The short answer to this question: a hundred million events and developments masterfully coordinated by the greatest intellect in Creation: Lucifer himself.
A slightly longer answer: the Church emerged from the Vatican Council in 1965 confident, optimistic, credulous, eager to embrace and affirm all that is good in a world that was at that very moment about to explode in a tornado straight from hell: the Cultural-Sexual Revolution. The cohort about to take the reins of Catholic life, the Great Generation, was entirely unprepared for this assault. The Council, inspired by the Holy Spirit and authoritatively interpreted by John Paul and Benedict, not so much in its specific wording, but in the tone and mood that surrounded it, left the Church all the more unguarded, gullible and vulnerable to the imminent attack. Some of the steams that fed this flood are evident:
1. Prosperity, Security, Affluence, Achievement. After the war and throughout the cold war, Catholics escaped the ghetto and were fully integrated into mainstream, bourgeois society in the happy ecumenical peace that largely pervaded the county. This contrasted sharply, of course, with the earlier travails of the depression and two wars. Inexorably there emerged a moral softness, materialism, consumerism, careerism, technological arrogance, individualism, and cultural superiority of the dominant world power. Unconsciously, without deliberation, they transitioned from urban ghetto to middle class suburb, from working to professional class, from social pariah and underdog to privileged achiever. The sharp countercultural identity...ethnic, anti-Protestant, persecuted (by WASP and Evangelical-Fundamentalist), "thick" religion...was inexorably replaced by a "thin," homogenized, accommodating partnership in the club of the successful and elite.
2. Individualism. From the roots of its founding...Calvinism, Enlightenment, Freemasonry... the USA had been anti-Catholic as individualistic and disparaging of communal Catholicism in its sacramentality, magisterium, religious life, Tradition/traditions, Mary and the saints. Catholic ethnics maintained an ambivalence about the country: appreciation for liberty and opportunity, but resistance to the WASP hegemony. This sharp, thick, combative identity steadily dissolved from 1945-65 as Catholics blended into a society already secularizing and transitioning from Protestant to moralistic-therapeutic-deistic.
4. Loss of Sense of the Sacred and of Sin. The earlier poverty and suffering of immigration, two world wars, and the depression kept our grandparents close to death, sickness, and the precarity of human life as well as the realities of the supernatural...the heavenly but also the hellish facts of sin, evil, the demonic and damnation. This sense was diminished, if not lost, in the prosperity, power, and competence of post-war America. Comfort, security, achievement and the quasi-omnipotence of techno-science became an addictive narcotic for the now-bourgeois Catholic, smoothly ascending the ladder of professional/educational meritocracy. This trend surged around 1965 when immediately, intuitively the entire apparatus of Tridentine Catholicism became incoherent and nonsensical: confession, reparation for sin, purgatory and hell (but not heaven which was welcoming, now, of everyone), judgement, the diabolical, spiritual warfare, the miraculous, and the very reality of the supernatural. Within a few years, the efficacious sacramental economy was replaced by an obsession with therapy and social activism as decisive in the fight against human suffering, without reference to sin or God.
4. Non-evangelical. In contrast to "I-love-Jesus-Protestantism," our mid-century Church did not clearly invite to a personal, intimate, eventful relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, man and God. Our boomer generation was systematically catechized into our sacramental, moral and dogmatic legacy, but not evangelized. The Christology of Tridentine Catholic piety placed a heavy accent on the suffering and death of Jesus as reparation for our sins: stations of the cross, the theology of substitution, a just and wrathful God. This Jansenist trend was softened by devotion to the Sacred Heart, but even that accentuated his suffering and so was not entirely inviting. The merciful face of heaven was often projected on to Mary who is often described as restraining the wrathful arm of God. Such a Catholicism, lacking a clear theology of and devotion to the person of Jesus Christ, was viable within an enclosed, thick, ethnic, ghetto culture. But was unstable when released into a broader society, becoming viciously anti-Catholic.
5. De-Programmed. More than anything else, the talented young athlete needs: a good program which includes competent coaches, stimulating teammates/competitors, balanced/challenging schedule of exercise, practice and games. So much greater is the need for solid spiritual programs. The Catholic Church is rich in this! St. Benedict gave us the monastic model which created Christendom. Francis, Dominic, Ignatius and a legion of such left us a superb banquet of options. In our time we see in the 12-steps of AA such a program; likewise renewal movements such as Opus Dei or the Neocatechumenal way exemplify this. For five centuries, since the Council of Trent, Catholics practiced such a sound program: obedience to the ten commandments, Church precepts, and the natural law; engagement with sacramental life; and fidelity to one's state of life (married, ordained, religious.) For the more zealous, there was much more: devotions, third orders, novenas, missions, spiritual direction, confraternities of various sorts. Even minor things like meatless Fridays, choosing the names of saints, crossing oneself when passing a Church, hearing the Church chimes, and ashes on the forehead at the start of lent played a role in defining one's identity, community, vocation and destiny as Catholic.
In 1965, not according to the actual documents of the Council, but in accord with the "spirit" or overall pervading atmosphere at the time, that entire network of Catholic practice was disparaged by our fashionable, progressive elites. "THE PROGRAM" was dismantled. It was replaced by:...Nothing! A vague, innocuous, voluntarist, moralist individualism resulted. You can eat meat on Friday; just choose your own penance. That Church precept was immediately forgotten by everyone. Why confess sin when it is almost impossible to commit a real mortal sin (unless you are Hitler or Stalin.) Why pray for the deceased when we know all "good people" automatically go to heaven?
6. Intellectual Superficiality. For several generations, from the start of the 20th century, the core of priestly formation was the dry, rigid manualist scholasticism which was detached from engagement with the broader academic culture. It was widely received as sterile and superficial. Especially in the thriving, fertile, activist post-war era, the pragmatic, can-do clergy were building many and massive physical plants, but pronouncedly low-brow and allergic to metaphysics (of Being) and (realistic) epistemology. Intellectually, as well as spiritually, our clergy/hierarchy was unprepared for the assault launched in 1965. The younger clergy at the time, again practical and non-philosophical and technical, drifted swiftly into the social sciences, especially psychology, sociology and political science, as comfortable venues of human service.
Conclusion. It was hardly obvious at the time, but looking back we must conclude: the massive, impressive edifice of post-war Catholicism was vulnerable because it had a weak foundation, spiritually and intellectually. It was like a huge tree, with shallow roots. It could not resist a strong wind; and certainly not the tsunami-tornado-earthquake that struck immediately in 1965.
That post-war Catholic renaissance (1945-65) was a time of bounteous blessings. But we do well to avoid nostalgia. Every "Camelot" is in part illusory. That was not a perfect time. That impressive, but in some dimensions hallow, Catholic civilization was largely, but not completely destroyed by the Cultural Revolution.
But Catholic life continues and thrives in millions of families, parishes, gatherings of all sorts. In different circumstances, Christ remains with us: in the Eucharist, his Word, every gathering in his name, and in billions of prayers and acts. The Holy Spirit abides with us and moves within us and among us.
We surrender, Jesus our Lord, to your abiding presence; and, Holy Spirit, to your movements among us!
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