What is causing the decline in church attendance while a majority of people say they believe in God? Father Ronald Rolheiser O.M.I. hypothesizes on this by saying “declining church attendance is paralleled everywhere:families and neighborhoods are dissipating and breaking down as people guard their privacy and individuality more and more. No wonder that our churches are struggling.”
I definitely agree that privacy is one reason for the decline in church attendance. Individuality could be part of the reason, too. Most folks generations ago used to go to church for guidance. Do secular activities fill that vacuum today? Are people looking for guidance in the wrong places? Could part of the reason for the decrease in church attendance and the fact that it is so arduous for some people to come together in Church be that our society is so culturally divided in belief of values and worldviews today?
Has the Church ceded its influence over peoples lives as it has become more indebted to the government? How often do you hear a sermon on abortion, contraception, sin and hell, or any of the tough or controversial issues from your parish priest today? Are priests worried about offending those who donate money? There are plenty of people who are yearning for a hard-hitting sermon and feel empty inside that may fill that monetary void if priests would just have more faith and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With the priest sex abuse scandal and other issues involving the Church could it be that some people see the Church as having lost its way and not leading by example, like it used to?
Some may see the Church as flawed but the Church that Christ founded is perfectly and wonderfully made. It is the fallen people within the Church who are fallible. Here is a most apropos ode to the Church from Carlo Carretto:
“How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too – where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough, I know better.”
Cross-posted @ Tu Ne Cede Malis
In a nutshell, I think it boils down to liberalism and relativism in the Church. Things changed so fast and so severely after Vatican II, that people had the impression that everything that came before, was being jettisoned.
And what replaced it appeared so banal or shallow or wishy-washy, that it didn’t seem worth going to any trouble for; especially since the ideas of sin and punishment were among those receiving short-shrift after V2 — note the decrease in those going to confession coupled with the increase in those receiving communion.
Of course this only addresses the decline in Mass attendance, but I think most of the same principles apply to Protestant churches. In fact they started it, it just took a while for us Catholics to catch up to the trend.
It’s true that mainline Protestantism’s decline came first. It is almost dead now, and wishy-washyism is what killed it. Catholicism is damn near dead in Europe, including Italy. The jury is still out if Catholicism in America will go the same way.
In Europe, the Church was too tangled up with the power structures, so when governments lost credibility, so did the church.
What could be hurting Catholicism here? I think the pedophilia has done grave damage, compounded by criminally complacent bishops who countenanced it and kept moving the pedophile priests around instead of taking them out of action. That pretty much destroyed their credibility and moral authority, especially when Cardinal Law gets “punished” by being feted in Rome and given charge of Mary Maggiore Basilica. He should have been clapped in the Vatican dungeon.
I also think the hierarchy is seen as overly legalistic and even Pharisaical. I get the whole language change thing starting next week, but to many it’s just another change without a distinction. And personally, I’m tire of hearing how “poetic” the changes are. “Consubstantial with” and “enter under my roof” are not poetic phrases, even if they are more faithful to the Latin, which itself is not a poetic language.
So, I don’t know. I can understand how people would love Jesus, even growing stronger in their faith in him, while being turned off by church hierarchy, which is, after all, human and fallible.
Catholicism as practiced here in the USA has become Protestant-lite. I think the grave damaged caused by the priest sex abuse scandal has been over-exaggerated in terms of causing a decline in church attendance. There are so many faithful Catholics who experienced this horrific trauma but have forgiven and still attend church. The problem with saying that the priest abuse “pretty much destroyed their credibility and moral authority” is that the Church followed the advice of secular counselors. Big Mistake! The secular therapists claimed that these pedophiles could be cured. And in this the bishops followed their advice by sending the priests for treatment and moving them from parish to parish. I’m not saying that how the Church or bishops handled the abuse was alright but I’m just saying that I think it was much less of a cover up than following bad policies in place. I don’t think even Canon Law had anything in place to deal with issues such as this. Yes, Cardinal Law should have either been prosecuted or sent to the dungeon as you suggested. I just saw this – Cardinal Law was just forced out of his Vatican position. http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=12431
Funny how your analysis tries to conflate the decline of the church with the incline in secularism.
Both are failing the human soul. One does it without the participation of the individual (the church) while the other does it with the wholesale/full participation (secular government).
Your brief toss to “individuality” speaks directly to the issue. The truth is the lack of suffering and the abundance of gifts has created a false-sense of self-control and self-importance.
I eat anything I wish, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. I can drive to my nearest airport (almost always less than 1-hour away) and jump on a plane from that airport and arrive anywhere in the world I want — within 24 hours — and do it all for under $1,000. I can pick-up my phone and reach even the most remote town in the world, and have instant communications. If I have a sickness, almost all of them are curable by my local medical support. Entertainment? Are you kidding, I wont’ even go there.
What we have lost with all these great and beautiful gifts is a sense of wonder and awe and humility.
We are able to mostly structure our government, payment plans, careers, marriages, and family planning as we individually choose.
Why do we need God?
The answer is our puny knowledge of what God has given us. If we knew how loved we were and we could understand an infinite love, we would be on our knees 24/7, and none of the above would matter.
But our intellects are weak. And they make our souls weaker still.
I’m not sure advancements in technology which makes easier living for individuals necessarily has made people individualistic and ended up in their concluding that they don’t need to attend Church – decline in church attendance.
In looking at your latest comment to Kevin – Maybe it is because of the combination of progressivism, the “Spirit of Vatican II” mentality, which has grown more expansively than in the U.S. other countries? And, adding to that a lack of proper catechesis in America may account for the decline in the faithful here and for the rise in faithful in Africa and Asia? It seems that these are probably the main culprits responsible for the decline in church attendance since Vatican II.
Unless someone can provide new facts not already mentioned, the Vatican II thing is a red-herring — in both spirit and fact. The stats show a steady rate of decline long before Vatican II (since at least 1955) and, surprisingly, a SLOWER rate of decline the years after Vatican II was fully implemented.
Moreover, the decline in attendance has substantially now stopped since 1995, when attendance was at 46% versus essentially the same rate in 2009 at 45%. These are all USA based numbers. As mentioned, rates of participation have sky-rocketed in different parts of the world.
The fact that the rate stopped in 1995 might support your catechesis theory. Specifically, the newest Catechism was published in 1995 — around the time the decline stopped. Perhaps the new catechism had a major and sustaining impact from 1995 on in stopping the decline of attendance in the USA?
Likewise, the explosive growth in attendance in Africa and Asia over the preceding 15 years might be heavily attributed to the new catechism being implemented and taught broadly there? I’d have to see the growth rates prior to 1995 to be sure.
But, so far at least, your theory holds the most reasoned logic on the page (including my own conjectures).
The truth is the lack of suffering and the abundance of gifts has created a false-sense of self-control and self-importance.
[...]
What we have lost with all these great and beautiful gifts is a sense of wonder and awe and humility.
Astute observations, and oh so very true…
Silverfiddle:
The problem with your theories, in my view, is that mass attendance plummeted within 10 years of Vatican II, long before the sex scandals, and during a time when bishops, far from being perceived as legalistic and pharisaical, on the contrary appeared quite lax and even indifferent to correct moral and doctrinal teaching.
If many of the bishops later on started appearing legalistic and pharisaical to some people, I think that was the result of their finally beginning to tighten the reins after the doctrinal and liturgical chaos that was the immediate aftermath of the Council.
Using your own words, I don’t think your theory (Vatican II led to a decline in attendance) is logically supported by the facts you provide of the decline beginning 10 years later.
Most crimes have a statute of limitations for a reason. While it maybe true that 10 years after Vatican II attendance began declining, it belies logic to assume anything other than correlation — not causation. If it took 10 years for people to respond to the changes, are people that stupid that they needed 10 years to “begin” to absorb and respond to the change? If there is some other criteria — such as a wholesale turn-over of Bishops in that time, I’d have to see the proof to believe it.
As a reasoned person, you would need to offer more direct proof to make such a claim. Logic dictates otherwise.
If, and I have not verified this, your claim that the decline began happening 10 years AFTER Vatican II, you are pointing to Dec. 1975/January, 1976 as the beginning of the decline. Logic/reasoning indicates that one should search for actions of significance in that time frame, and since the decline continues from then over a period of decades — the assumption would be the actions also continued (and continue on to this day). Thus, what major event happened around then and continues to shape our western cultural society even now?
Solely based on that reasoning and logic, and looking at the entire Western decline of Church attendance (US + Europe decline, while increases happen in Asia and Africa) — one would more likely zero in on factors which could show causation in that time, specific to those regions where the decline is happening.
As a first good guess for future analysis: I would start with the rise of Muslim power (fueled by nationalizing oil profits) and the continuing ascendency of Muslim political and religious authority over the succeeding decades.
Perhaps this is is part of the reason Pope Benedit gave his Regensburg address, where he said:
“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
I’m surprised, Intellect, that you do not see the causal connection between some of the immediate and unfortunate results of Vatican II (caveat: I am not saying that Vatican II had only unfortunate results) and what occurred further down the line. Vatican II was seized upon by progressive and modernist elements in the Church as a wholesale surrender to their agenda. Their theology, which has always been centered around dissent from essential dogmas of the faith and redefining traditional terms with non-traditional and often even heretical meanings, has poisoned and corrupted every well-intentioned reform of liturgy and catechesis.
My parents grew up learning their faith by the Baltimore Catechism. Say what you will about it – it wasn’t perfect and neither were the people who taught them their faith – but they grew up knowing what they were supposed to believe, and I learned more about my faith from them before the age of five then I ever heard in seven total years of on again off again attendance in Catholic school. No Baltimore Caetchism there. Haven’t you heard? Vatican II! Spirit of the Council! We Don’t Do That Anymore. Just Love One Another (meaning Be NICE) and Jesus is a Cool Guy – this is the Faith of Our Fathers, this is the faith of the Church. My generation was virtually uncatechized. No one in my catechetics class learned anything significant about the faith before Confirmation. Whatever spiritual meaning that we should have been taught to assign to that sacrament, we weren’t taught. It was just a rite of passage, a party. It was a coffee klatch.
People don’t go to Church if the don’t believe they need it, and why would they believe they need it if they were never taught that they need it?
That’s what happened in my neck of the woods and that’s why people in my area stopped going to Church. It sure had nothing to do with Muslims nationalizing oil profits.
Go to a daily Mass and have a look at the faces around you. Go to confession and see who is waiting on line with you. They are almost all older people. They are almost all from the generations prior to the Church in the West all but abandoning traditional Patristic and Thomistic theology and traditional catechesis.
Hi Kevin,
I do go to daily mass. Trust me, I’m blessed beyond compare. I’m sure this will surprise you, but when I look around at the faces at that mass — or our Sunday mass — or look at the people on line at confession (there are soooo many lined up after the 9am Saturday mass at two confessionals!) I see young, passionate Catholics. Many of them. I see families with 9-10 even 11 kids. It is as if I am in heaven on earth. I know I am blessed.
Moreover, I fully understand that there are those who find Vatican II a theological problem. I’m not one of them.
But my point is not about Vatican II, but about reason and logic.
If it were true that Vatican II was somehow the root cause for weakening our faith — then how does one explain the explosion of the faithful in Africa and Asia? Do the precepts of Vatican II somehow grow weaker or stronger not on their own, but somehow the longitude or latitude you are in dictates your experience with the “new” Mass?
Clearly not.
Again, I do understand that there are Catholics who are deeply passionate about Vatican II. I understand that we have less percentage of the population attending Mass on a regular basis. I see the correlation, but the causation is entirely weak.
Someone recently sent me this link to a TED presentation: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
The person who sent me the link is a flaming secular liberal. They wanted me so desperately to believe how horrible life is SOLELY because of income inequality in the USA. First, our lives are amazing — so already I was skeptical. But I watched.
Like the argument about Vatican II, I was unconvinced after watching. Not that I believe the opposite — but that logic and reason and math destroy the causation argument and point only to correlation.
My specific point to the liberal who sent me the TED presentation, and the liberal who did the presentation — are that they are trying to prove causation solely by correlation. In the income inequality presentation, you could take EVERY graph in that chart and pick ANY of the Y-axis variables and show that on the x-axis and the thing would make the exact same point.
So how could it be that ALL of these graphs show the exact same correllations over and over — no matter what you put on the x-axis, but that somehow the “one” thing the presenter wanted to give as the “reason” (income inequality) was the “cause” not the correlation.
Intellect writes, “Using your own words, I don’t think your theory (Vatican II led to a decline in attendance) is logically supported by the facts you provide of the decline beginning 10 years later.”
Actually, I didn’t say the decline began 10 years after V2; I said the decline occurred “within 10 years of Vatican II”.
Please see this article from America magazine, which states that “weekly Mass attendance among American Catholics declined to 50 percent from 72 percent” between 1963 and 1974, less than 10 years after the end of V2:
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3626
Here is another article from Homiletic and Pastoral Review, which confirms that “Mass attendance of U.S. Catholics fell precipitously in the decade following the liturgical changes”:
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aversa/modernism/Novus_ordo_record.pdf
Agellius,
As soon as someone gives me data that “starts” exactly where they want the base-line to start, I am suspicious. Life changes. Period.
If you don’t believe me — randomly pick any year in history. Any year — – to 2011. Give me that zero point and a month and I will come back to you with stunning graphs showing things either: 1) Exploding upwards from that point; or 2) Declining precipitously from that point.
Consider human population as a simple example. Give me any year in human history. Ever. And I will give you a graph that will shoot almost straight NorthEast. Why can I deliver this? Because that is called a trend line.
Your source, again, tries to prove their point by misdirection and mathematical tricks.
Let us NOT choose 1964 as the base year. Let’s pick a year — say 10 years before that. So this would be a year probably before anyone even thought of anything like Vatican II. If we move the base-line to that year — and there is ZERO or flat decline in attendance — and suddenly at year 1964-1968 we see a big drop, NOW you have a case to make.
So let’s see your case if we move the zero-line to 1955 — a year that Gallup started to track regular weekly church attendance.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/117382/church-going-among-catholics-slides-tie-protestants.aspx
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!
Somehow, before Vatican II was even considered — Vatican II must have led to the STEEP decline in weekly Catholic Church attendance! Moreover, that Vatican II thing was so clearly the driver of the decline that it actually SLOWED the decline rate a few years after it was introduced. Yes, amazing. The rate of declining attendance was GREATER 10 years before Vatican II even started than it was 10 years AFTER it started. But somehow, that Vatican II thing was so powerful it was impacting society MORE regarding weekly church attendance a full decade before it even OPENED than it was doing a full decade after. Now that is proof of causation if I ever saw it!!
Tongue-in-cheek of course, but (and again I have NO dog in the Vatican II fight) — my point is you are Catholic AND you have human intelligence and reason!
For God’s sake, and for man’s — USE both your intelligence and reason.
If you so easily fall for the graph tricks of zero-time line setting, you will fall for just about any causation argument.
I know that there were quite a few disenchanted faithful Catholics who didn’t like the change from Latin to the vernacular. Whether they accounted for some of the decline in church attendance I’m not sure.
“In a nutshell, I think it boils down to liberalism and relativism in the Church. Things changed so fast and so severely after Vatican II, that people had the impression that everything that came before, was being jettisoned.”
I think you hit the nail on the head agellius. I also think this is where secularism is linked to or has played a role in the decline in church attendance. I mean who wants to hear the truths and adhere to them when society gives them an out when they claim those truths to be irrelevant, when society claims the moral relativistic behavior to be permissible in our culture today? People tend to choose the easy way out.
I attended a Catholic elementary school for 8 years and I honestly just remember learning the main prayers and then reciting them. But other than that I cannot remember learning about my faith more deeply. I had the awesome opportunity to sponsor a girl in RCIC when I was in 8th grade and I learned so much more from that experience than from attending a Catholic elementary school.
Teresa,
See the graph here:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/117382/church-going-among-catholics-slides-tie-protestants.aspx
The decline started long before Vatican II and — if I could find a chart that accurately went back to 1910, I guarantee, you would see a steep decline in the chart starting from then as well.
Now see the graph here:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_chu_att-religion-church-attendance
Again — WOW! Nigeria is operating under the same Vatican II rules as the USA and it’s church attendance is a whopping 89%.
I repeat — does that mean that Vatican II changes as it moves from lattitude or longitudes?
Hardly think that is logical at all.
It seems like my grandparents generation attended Church every Sunday, my parents generation was too smart and sophisticated for such, but would go every so often. My generation lost the connected to organized religion entirely. Somehow the tradition or need or ritual was lost.
Although I’m a Mormon and go every Sunday, I’ve seen many of my peers turned off by organized religion to such an extent that I am curious as to what is and isn’t being offered. Or maybe the hippies, yuppies and feminists failed to offer their children exposure to being part of something bigger than themselves. Maybe instead of faith, cynicism was taught. I’m not sure.
Intellect writes, “So let’s see your case if we move the zero-line to 1955 — a year that Gallup started to track regular weekly church attendance. [link] OH MY GOODNESS!!!!”
The graph you link to shows an 8% drop in attendance from 1955 to 1965; but a 13% drop from 1965 to 1975. Thus the rate of decline from mid-V2 to 10 years post-V2 would seem to be 61% higher than the rate of decline from 10 years pre-V2 to mid-V2.
I’m not surprised that the decline should have started before V2. After all, the Church could not have gone so far in the direction it did, both during and after V2, if the ground were not already prepared to some extent. But the data do seem to show that the rate of decline accelerated immediately after the Council.
And then later on the rate of decline slowed: from 1975 to 1985 the rate of decline was only 4%. Well sure, by 10 years post-V2, most of those whose faith was susceptible to being shaken by post-V2 shenanigans had already been shaken out. From 1985 to 1995 the rate is again 4%, and then it pretty much levels out.
My theory to account for this is that John Paul II started reigning in 1978, and he fairly well put the brakes on the doctrinal and liturgical nonsense that exploded after the Council, such that by 1995 things had stabilized in the Church, and a new generation had grown up never having known what things were like before V2.
I don’t claim to have proven my thesis by numbers alone. I’m just saying that my theory is consistent with the data.
Intellect:
Also, you wrote, “As soon as someone gives me data that “starts” exactly where they want the base-line to start, I am suspicious.”
Incidentally, the second article I linked to contained data starting well before Vatican II, going back to 1939 in fact. It is based on data compiled by Gallup as well. It still shows a decline from the early 60s through the mid-70s which was much more precipitous than at any other time.
Agellius,
I did not want to draw out the obvious fraud in the second piece. You’ll note that the author of that second piece cites Gallup as his source, but then completely recreates Gallup’s data to show much steeper declines. Unfortuntately, comparing the base numbers to his graph, it is clear he has chosen to present false data. Another rascally, but unfortunately all too prevalent lie provided by those who think “slight” changes to data won’t be noticed and can be “fudged” for the good of the cause. (see also anthro-promorphic climate change — a.k.a. Climategate).
While your analysis of the declines is more exact — and thank you for taking the time to do that — the truth is that the decline was happening long before Vatican II started, it continued during Vatican II and then on afterwards. Vatican II either stopped having an impact or some other factors off-set it completely starting in 1995.
I also applaud your point about JP-II, but if that was true, wouldn’t that simply imply that we had weaker Popes rather than a Mother Church who together with Bishops from around the world wrongly adopted V-II?
My conclusion remains: As it relates to V-II and declining church attendance the causation argument does hold. There is correlation, on this I can agree. But causation is highly unlikely and requires a much higher degree of certainty and proof which has not been offered.
Again, let me be 100% clear — I neither see V-II as a problem nor as a redeeming event of our Church. I do, however, see it as a teaching of our Church, established with clarity by Popes and fully endorsed by the vast majority of Bishops. I am therefore obliged to start from the premise that our Mother Church, and her councils — are correct, not incorrect.
Intellect, I think it is great that you live in a place where the faith is abundantly alive and that young people are excited about it. Stay there as long as you can, the rest of your life if you can get away with it! I went to grad school in a bubble like that, and it was a great relief and wonderful change of atmosphere from what I was used to. If I could have I would have lived in that bubble until they boxed me and covered me in dirt.
But I don’t see it as mere correlation when liberals and modernists cite Vatican II as their justification for moving the tabernacle from above and behind the altar to a little broom closet on the side, taking out kneelers and seating the parishioners in folding chairs (not temporarily but permanently), and letting rich old style buildings of traditional architecture languish and rot while refurbishing their flea market-looking gymnasium to become their main church building (now it’s a shiny wall-to-ceiling glass gymnasium-flea-mart-looking building); I don’t see it as mere correlation when these same liberals and modernists cite Vatican II as their reason for claiming that the Church doesn’t Believe In That Stuff About Purgatory Anymore (let alone HELL!) or about the necessity of the Church for salvation .
I can tell you by many conversations with my family of that age how Vatican II affected them. It was catastrophic. All of my mother’s siblings felt their faith seriously shaken. One of my uncles (God rest his soul) had been an altar boy before Vatican II. The changes in the wake of the council in areas which he had been expressly taught could NEVER change led to a profound identity crisis and had everything to do with his leaving the Church later, his faith severely shaken. The ripples that caused in my cousins lives and now their children’s lives, continue to go out and disturb the psycho-spiritual waters in that part of my family. That chain of dominoes may never stop falling, ever!
Don’t get me wrong – I am not blaming all the ills of the Church on Vatican II, nor am I denying that it was a valid Council of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit. These are all abuses of Vatican II and abusus non tollit usus. But to deny that there is any causal connection at all and turn instead to an issue that is a much better candidate for Mere Correlation (and offering no causal connection to support your alternative) seems obviously and bizarrely mistaken to me.
You are correct that I do not have causal proof in my ideas. But I presented them as ideas, not as a challenge to a Church teaching.
As for the use of the justification for so many abuses being V-II, I have no doubt that some justify their actions based on V-II.
But that does not make V-II the issue does it?
After all, back to the Catho-libertarian position, I seem to recall that Pelosi and her team “justify” Obamacare based on the Constitution.
Should we, therefore, criticize the Constitution? Should we say it must be wrong because others corrupted its meaning easily and with malice towards freedom and individual rights?
I would say “NO.”
I would say that the hearts and minds of those justifying their arguments were corrupt.
My whole point about using reason and logic is exactly about this.
I have argued with the best minds I have met on liberal (e.g. left) vs. conservative (e.g. right) thinking and philosophies.
Almost always, my opponent in these debates have cogent arguments. They make their points. The throw-out studies and cite facts. For the first 20 years of my life, I took those at face-value.
But over time I learned to challenge the core data. A case in point is “deaths at childbirth.” I’m sure you know that stat very well. According to liberals, America has one of the worst death-rates in the Western world for new born babies. Lo and behold, they can cite exact studies and give specific numbers.
When one peels away the data in those studies — a peeling away that only 1 in 1,000,000 or perhaps 1 in 10,000,000 people will take the time to do, one finds that the definition of live-births differs at country levels. In the USA, if a baby is BORN alive, it is counted in the denominator. In most nordic countries — whether the baby is born alive or not — if the birth occurs before a certain number of weeks, the birth is considered a mis-carriage and the baby is NOT counted in the denominator.
Not surprisingly, when you take out the “youngest” new-borns — the one’s with the greatest health-problems and the most risky chances of life — your death rate per live birth looks amazingly better than the USA’s.
Enough said.
I only write not to convince you of V-II but to insist that all of us apply logic and reason to these questions of faith.
Intellect, I love your commitment to critical thinking and your habit of questioning other’s conclusions, including my own. Keep it up! But I am getting the impression that you are still young yet (this is not a criticism – youth is an advantage in some things: it allows for a fresh perspective and encourages out-of-the-box thinking), so I urge you to caution when criticizing those who have a bunch of years on you, because sometimes that also means that they have some relevant experience in the matter under discussion that you don’t. In my view, this Vatican II issue may be one of them. I am open to correction if I have misjudged you in this matter.
FWIW, there is a lot to love in the actual documents of Vatican II.
I am most certainly guilty of being young in my faith. Although I am a cradle Catholic, the immensity of this faith coupled to the narrowness of my mind, ultimately conspire to leave me a neophyte. You have properly challenged me.
I am like the ignorant man Sheed describes as standing on a stage with blackness all around him, and one spotlight above. Wherever he goes, the light moves with him expanding in every direction. But even if he were to run in every direction all his life, and the light was to illuminate all the stage he uncovers, in the end, the area he has not explored will remain dark to him forever, and that area will be infinite. To put it bluntly: I have learned that the more certain I am of a thing our Church is doing wrong, the more likely it is that I have simply not yet asked enough questions.
Alas, years wise, I am far past my prime. If my knowledge and faith are so evidently immature, strike that up to my years locked in secular universities, including a few years pursuing a masters at Harvard and from working in the belly-of-the-beast at the NYTimes.
I find great comfort that you see me as with the mind of a child. Not too many years ago, you would have met a man who was certain of many things about his faith and about his Church. A man opinionated on all of them and passionately trying to “correct” others. I once got into a heated argument about the appropriateness of doing mass on a camping trip, using an upside-down canoe as an altar. Oh how I wish I could take back my argument. To think that I had the pride to challenge a Catholic Priest in his core duty to administer the Eucharist! Or to challenge the appropriate actions or dress or participation of those around me in a Church (clapping, singing, giving a kiss-of-peace that lasted for five minutes, etc). All I can say is: “Thank God for confession.”
But I have wished for a long-time to start a journey through the long dark night of the soul as described by St. John of the Cross. The first step has been the hardest — to give up my own certainty and my own passions of what I knew to be “right” so that I could embrace the uncertainty of humility and and embrace the belief that Christ sees all, knows all and loves all and that to embrace Christ fully, one must give up more of themselves than is possible without the grace from Christ directly.
I know in that great endevour, I will never succeed here on earth. But I still I fight the unbeatable foe — my own pride. And, if I might be an example to my own sons and daughters in so doing, then my life would have been worth living.
Intellect writes, “I did not want to draw out the obvious fraud in the second piece. … it is clear he has chosen to present false data.”
That’s a very serious allegation and I would like to know specifically what data you contend he is lying about.
Intellect writes, “… the truth is that the decline was happening long before Vatican II started, it continued during Vatican II and then on afterwards. Vatican II either stopped having an impact or some other factors off-set it completely starting in 1995.”
As I already explained, the data show that the decline started before V2, but was much accelerated during the decade after V2. I don’t blame V2 per se for the decline, and numbers alone couldn’t prove causation anyhow. But as you concede, they definitely appear to be correlated.
As I said in my initial comment on this thread, I attribute the decline in mass attendance to the explosion of liberalism and relativism immediately after the Council. As I also already said, I agree that liberalism and relativism were already a problem before the Council, and I suspect that helps to explain the decline in mass attendance that began before the Council. The explosion during and after the Council could not have happened if the ground had not already been prepared.
Intellect writes, “I also applaud your point about JP-II, but if that was true, wouldn’t that simply imply that we had weaker Popes rather than a Mother Church who together with Bishops from around the world wrongly adopted V-II?”
I don’t see that implication. I do think Paul VI was too weak — and I don’t mean that as a personal critique of the man, only that the forces against him during that time were too strong and too concentrated for one man to overcome. It took time and another firm and long-reigning Pope to finally put the brakes on the liturgical and doctrinal chaos that broke out after the Council. But the fact that Paul VI was too weak, doesn’t necessarily absolve the remaining bishops of responsibility for how things worked out.
Intellect writes, “… I neither see V-II as a problem nor as a redeeming event of our Church. I do, however, see it as a teaching of our Church, established with clarity by Popes and fully endorsed by the vast majority of Bishops. I am therefore obliged to start from the premise that our Mother Church, and her councils — are correct, not incorrect.”
You seem to be misconstruing my point, as if I’m arguing that the Council itself was a problem and resulted in declining mass attendance. But I never said that.
I pointed out the correlation between V2 and declining mass attendance, but only because the explosion of liberalism and relativism coincided with the close of the Council. I don’t say the Council was a direct cause of those things, but there is certainly some kind of a relationship between them. The fact of the Council, perhaps, rather than its decisions and documents per se, caused myriads of people to believe (and the secular media was happy to promote the idea) that it was “out with the old, in with the new”, and everything was up-for-grabs. It’s that attitude — and the fact that liberalism and relativism were allowed to flourish — that resulted in the decline.
Since the Pope and bishops are the shepherds of the Church, an argument could be made that they didn’t do enough to stem the tide, that they were too tolerant of dissent and error and liturgical disrespect and experimentation. But it’s a very complicated thing to judge, with so many different bishops involved and different things happening in different dioceses. It may have simply been too big a thing for the bishops to get a handle on (those who tried I mean), at least for a while.
So you see that I give the Council and the hierarchy the benefit of the doubt. I think many mistakes were made, and I think a lot of people, priests and bishops included, were guilty of deliberate attempts to undermine the Church’s traditional liturgy and teaching, during and after the Council. But that’s not the same as blaming the Council.
agellius and Intellect
Would you agree that there were adverse effects which resulted not necessarily because of Vatican II but rather that there were forces within the Church which advocated for progressive changes after Vatican II, which Vatican II thus permitted?
Teresa:
It’s hard for me to answer that question as phrased, since I’m not sure exactly what you might be implying by certain terms. But I will say this, which may be the same as what you’re asking:
It appears the Council was not called for a specific purpose: Most past councils were called to respond to a particular heresy or to address a particular question; but it appears V2 was called mostly just to “re-express” the Church’s teachings in a way that the modern world could better relate to. The phrase “open the windows and let the light in” was tossed about.
As a result, I think the idea was reinforced in many people’s minds — and reinforced by the secular media as well — that the Council’s purpose was to “update” the Church. And so, old things in the Church were perceived as suspect or as holding less weight, merely by virtue of being old. “The Church used to do such-and-such, but since V2 we don’t do that anymore.” “We used to believe this, but now we believe that.”
The Council never came out and said such things, and that’s why I don’t blame the Council per se. But in a way, it makes sense to say that it was the Council’s “fault”, in the sense that the Council was the occasion of these ideas becoming widespread and taking root.
Could the Council have done more to counteract these trends? Maybe. But how aware could the Fathers have been, while the Council was still in session, that they would be taken to such extremes?
It’s very, very complicated; and that, combined with the need to be charitable and assume people’s good intentions, makes it hard to pin any definite blame.