The previous letter considered three visitations by the heavenly Bridegroom to his bridal Church in my 75 years: the Mercy of the Father (St. Faustina and John Paul II), the ongoing revelation of the Divine-Human person of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and the myriad workings of the Holy Spirit. The letter to follow will look at the distortions, dysfunctions and decadence of the Church in our time ( "The Worst of Times"). Here we will identify, in broad strokes, the secondary workings of divine grace. These lack the heavenly purity of the primary three already considered, but are movements of the Holy Spirit infused in human agency. In some cases, they carry within themselves a dark side. That will be considered in the following, third letter.
The Great Catholic Restoration 1945-65
In the wake of the War and Great Depression, the American Church experienced a surge of blessings, energy, optimism, fruitfulness, affluence, power, religious revival, and hope: robust economy, global dominance, large families, thriving religious orders, seminaries, expansive parishes and dioceses, enhanced status and recognition in the broader culture, widespread Church attendance, boundless and exuberant confidence. Catholics were united with the entirety of the West in opposition to a totalitarian, predatory, communist Soviet Union. The threat of nuclear war was there, for example in the Cuban missile crisis, but my defining memory was of a virile, youthful, bright, Irish-Catholic John F. Kennedy, surrounded by elegant-wife-thriving-family-and-brain-trust, radiant with vigor, strength and promise. Lean, erect, athletic JFK was to fat, bald, aging Nikita Kruschiev what Gary Cooper as Marshall Will Kane (in High Noon) was to Frank Miller and his boys; what Marlon Brandon, as Terry Malloy, (in On the Waterfront), was to Johnny Friendly; what John Wayne, as Tom Doniphon, was to Lee Marvin (in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.) (Sidebar: if you haven't seen these movies put them on your "must do" list for this summer!) Catholic presence was powerful, assertive and highly esteemed in the labor movement, Civil Rights, Democratic Party, and the war on poverty. There was a strong awareness of the poverty and suffering of the undeveloped, "third world" and a flow of energy and resources to assist them.
(This last was a complex reality: at once a countermove against communism, a humanitarian act of kindness, an ecclesial-charitable work of evangelization, and sometimes a gesture of American arrogance and imperialism. My uncle Bill Gallagher is exemplary: a decorated war hero, he worked as a small businessman in Latin America and also for a time for Agency for American Development (AID). AID was intended to assist development in the Southern Hemisphere but identified by the New Left of the 1960s as a cover for our intelligence operations. Bill remained a believing Catholic and befriended Maryknoll Missioners. We later learned that all those years he was working for military intelligence. He was a character straight out of Graham Green: war hero, fisherman, golfer, heavy drinker, loving if eccentric father and husband, spy, less-than-successful small businessman, believing but flawed Catholic!)
It was a 20-year Catholic Camelot. It was the best of times. It was not to last.
Vatican Council II 1962-5
This was the defining historic event of the Catholic Church of the past century. It was, by wide consensus, a remarkable work of the Holy Spirit. It did not come out of nowhere. It was the confluence of a range of movements that had been gaining strength in the post-war era and even earlier. It was not a rupture, but a defining, culminating climax of a remarkable symphony of organic, dramatic developments. These include:
Ecumenical Movement. Within and beyond the Catholic Church there was an urgency to realize the prayer of Christ that all his followers would "be one." The antagonism between Catholic and Protestant that structured the post-Tridentine Church was overcome, in this event, by a focus on our unity in faith.
Liturgical Movement. The intention here was to enhance lay participation, to overcome a perceived passivity and monotony, and clarify the underlying, ancient form of the Liturgy.
Scripture. Advances in academic study of scripture joined with a yearning for the Word of God in an emulation of Evangelical zeal for deeper, broader engagement with the Bible.
Laity. A new "age of the laity" was declared which did not diminish the mission of the priesthood (worship, preaching, governance of the Church) but overcame a sense of inferiority and recognized the authority of the lay person in marriage, family, culture and the broader society as well as a leadership role within the Church.
Jews. A new appreciation for the Jewish people emerged out of our horror at the Holocaust but also from our gratitude for the Judaic roots of our own faith and how much we share with our ancient "cousins." The Catholic Church was never anti-Semitic in its core belief and practice as it has always cherished the Jewishness of the Scriptures, patriarchs, prophets, Jesus, Mary and the apostles. It has, indeed, longed to share with the Chosen people the riches of Christ. But it has at times tolerated anti-Semitism in society. And its theology of Judaism, since the primitive split of Church from Synagogue, has dwelt upon the rejection, by Rabbinic-Pharisaic Judaism of Jesus as Messiah. Without denying that immense difference, a new positivity about Judaism and the Jews surged out of our sorrow at the Shaol and newfound delight in our shared roots. One might say that in the Jew-Christian relationship a hermeneutic of continuity displaced one of rupture.
Freedom. Freedom of conscience and the broader human freedoms were elevated in the mind of the Church in this council. Previously, the medieval model in which the Church exercised a more direct authority over government and society had widely prevailed in Europe and beyond. At this time, the American experiment in liberty and pluralism gained wide esteem, especially in the light of the recent and current totalitarianisms of the Right and the Left. The Church fathers were all well aware of Communism and Fascism. Clear recognition was given to primacy of conscience, not as directionless autonomy, but as oriented to Truth and Goodness.
World Religions. The mysterious workings of God's grace were recognized outside of the institutional boundaries of the Catholic Church, even beyond Christianity and the monotheisms (including Islam), in the world religions. Previously, Church understanding of "salvation in Christ alone" was understood to cast an absolutely dark judgment against "pagan" belief and practice. Without diminishing the specific salvific role of Christ or the power of evil and sin in the world, a more generous, expansive view prevailed to see that Christ himself, anonymously-covertly-mysteriously, is at work in every soul and every community to draw us all together in God's love.
Philosophical Openness. From the time of the French Revolution to the Vatican Council, the Church was under attack from and defensive before a hostile post-Enlightenment modernity of ideologies including Marxism, Fascism, atheism, libertarian capitalism untethered from tradition and community, secular psychology, sexual liberalism and more. Especially in the early 20th Century the Church condemned "modernism" as accommodation to godless secularism and erected a philosophical fortress, largely an elaboration of the magisterial thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, around a now-ghettoized and defensive Catholicism. This theological edifice fit the immigrant experience of poor, ethnic Catholics despised by WASP elites of the northeast and Southern fundamentalists/evangelicals. Priests, who provided most faith instruction to largely unschooled ethnics, were formed in a closed system of thought removed from developments in scholarship. The Catholic community was largely a ghetto in America, even as it exercised muscle in labor unions, city politics, police/fire departments, and such arenas. But in the euphoria of the post-war Camelot, there emerged a new openness to the broader, now-Catholic-friendly society. And so, in the Catholic academy, there was an explosion of interest in modern philosophy, social and natural sciences, and the humanities. The restrictive straightjacket of a narrow Thomism was cast off. This new embrace of the larger culture was affirmed by the Vatican Council and the Church surrendered to a euphoria of dialogue and engagement. The study of personalism, phenomenology, psychology, political science, literature and a range of subjects dilated the Catholic intelligence. We will see that we were not quite ready for such an intense engagement.
"Ressourcement" Theology. Along with this study of contemporary thought, there occurred in the years leading to and flowing from the Council a turn to the "sources": Scripture itself, the Church fathers, doctors, saints and mystics. This is, of course, our Deposit of Faith, our abiding legacy, our perennial philosophy. But new historical, literary studies opened up a richness of thought that had been obscured by a narrow, defensive Thomism. For example, two who participated in the Council, one as a theological adviser (Joseph Ratzinger) and the other as a young, rising bishop (Karol Wojtyla), did doctoral dissertations in Augustine/Bonaventure and St. John of the Cross and phenomenology respectively.
This list of nine is not exhaustive. They share characteristics. First, in each there is a clear, legible paradigm shift. Elements of our faith are shifted in relation to each other so that some take on a new emphasis and others change in that light. Second, none contradict the past but flow from it fluidly and organically. They involve growth, continuity, improvement, not rupture. Thirdly, each radiates a positivity, an openness, an eagerness to dialogue and communicate. An expansiveness and generosity.
All of the above represent the collaboration or "conspiracy" (in the etymological sense of "breathing together") of the bishops/theologians with the Holy Spirit. The council documents are inspired. But they are also human statements, finite and less than perfect. They are free of substantial error. But they are less than complete revelations of Truth. There is more to be said. They need to be interpreted, elaborated, clarified and even complimented as there are inevitable omissions and inadequacies.
The overwhelming flaw is precisely the unbalanced optimism and positivity in its embrace of the world. The Council happened 20 years after the decisive defeat of the Axis powers and at the very end of the post-war Camelot. It largely ignored the menace of Communism. Someone reading these documents alone would receive an inaccurate picture of the Church and world of that time. There prevailed an aura of euphoria, wellbeing, and trust. The Council ended as the West was about to explode into the Cultural Revolution. The Church emerged at this time eager to credulously embrace a world that was at that very moment turning to the dark side. The Council left the Church singularly unprepared to confront the attack that was set to be launched from the depths of hell.
Post Vatican Council 1965-2023
1. Humanae Vitae, and John Paul's Catechesis on the Human Body as Response to the Cultural Revolution. The sexual liberalism that exploded in the West just as the Council concluded was a demonic attack upon the human person in its most profound, vulnerable, sacred and intimate dimensions: bodily sexuality and gender. First of all, with contraception it tore sexuality away from the spousal mystery as unitive and fertile, leaving it isolated as subjective, self-enclosed, lonely, sterile, futile and despairing. Secondly, it denied the interior reality or form of masculinity/femininity in their distinctive-yet-complimentary natures as iconic, generous, heroic, fruitful. St. Pope Paul VI in his prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae defied the already-hegemonic contraceptive "culture of death" and the progressive compulsions of the post-Council Church. He predicted accurately that the sterilization of sexuality would lead inexorably to the degradation of women, pornography, divorce, abortion, and the destruction of the family. A few years later, John Paul in his talks on the "theology of the body" articulated a definitive anthropology of the spousal-sexual-gendered human person that will endure as the definitive answer to the sexual liberalism.
2. Culture War. Even beyond the spousal reality, Cultural Progressivism was a direct, powerful assault upon Christian life in all its integrity and complexity: incompetent human life, authority, tradition, the role of science, the nature of moral norms, freedom of conscience, and the reverence and gratitude due to God. A vicious war erupted and has been raging since. It has inflamed and polarized politics, religion and all aspects of culture. After more than half a century, it is increasing in ferocity. At the start the Church, intoxicated with the Conciliar openness to modernity, was feeble and delayed in response. All the Churches became polarized between those that accommodate and those that resist cultural liberalism. Observant Catholics found themselves in a new ecumenical alliance with Evangelicals in defense of their shared way of life. Slowly courage and energy was summoned to protect innocent human life, the family, religious freedoms, and principles of solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good. This Culture War is the defining event of our time.
3. Lay Renewal Movements. These, mentioned in the prior letter as visitations of the Holy Spirit, include: Cursillo, Charismatic Renewal, Marriage Encounter, Focolare, Communion and Liberation, the Neocatechumenal Way, and others. They fleshed out the vision of the Council. They took distinct shape around differing charisms, personalities, cultures, and life patterns. They all revere the sacramental, magisterial form of the Church but infuse a fresh lay spirituality into marriage/family, economics, politics and all areas of culture and human life. They are an intensification of Catholic life as the mainstream became anemic and diluted, a "Catholic Lite," entrapped within bourgeois comfort. They are a clear, triumphant answer to Cultural Liberalism. In a world gone fluid, mad and diabolical they are oases of stability, sanity, and holiness.
4. Pontificate of John Paul and Benedict. Combining intellectual brilliance, personal sanctity, and an astonishing richness of charisms, virtues, and fruits of the Holy Spirit, these two popes (1978-2013) authoritatively interpreted the Council in a hermeneutic of organic continuity and strengthened all the currents that fed into and flowed from the Council. Both were already standouts at the Council, the one as a young bishop the other as a youthful theologian. As they had faced Nazism and Communism, so now they defied the assault of Cultural Progressivism. They found in the renewal movements as well as new religious orders their staunchest allies in the War within the Church and beyond.
5. Theology of Trinitarian Communion. In seamless continuity with the ressourcement theology that informed the Council, the journal Communio was founded in 1968 by DeLubac, Ratzinger and Balthasar to counter the progressivism of the Concilium school (Kung, Rahner, Schilibeeckx, Lonergan) and ground the Church in an authentic, organically conservative anthropology of the human person; of the Church as always bride, mother, sacrament and teacher; and a moral order that is personalist and established on firm, clear principles. This school looked to the past, Thomas as the "first among equals" of the fathers/doctors, even as it engaged with the best of contemporary thought. Led by John Paul and Benedict it is a sophisticated discernment of modernity, harvesting what is best and discarding the waste.
6. Retrieval within the Renewal. In continuity with the Council and its prehistory and corrective of a excessive progressivism, there emerged, with the blessing of Pope Benedict, a retrieval of elements of our legacy: the reverence of the Latin Mass, home schooling, a renewed study of St. Thomas, classical schools, small colleges with clear Catholic identity, new more traditional religious orders, EWTN network, and revivals of Marian devotion.. This is not a rejection of the Council as a rupture with the past, but a purification, a consolidation, a reintegration of the Church in her core identity as memory and hope.
The Catholic Church in my lifetime has seen immense change, for the better and for the worse. It has been the best of times. It has been the worst of times. It suffers exile, death, decadence; but it is always restored, resurrected and renewed. In the eyes of one who loves her, she is always the Bride of Christ, our Mother. Vulnerable, flawed, and tormented, She is ever resilient, fresh, youthful, and generous. We suffer with her, but we mostly rejoice in her and look forward to an eternity of Glory.
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