The Flaw in the Plan

The flaw in the plan of the bishops of the Second Vatican Council, or at least the groupthink that prevailed, was the belief that the average Catholic’s faith was far deeper than it really was. 

The documents give the impression that, if only the Church would remove the brakes applied following the Council of Trent, modern Catholics would Christianize the world, beginning with unity amongst Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants.

This foundational assumption was backwards. The popular devotions and disciplines of the post Trent Church were not barriers to the fullness of the Christian life for most Catholics. Rather, these were the faith for many Catholics. Removing them by force all at once proved devastating, alienating many who hadn’t already chosen to leave the Church in favor of secularist culture. 

There are several clear examples, each of which identified a real problem, but provided a kneejerk solution that backfired. 

Liturgy

Most Catholics today, even traditionalists, agree that praying the rosary through Mass is not the ideal way to assist at Mass. It was said that Catholics at Mass should be full and active participants, meaning they must be fully conscious of what’s going on at Mass. Presumably this means that they are engaging in some way with the prayers of the Mass itself and not some private devotion. 

This is reasonable, and lack of understanding of the Mass was a real issue. Still, what was the appropriate pastoral way to address this? Many Catholics had no other experience of the Mass through multiple decades than silent personal prayer. This is probably why the rosary in particular was regarded as a barrier to fully experiencing the Mass. 

Was it appropriate to take a man who had quietly prayed his rosary through a mostly silent low Mass for 30 years and force him to show up at a Mass one Sunday where everything was now audible, and in English, and where he was expected to verbalize responses, shake hands, and look a priest in the face for close to an hour? This is exactly what happened, and it seems spiritually cruel. 

The rosary wasn’t a barrier to the experience of the Mass for those people, it was their experience of the Mass. Any movement toward a more direct participation in the prayers of the Mass could have been handled more gradually, and in a less condescending manner. Moreover, it was already happening. I know someone who entered high school in 1958 and received a Latin/English Missal on day 1 of grade 9. Greater engagement with the prayers of the Mass was coming, though apparently not fast enough for the authorities. 

Cathechesis

The older generations seem to positively loathe the Baltimore Catechism. And yet 60 years after it was largely thrown out, the boomers who studied it still remember the responses. And we haven’t found a better way of teaching children the basic truths of the faith in a way that sticks. Embarrassing mistakes and accidental heresy on basic matters abound, often in priests’ homilies. 

And many who have discovered the Baltimore Catechism as adults, myself included, find it a refreshing way to understand and explain key concepts of the faith clearly and concisely. 

Yes, the fact that, for many, the faith was reduced to a set of rote questions and responses was a real issue. 

The problem though, was not the Baltimore Catechism, the problem was that catechesis often stopped there. The catechesis of the day did not sufficiently teach Scripture, the lives of the saints, and how those could be realistically lived out in the real world. But you’d be hard pressed to say we’re doing better today.

Error

Pope John XXIII’s opening address to the Council assumed that the faithful were well formed enough to be able to spot and reject error, even if error were no longer censored and punished by Church authorities. In conjunction with throwing out the Baltimore Catechism and Thomist-based education in seminaries, this was also an unsafe assumption. 

Barely three years after the Council, the media was filled with theologians, bishops, lay “experts” and everyone else explaining why Humanae Vitae was wrong or did not need to be accepted by the faithful. If the Conciliar assumption was correct, the faithful should have been able to sort truth from error and do the right thing. Only they didn’t, and Catholics contracept at the same rates as any other demographic group. Widespread acceptance of abortion and divorce weren’t long in following. 

This also filters down to more critical matters. Over 2/3 of Catholics who regularly attend Mass don’t believe in the Real Presence. Plenty others believe that people become angels when they die, and we can’t blame It’s a Wonderful Life for that. Others don’t realize that Jesus Christ is God. 

While the prosecution of error in the Church could certainly get out of hand, some restraint of error by proper authority was all that kept the faithful safe from endless spiritual confusion and questioning on every subject. The faith is not supposed to be an independent research project, it is supposed to be something handed down. There needs to be something to hand down that isn’t clouded by endless uncertainty and dissension.

Fasting

While I’m admittedly more fuzzy on the rationales here, there was a strong belief that the Church’s rules around fasting made remaining in a state of grace inaccessible to many and relegated the faith to a set of legalistic rules. 

Still, fasting has proven to be one of the more enduring aspects of the Christian life. I know plenty of people who do not attend Mass but who still give up something dear to them for Lent. I know people who aren’t even Catholic who attend Friday Fish Fries. And it’s well known that Ash Wednesday remains one of the most popularly attended Masses despite not being a holy day of obligation. An elderly relative whose grandfather was Catholic often recalls his grandparents’ house smelling of fish every Friday, when his protestant grandmother (who refused to raise their children Catholic) consented to cooking meatless dinners each week. 

And the loss of fasting discipline has been disastrous. If one wonders why stores are filled with Christmas merchandise in mid-October, you could do worse than pointing to the Church’s dropping of the traditional fasting practice on vigils (like Christmas Eve) in the 50s. If you’re struggling to understand why belief in the Real Presence is flagging, the reduction of the Eucharistic fast from midnight to one hour is a contributing factor. I know several priests who have complained about the loss of any real penitential character to Lent- without bringing up that Lent used to require daily fasting. While the full breadth of traditional fasting may have been a struggle for the upper classes, this is one precept that simpler people could and did fulfill that gave their faith real physical grounding. 

If the Church no longer asks anything of its faithful, it’s easy to conclude that the Church and her teachings just aren’t all that important. This is especially true when one contrasts the attitude of the modern Catholic Church with fasting practices still observed by the Orthodox (no meat and dairy most Wednesdays and Fridays, fasting each day in Lent), Muslims (fasting from sunup to sundown through Ramadan), and Orthodox Jews (kosher laws). 

Legalism was and remains a problem in the Church. But this is inevitable given that the faithful need minimum guardrails from those in authority so as not to drift, especially in a secular world of plenty. And some will always misuse those minimums to marginalize and claim superiority over those who struggle in one area or another. 

A lighter approach may have been to reiterate longstanding exceptions for the sick and infirm, loosen the reigns to grant local bishops more authority over local fasting practices (which they should be expected to uphold rather than ignore), and enable other pastoral exceptions on the advice of a confessor. The traditional practices though, could remain as the gold standard, to be striven after by most, even if not achieved perfectly by many. 

Why? Quebec Edition

 

Why did the Catholic Church in Quebec collapse in the 1960s? Traditionalists would do well to consider the matter. Quebec is different in that it is not enough to point to the changes in the liturgy or the confusion surrounding the Second Vatican Council because the visible collapse started earlier. 

The Catholic Church was the foundation of the culture of Quebec. To this day, many street names, town names, and neighborhood names are drawn from saints. Montreal is known as the city of a thousand steeples. The churches there are breathtaking on a level not encountered in the United States or even some areas of Europe. 

The province’s Catholic culture and practice survived the takeover by the British after the French and Indian War, industrialization, the world wars, and the fraught politics of a francophone province in an anglo nation. It did not survive the 1960s. 

Paul Mavern has an excellent article on Cultural Witness chronicling this rise and fall. Over 90% of French Catholics confessed and received Communion during the Easter season near the turn of the 20th century. It was down to 15%, even before covid. Friends staying in Montreal can attest that it’s even lower now. 

Every issue that plagues a typical diocese in the West is present in exaggerated form in Quebec. Your diocese has low baptisms, marriages, Mass attendance, high divorce, decaying church buildings, immoral government? Quebec likely has more of them. 

At a recent event with George Weigel, the author stated “There is not a more spiritually arid place from the North Pole to the Tierra del Fuego.” 

So what happened? 

In short, two things. First, the church overcommitted to the conservative political order in Quebec, and once that political ideology lost its shine with the totalitarian tendencies and then death of powerful leader Maurice Duplessis, there was little left. 

The point is: compromises with totalitarian leaders have consequences, particularly when the Church has no answer for what comes after. This is something to keep in mind as we US Catholics dally with Trump and DeSantis. There are few places where the Church is worse off than Quebec, Spain, and Portugal. 

In all three cases, the Church allied itself (at least in the public mind) with authoritarian, nominally Catholic rulers who had brutal tendencies.

Second, the Church in the 1960s retreated and allowed a socialist government to take over vital education and health services. With the Church no longer taking an active role in the trenches helping people with day to day problems, people saw little reason to stay loyal to the institution. And far from standing for the truth in an age of change, the Canadian bishops issued the Winnipeg Statement which essentially gave a green light to disregarding Humanae Vitae, regardless of what its apologists say. The result is predictable if you know anything about the curses promised in the Old Testament for those who depart from God’s law. 

When the strongmen were gone, the Church retreated and made no attempt to step into the power vacuum with a new social order that upheld natural law and faith while lightening the heavy discipline. It was a worse case scenario combination of Rehoboam not lightening the burden imposed by his father Solomon on the northern tribes, followed by Aaron’s shameful allowance of mass apostasy. 

So what’s the answer? 

I would suggest helping people with real world problems. Giving people parish communities worth the name. Matching the beauty of the churches with beautiful liturgy. And helping people who are struggling, ranging from those on the streets with psychological problems, those from broken homes in need of someone to take on the role of family, the elderly with someone willing to listen to their stories, young families with childcare and education options that are authentically Catholic, and young people with intellectually engaging spiritual formation. 

It’s obviously not coming from the hierarchy. In a few days in Montreal, I witnessed a historic church dedicated to an early Canadian saint hosting a Christmas concert in which the sanctuary was treated liking a casual social parlor by all and sundry for a solid hour. I was then barred from entering the basilica more than 15 minutes before a Sunday Mass, being forced to stand out in the cold for 20 minutes while the money changers collecting fees for entry stood clustered around a heat lamp and turned away visitor after visitor. 

We can begin refilling the pews, but the average Catholic vastly underestimates the sheer amount of work, outreach, rejection, mortification, prayer, and fight against bureaucracy that will be required. Not for nothing do biographies of Saint Patrick recount that he prayed the entire psalter daily and struggled with betrayal from those in the Church administration who should have been his greatest supporters. At this point, modern Quebec and Ireland need someone similar. Or more impressive if C.S Lewis is correct that post Christian society is worse than pre Christian society.