catholics had to shrug off Church authority to a conviction to shrug it off and make up their own minds. If the Church was that wrong once, it could be that wrong again.
I also agree that liturgy wars were an offshoot of wanting to go back to the way it was and moving forward, not only with the glorification of Latin but on the other side with the visceral protection of the reformed liturgy as a stand in for “progress,” ironic in a Church still run as an absolute monarchy. Unlike Anglicans, who have both a sane attitude towards birth control AND a greater respect for traditional liturgies like Vespers, Catholics have neither.
“Then came HV. It tipped the inclination that many Catholics had to shrug off Church authority to a conviction to shrug it off and make up their own minds. If the Church was that wrong once, it could be that wrong again.”
As a history lesson, I’m sure that’s as good a recap as any of what happened way, way back then.
Consider this, though: a person who is 50 years old today, i.e. quite possibly a grandparent, was six or seven when HV was promulgated. I doubt she stopped playing with her Barbies long enough to decry the patriarchy and insensitivity and authority and so on ad nauseum.
If that 50 year old is a grandmother today, then that means we’re at least three(!) generations removed from the generation whose actual sex lives were allegedly thrown into crisis back in 1968.
Yet her grandchildren still need to be baptized, still need to hear the Good News about Jesus, still need to be forgiven and to unite with Jesus in Holy Communion. HV has nothing to do with any of those needs.
If that grandmother’s parents grew lax in their religious practice in the wake of HV – apparently because irresponsible sex is more important than fidelity and truth – and then passed that laxity along to the grandmother, who in turn transmitted it to the next generation and so on down the line, then … it’s something to contemplate.
Jim Pauwels:
You wrote, “. . . apparently because irresponsible sex is more important than fidelity and truth. . . “
It looks – to me, at least – as if you’re saying that the debate about HV is a debate between those who favor irresponsible sex, and those who favor fidelity and truth.
Or did I misunderstand you?
Jim: my parents were in their early 30′s at the time, and young parents. My father never passed an opportunity to mock prelates who claimed definitive knowledge about anything. I grew up Catholic, but the kind of Catholicism that is grounded in uncertain hope, not in confident knowledge. My daughter shrugged off those uncertainties and has the conviction that she can make up her own mind. That’s a multi-generation transition, from trust in church authority to uncomfortable uncertainty, and from there to confident dismissal of church authority.
Jim, if you knew more good Catholic families that were torn apart after the 7th or 8th or 9th kid put them over the edge physically and psychologically, you might be less glib about characterizing it as irresponsible sex vs. fidelity and truth.
Nevertheless, it is true as Claire says that there has been a multi-generation transition, from trust in church authority to uncomfortable uncertainty, and from there to confident dismissal of church authority. Yet as you say, we still need to be baptized, still need to hear the Good News about Jesus, still need to be forgiven and to unite with Jesus in Holy Communion.
The nub of the problem is this — how do we structure an institution that has lost the authority / trust of its people so that trust can be regained?
Claire: I’m interested in a couple of phrases in your last post. “I grew up Catholic, but the kind of Catholicism that is grounded in uncertain hope, not in confident knowledge.” Isn’t Catholicism supposed to be grounded in faith and hope? I’m not sure what the metaphor can mean of being “grounded” in what is uncertain.
The terms of the “multi-generational transition” you nicely describe–”trust in church authority” and “confident dismissal of church authority”–have to be looked at more closely, I think. The trust in church authority was too often unquestioning, almost absolute. Surely, the dismissal of it now should also not be unquestioning, almost absolute.
The great problem for Church leaders is how to inspire the trust that is the corollary of authority, without which, in fact, there is no authority.
Fr. Joe, that is exactly the problem but I would say it’s not so much a problem for Church leaders as it is a challenge for the faithful. The change that inspires trust will not be led from the top.
Jeanne: I think the needed change probably has to come from both sides.
Fr. Komonchak, yes, “grounded” was not a good word. Let’s say I grew up in parishes that studiously avoided all difficult questions. People avoided going into beliefs in any detail, possibly because of the unspoken fear that examining them might result in the whole edifice of faith falling apart. My own hopes are more optimistic, perhaps due to the good luck of some encounters with grace; but they are no more rational.
I agree with the need to inspire trust. In fact, you are a priest and a teacher, and, in those ways, a Church leader yourself; yet, dare I admit it? I do have a little bit of trust in you, to some limited extent!
Jeanne: my obviously unclear point what that when liturgy devolves to performance art to the point that the folks in the pew become observers rather than participants, then it does not point out anything about what is happening. I also believe that the consecration is only one part of the liturgy. I’m not arguing how much of the liturgy the consecration is, just that it is a part. By its nature (the action of the priest) the rest of us end up kneeling/standing and observing. The rest should engage our senses as well as our intellects. Good preaching can do that to a point. Music that reaches out and snatches our minds and souls into the activity itself is critical.
“Shout joyfully to the LORD, all you lands; worship the LORD with cries of gladness; come before him with joyful song.” (Ps 100) says it best: Shout joyfully. Cries of gladness. Joyful song.
How many of us can say that the average Sunday liturgy in our parishes evoke those emotions and reactions in us? Can solemn, dignified, smells & bells performances do that? Methinks not! If our liturgy’s consecration was preceded by an attempt to really engage the parishioners, maybe they would be a bit more in tune with what’s happening, rather than using that action as a time to scan the bulletin.
Free admission: I spent many years as a member of a non-denominational church with music from many traditions. I have been known to bash a tamborine on occasion! I miss the excitement of upbeat, joyful singing.
I agree with Father Joseph.
F.Y.I., a memory and a snapshot: http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/ephesians4.htm
least that memory and snapshot be forgotten, one can find it here:
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/ephesians/ephesians4.htm
“It looks – to me, at least – as if you’re saying that the debate about HV is a debate between those who favor irresponsible sex, and those who favor fidelity and truth.”
I didn’t quite say that.
I do see sex for the sake of sexual gratification, with no acknowledgement that (a) procreation is intrinsic to the act, and (b) consequences emerge from that act for which the partners must be willing to be responsible parents, as the great irresponsibility of our times.
“Jim, if you knew more good Catholic families that were torn apart after the 7th or 8th or 9th kid put them over the edge physically and psychologically, you might be less glib about characterizing it as irresponsible sex vs. fidelity and truth.”
Perhaps.
I did and do know a lot of those families. As it happens, I come from one of those families myself – good Catholic parents with lots of kids. We were very imperfect, and maybe even torn apart once or twice, but I assure you that it wasn’t the children who came later who caused the trouble for my parents or the family as a whole.
Nor does your point address the reality of Catholic families – the majority – who had one or two or three children. (According to Greeley, the average size of Catholic families has changed hardly at all pre- and post-Pill). My impression isn’t that small families accepted HIV with more docile obedience than large families.
The truth is, Paul VI was extremely kind to parents of large families in Humanae Vitae. Nobody in the church wants parents to have more children than they should.
“That’s a multi-generation transition, from trust in church authority to uncomfortable uncertainty, and from there to confident dismissal of church authority.”
Claire, don’t you think, though, that the church’s teachers have important and urgent messages that your daughter (and mine) needs to hear? If the messages are dismissed because the messenger isn’t considered trustworthy, then who will relay the message to them?
Who is responsible for making sure that the messenger is trustworthy so that the message gets delivered?
Yes, Jim, we desperately need leaders that we can trust and follow. I am yearning for those leaders. I pray for them, I wait for them, and when I read writings by bishops, I still look for something inspiring. Of course my daughter needs them to, although she doesn’t realize it yet.
As to HV and contraception, for us that is not something we worry about. I am not looking to the Church’s teachers for education in matters related to sexuality. That conversation is over as far as I’m concerned.
Re: tradition and change, has anyone downloaded the confession app for the i-phone yet?(Given the first ever imprimatur for an i-phone app.)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confession-a-roman-catholic/id416019676?mt=8#
On the basis of what evidence can someone make the claim that the message and messenger of Humanae Vitae were not trustworthy?
Nancy, broad rejection by many good people.
How easily we slip into facilities and broad semantics: “the great irresponsibility of our times.”
Violence and the the use of power and control to subjugate.
Placing women in second place while pretendin gnot to.
And on an on.
I continue to beleive things will get worse as the push to maintain the status quo or go backward goes on and on – more theologians sign on to the European theologians; the proper authorities push back(gently, in Germany.)
“… during the Bishops’ Synod in Rome last fall. Paul broke tradition by attending the meetings and sitting on a level with his fellow bishops at almost every session.”
Just reading that is a real thrill. Would I that our current pope did the same!
These articles are very interesting to read. It’s eye-opening to see a more global perspective. At the time when that magazine issue was published, I was 5 years old, and my memories of that period are of our brand new cinderblock church, our worker-priest who was sometimes late for Mass, who played recorded music and who would ask during Mass: “Who has a suggestion for the hymn that we are now going to sing?” – a question followed by an uncomfortable silence before someone would tentatively make a suggestion. A family memory is that one day my older sister told our neighbors: “Today Genevieve [a local teenager] did the Mass; the priest was there to help.” My parents used to say that our local nun was the most interesting homilist around. But the congregation quickly dwindled during my years in elementary school, until it had shrunk enough that we started having Mass in a classroom instead of the church. Homilies were replaced by awkward small group discussions. The priest took a sabbatical year “to reflect on his vocation”, and didn’t come back.
I was too young to wonder about the differences between the Masses in the various churches we went to. I thought diversity was normal, and I have quite fond memories of those liturgies. (The only thing that I couldn’t accept was the architecture. Even as a young child, I knew that our old churches were incomparably more beautiful than cinderblocks, and was bothered by the sheer ugliness of our church!)
The funny thing is that now it is easier for my children to understand my parent’s childhood memories of Mass than my own. Was my experience that radical?
Bob, to be clear, my question requires evidence for the claim that we should not trust the message or the messenger.
My clearest memories of Vat. 2 and the aftermath are of things that were happening at Catholic U., where I was working on my doctorate. Part of the time I lived in the graduate women’s dorm which was located in Sisters College, a collection of old dorms for nuns which was so far from the campus you had to take a bus to come and get to school. The location was surrounded by woods, which sometimes had giant Queen Anne’s lace growing in it. The woods also sometimes had hoboes from the trains which passed nearby, so it wasn’t safe. Does that all tell you something about the old attitude towards women at C. U.?
The nuns were ecstatic to be reviewing the rules/laws of their communities, which were truly medieval in some cases. One nun-friend said that at one point one of her nun-sisters came to her door in middle of the the night asking to talk to her becaus she (the other nun) thought she was having a nervous breakdown and was about to crack-up. But, said my friend, “I wouldn’t say a word to her” because it was against the rules, and she closed the door in the unfortunate woman’s face. (Rules above charity. See?)
The other big thing with the nuns was what to do about their habits. That was sort of funny.
My other clear memory was seeing the students and faculty (except the Education Department) on national TV news when they all struck because Hans Kung had been refused permission to give a lecture there. (The local Archbishop was also rector of the school and said NO.) It was like Tahrir Square without the violence — priests, nuns, lay students, deans, young and old, everybody struck. It was led by the theology faculty, who has invited Kung, followed by the philosophy faculty. Ah, those were the days. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in Washington when it happened. Will it ever happen again? Sigh.
Oops — no, the Archibishop had some other over-seer function. The rector was a priest and he was fired, or shall I say removed from his position, I assume by the powers that be in Rome. In other words, the faculty and students had won that one, because Rome had changed for the moment.
“Bob, to be clear, my question requires evidence for the claim that we should not trust the message or the messenger.”
Nancy, so far as I can tell, Bob did answer your question with his reference to “[b]road rejection by many good people.” His reply presumes that “good people” otherwise respectful of authority did not find HV to resonate with their own experience or the experience of others.
Just as with listening to one’s conscience, i.e., that tiny voice of God within, an adult learns to ignore personal experience (and the experience of others) to one’s possible detriment. It’s called “being an adult”. When the messenger delivers a message that does not coincide with what has been learned in the proverbial “school of life”, one is more than likely predisposed to reject the message. When this experience recurs, the messenger can jeopardize his or her credibility.
An adult does not ignore his or her experience, much less behave like a child and trust everything out of a teacher’s mouth simply because the teacher is “Father”, “Pope”, etc.
God gave each of us a brain and expects us to use it.
“broad rejection by many good people.”
It just so happens, I am reading “Life Is Worth Living”, by Bishop Fulton Sheen, (I highly recommend it) who reminds us, ” ‘But there was no room at the inn’, for the inn, which is the gathering place of public opinion, so often locks its doors to The King.” Something we should all think about.
There’s a whole new thread on Michael Dummett’s “Incredible” in the new Commonweal about HV.
I’m sure the argument there will continue along the same lines as here.
But I think Dummett is spot on this observation:”Pope Paul VI did many good things, yet his most important action, the issuing of Humane Vitae, has engendered unresolved moral crisis.”
This thread is about 40 years ago and since in the Church.
That’s why I referenced Msggr. Byrne and his sharp reaction to the claim of George Weigel that the days of Benandin are over and Msgr.’s plea to Rome to change course.
I think that post VII has been a clear era of push back, not continuum, against, not with VII.
In this same Commonweal is an excellent book review of Raymond Shroth’s biography of Fr. Drinan by David O’ Brien.
He notes that Rome shut down priest political activities, like Drinan and Berigan but worried this risked obscurin gthe prophetic voice of the priest.”…but prophecy is not often sen among the hierachy…”The real problem, at least n the uNited states, is pastoral, for bishops and priests ar esupposed to unite their people, whatever their politics….But we are learning once again that this only works when there is some underlying consensus. some belief that the comon good is a genuine good, whjch in turn limits our pursuit of our own version of what is good.”
Weigel may rejoice, bu tthe lurch to the right continues, and the unified world split open under Paul Vi and attempted to be closed up, not held together, by his successors, is coming apart even more.