I meant to blog on this before Christmas. I came across the Curmudgeon’s take on Vatican II and I found myself saying, “yes, yes, yes,…AMEN to that!!!” He said exactly what I have thought to myself and what Mr. Pete and I have said to each other for at least the last 15 years. I agree totally.
Curmudgeon’s Cave: On Vatican II: “People much smarter, much better read, and of much better grounded faith than me have commented on Vatican II in great detail, so there’s little I can say that won’t make myself look ignorant and foolish by comparison. But having listened to and read so much about V-II in the last week (with the 40th anniversary of the closing of the Council on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception Thursday), I just have to say something, not just to the National Catholic Distorter crowd, but also to the folks at EWTN, Catholic Answers, and other non-dissenting organs:
stop, STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!Stop telling me what a great gift the Council was to the church! Stop telling me how enriched we’ve all been by the Council! Stop telling me how uplifting the aggiornamento has been! Stop telling me how we’ve come to an ‘adult faith’!
You can remind me that V-II was a valid council. I accept that. You can tell me that John XXIII loved the Church and called the Council with good intentions, and remind me the vast majority of the fathers who participated did so in good faith. I accept that. You can remind me that the Holy Spirit protected the Council from promulgating any outright doctrinal error. I accept that, and I affirm each and every point of doctrine repeated by the Council as true. But that’s enough. Don’t try to convince me that the Council and its aftermath has been good for the Church. Don’t try to convince me that I must not just accept, but agree with, the overly-optimistic pastoral orientation expressed in the Council documents. Don’t make me express my appreciation for the ambiguities…the chinks in the armour…that have been exploited by Satan’s Little Helpers ever since. I accept the Council, but I won’t embrace it. I’ll wait patiently (while doing what is necessary to protect the souls of my children) for matters to be set aright by Holy Mother Church, in good time. I won’t give up. But I won’t pretend that the implosion of the institutional Church in America . . . in Europe . . . in Latin America . . . heck, everywhere…has nothing to do with the pastoral orientation of Council.
Absolutely!
In my life personally, I think the implementation of Vatican II, in the name of the elusive “spirit of Vatican II” robbed me of what it meant to truly be Catholic in how I lived my life, and learned my lessons, how I prayed, and how it was to actually LIVE A CATHOLIC LIFESTYLE.
Oh my grandparents and my mom did what they could, and I knew that my mother was still a powerful prayer warrior and devoted to her Catholic faith. But as soon as the salt of their good and Godly exaple was poured in one end, it soon ran out the other as I faced the secularized environment and curriculum of my Catholic high school. We didn’t pray before classes, we didn’t pray at the beginning of the day, boy-girl relationships were encouraged and promoted and the straight talk I needed to hear about sexuality and marriage were marred with a “what do you think? it’s enough to just be a good person” type of attitude. When the school has you for the best part of the day, there is no way the influence of your parents is going to top that. It might be there for you to grab onto in your late twenties and later, but when you’re a teen, the other influences are just too powerful.
The result of that was I emerged into adulthood with a profound, deep ignorance of my Catholic faith. So much so that the slightest challenge to that faith left me with a deer-in-the-headlights look. I had absolutely no clue and no way of knowing how much I actually had missed out on.
But like the Curmudgeon, I’m not giving up either. I didn’t give up. In fact I have tried to forge ahead and learn much of what I should have had as a kid while at the same time passing this on to my own youngsters. But let’s not pretend it’s easy as an adult to relearn this stuff. It’s like picking up long division as a 35-year-old, or taking up a second language at age 40. It can be done, but there’s a price to pay in time, energy, and frustration.
My thanks to the Curmudgeon for putting, what I suspect, are the thoughts and feelings of many of us VII kids, into words.