Ex-Maryknollers of 1965, Our Lost Generation: the Catastrophic Confluence of the Council and the Cultural Revolution

 Karl Barth:  "Vatican II opened the window to let in some fresh air. What came in was a hurricane."

Theological premise: I accept the actual Council as inspired by the Holy Spirit and definitively interpreted later by the young theological geniuses who participated in it as bishop and peritus: Wojtyla  and Ratzinger. The "Spirit of Vatican II" is something else: the urge to accommodate the Church to the foundational premises of the Cultural Liberalism that exploded in Western culture just as the Council was concluding in 1965. The singular failing of the Council was a naive, unrealistic, optimistic view of the broader culture as benign, open to the Gospel, and pregnant with positive values. The Council adapted this posture at the precise moment when Western culture turned to the dark side and embraced Cultural Liberalism in all its anti-Catholic dogmatism. Imagine: Yoda, Obi-Wan and the Jedi council adapt a relaxed, inclusive, welcoming attitude...renouncing vigilance and suspicion...just as Darth Sidious and the Sith are achieving their peak in power. The dark side! 

Maryknoll Alumni 2011 was the centenary of the Maryknoll Fathers and there was a celebratory gathering of a distinctive cohort: "Maryknoll Alumni," understood as any who had spent some time as seminarians, priests or brothers. While some current Maryknoll priests participated, it was overwhelmingly those who had left that life to pursue secular careers and family life. The group was distinctive in two ways: 

Time frame: most had entered Maryknoll in the peak period of American Catholicism: 1955-65. Most had left seminary or priesthood during the collapse of 1965-75 or so. In the decade preceding 1965, the end of the Council, there was an immense inflow of seminarians everywhere, as the Church was expansively, robustly confident and missionary. Almost immediately after the Council the entire system imploded and there was an unprecedented exodus from the priesthood and religious life. Simple enough: 1955-65 mass inflow; 1965-75 mass exodus. What happened?

A self-selected cohort. We were (I boast!) the best and the brightest! Well...not really! But we were exceptional in our idealism, altruism, adventurous spirit, internationalism, sense of confidence and agency. At the age of 18 we were ready to dedicate ourselves in chastity, obedience and poverty  to the Church in her service of the poor overseas. We brought all this youthful enthusiasm and energy to each other just as the Church was surrendering in a Dionysian embrace of the (rapidly secularizing) world. Like America and her Catholic Church we were, for the most part: practical, not pious; activist, not contemplative. We reflected the spiritual/intellectual shallowness of the broader Church. In a mimetic, contagious "perfect storm" we threw ourselves into humanist psychology, ecumenical dialogue, political advocacy, prophetic criticism of the established Church and the military-industrial-capitalist-imperialist system. 

1965-9 (my own college seminary years) the Church fell in love with the modern, now-disenchanted world. I know because I was under the spell of enchantment. It was thrilling: every week another book, lecture, political or psychological theory, cultural critique. I drank far more than my own share of the cool-aid. 

Root Problem Like the Church that birthed us, we had not clearly heard and been grasped by the Gospel: the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord and Brother. We knew the words, but we had not encountered the Mystery...the Event...the Rebirth. We had been moralized (about helping the poor, about sex), sacramentalized and theologized in an abstract fashion. But we had not personally, experientially entered mystically into the reality of Christ. The genius of Vatican II and its interpretation by John Paul and Benedict, was exactly the centrality of the person of Jesus.  So: as the old system crashed, we put together a new, "Spirit of Vatican II" progressive Catholicism, untethered to Christ and disparaging of our tradition, which retained crucial moral-cultural elements from the past but syncretized them with premises of anti-Catholic Cultural Liberalism. The Church of our childhood was confident, prosperous, expansive; but spiritually and intellectually shallow. It was entirely unprepared for the Cultural-Sexual Revolution. So our "best and brightest," untethered to Christ and shallow philosophically, jettisoned the old paradigm and happily constructed a new one, liberal and progressive and and enlightened. 

Back to the Maryknoll Alumni  It was a heady experience this Alumni Celebration of 2011. I was privileged to be on the planning committee. I was an outlier: by far the most conservative in the group. I simply loved these guys who were just like my own classmates: bright, energetic, warm, compassionate, funny, generous, fun, confident, affectionate and respectful to in me, the token traditionalist. The key speakers at the event were indicative of the reigning ideology. Miguel Diaz, Ambassador to the Vatican for the Obama administration was a theologian of liberation. I didn't approve of the political/partisan nature of the choice but I deferred because I have a sympathy and respect for liberation theology which is the hallmark of Maryknoll's  own Orbis Books. But the keynote was delivered by Eugene Kennedy, ex-Maryknoll priest, guru-psychologist, and my nemesis.

He taught us psychology from 1960-71, the very years of the Revolution. He became a rock star of "Spirit of Vatican II" Catholicism and one of the most influential purveyors of it. He was widely respected by the most students and adored by a faction, many of whom went on to emulate him as psychologists. I felt alone in my distaste and distrust of him. He delivered the keynote, in a wheel chair, still a brilliant wordsmith, drooling with contempt for traditional Catholicism. He blasphemed the Eucharist as "cookie worship." (I wanted to strangle him on the spot like what Judas Maccabeus did to the unfaithful Jews but that view would fare poorly in the "blue" NY judiciary!). I don't know that it bothered anyone else.  He was the rock star.

Progressive Catholicism is a distinctive new religion of non-evangelized (just do not know Jesus personally) Catholics that exploded as the old Church collapsed and that embraced the following premises of Cultural Liberalism:

- Separation of sexuality from fecundity: contraception.

- Deconstruction of gender: disgust for the male priesthood.

- Rejection of the tradition (past) as authoritative and a trusting orientation to future breakthroughs in science and human development.

- Overall a disbelief in or indifference to the supernatural (God, angels, devils, heaven and hell) in favor of the natural in a soft secularism, often agnostic rather than militantly atheistic.

- Rejection of the  efficacy of the sacramental system which becomes a kind of human celebration.

- Substitution of psychology/therapy for traditional prayer disciplines.

- Strong leaning to leftwing politics, a soft neo-Marxist critical theory path of liberation for the poor and oppressed.

This viewpoint is resurging under the papacy of Francis. 

Back to My Cohort, Maryknoll Alumni of Mid-20th Century, the Lost Generation

Back to this amazing, historically distinct cohort. They came of age in the robust Catholicism of a post-war America flush with confidence, having survived a Depression, defeated the dual tyrannies, and facing down a militant Communism as it reached out to heal a wounded Europe and assist the underdeveloped world. They exercised each other in a brotherhood of idealism and altruism in an age of cataclysmic change: Church renewal, civil rights, antiwar movement, and the Cultural Revolution. They were already self-selected by virtue of their internationalist interest, enthusiasm, confidence, determination, youthfulness, and elevated moral aspirations. They left the seminary or priesthood but retained the ethos and values of their young adulthood and sustained a comradarie through the following decades as they pursued successful careers, often in the helping professions, enjoyed happy marriages and raised wholesome, charming, confident, generous children.

Are they a lost generation? Yes and No! They lost the Catholic ethos of their childhood: respect for authority, tradition, the fertility of sexuality, the sacredness of gender, sacramental efficacy, the holy and the demonic, silence, worship and prayer. On the other hand, they never really received the core of the faith, the encounter with this Person, so they didn't have that to lose. In their actual lives they are exemplary: marital tenderness and fidelity, fierce paternity, passionate concern for the poor and suffering, a welcoming but critical attitude to other views. On the whole they are an admirable, noble and entirely wholesome cohort, exceptional in generosity, compassion, confidence and positive energy. They became leaders, in the best sense, in whatever arenas they participated. I am not afraid they are going to hell.

I worry more about their children; and even more about their grandchildren. Their "Spirit of Vatican II" progressivism inclines them to accommodate to the reigning liberal elite hegemony as they value what they see as best in it. But it also makes them vulnerable to the dark side of modernity as they have abandoned the boundaries and protections of traditional Catholicism. My peers themselves benefited, if unconsciously, from the wholesome post-war Catholic culture: family centered, generous, expansive, industrious, optimistic, and morally rigorous. But that world is gone and each generation, uprooted from Church and faith, is more vulnerable to the isolation, loneliness, fragmentation, political polarization, and deaths of despair in a decadent society. I don't grieve my friends, I grieve their grandchildren.

Conclusion

This cohort is now in their 70s and 80s and will soon be dying off. I have immense admiration and affection for them, the "Eugene Kennedy generation." I relish their gifts, energy, generosity, and charm. But I grieve the loss of Catholic roots and the failure to encounter Christ.  The irony:  At age 18 we were ready to give our lives to bring our Catholic faith to a suffering world. Within a decade we had discarded that Catholicism in favor of an enlightened liberalism. Sad that we ourselves had never heard, and never been grasped by the Gospel! 

Yes I am nostalgic for the 1950s. How could I not yearn, in this society of anger, anxiety, division and despair, for that seamless communion of family, parish, union, party and nation; for that privileged and prosperous expression of late Christendom; for that Camelot? But we can't dial ourselves back to that time as in Pleasantville or the Steford Wives. We can only move forward!

The genius of John Paul and Benedict in leading us out of the Council and into the third millennium is that they maintained continuity with all that is best in our Catholic traditions, without being stuck in a museum rigidity,  centered everything in Christ, but moved on to embrace all that is best in modernity: the primacy of freedom (always as oriented to truth), openness to dialogue, an unavoidable and wholesome diversity, an aversion to coercion, a preferential love for the poor and oppressed, the dignity of women, the fertile marriage of faith and reason, and the inviolable worth of every single human life.

My take-away from this reflection: to pray. To pray for my cohort and their children. To pray for Eugene Kennedy, who may be surprised to face heavy purgatory (a theme he never developed in his many writings) time and will have to repair for the toxic influence he had on his proteges. Pray for myself...and repent of my judgment, resentment and hatred against Kennedy. I will not receive Mercy if I don't grant it. May God have Mercy on Kennedy, myself, my friends, and our children!

Afterthought  By no means has our entire cohort followed this route like a homogenous herd. There is variety. But surely a majority, the critical mass of our "best and brightest," were swept along mimetically by the cultural wave of our youth and are now certifiable BLM-sympathizing, woman-priest-advocating, death-penalty-despising,  gun-controlling, contraception-approving, Trump-hating, global-warming-worrying, purgatory-doubting, abortion-approving, gay-liberating, immigrant-welcoming, Obama-loving, therapy-seeking, confession-avoiding, "woke" proteges of Eugene Kennedy. "Deplorables" they ain't! A small group has continued to practice the Catholic faith of our youth in a serene, continuous manner with minor adjustments without serious engagement in the Culture War on either side. Some are on the scale, somewhere in between the competing viewpoints. We have two married deacons: one leans more liberal the other more conservative. We have marvelous outliers, anomalies, exceptions. Steve, my dear friend, lost his faith in God in college but fiercely defends his Catholic legacy and passionately advocates a rightwing libertarianism in defiance of the group. John H., the undisputed leader of our class, unsurpassed in charism, charm and character, left leadership in the Society, founded his life solidly on practice of the 12-steps and fathered an extraordinary family of healing for the broken and addicted. Bob left the Catholic Church, received Christ as his Savior, and redirected the Catholic missionary passion of his childhood into Evangelical zeal; he grieves for the salvation of his classmates. Tim R, a successful lawyer, became a protege of John Paul and Benedict and thinks like me. The handful who became missionary priests are fascinating. Fr. John, loved and admired by us all, is theologian-emeritus and poster-boy for the lost generation. Scott, a gifted surgeon-doctor-missionary-priest, seems deeply rooted in the faith and yet open to liberation on many fronts. Fr. Larry, a delightful, insightful eccentric, avoids all group gatherings, curses like a sailor, has written his memoirs of his upbringing and  priestly work in an enchanting book entitled Misfit. He is a spiritual director deeply rooted in his faith, yet refreshingly creative and liberating. Fr. Jim is the one and only one who has spent his entire adult life doing what we all ambitioned 55 years ago: as a classic, missionary priest, in Korea and then China, announcing the Word and administering the sacraments. He is currently researching for the canonization of Bishop Walsh and Father Price. He is even more Catholic than me. . He wins the "outlier prize."