We serious, boomer Catholics can be excused some nostalgia for our youth. Fondness and gratitude for childhood, in proper proportion, is filially wholesome and virtuous. Beyond that: the postwar period (1945-65) was a great time to be growing up American Catholic.
In the lifeline of every person and community there are golden times and terrible ones. The Israelites recalled with delight the days of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), the Exodus with reception of the 10 commandments, the kingships of David and Solomon; but also the days of slavery and the exile in Babylon.
The victorious end of the war, with the Depression now a memory, initiated a Catholic Camelot: expanding economy, pride in defeat of the Axis powers, global dominance, national unity against Communism, large families, lots of jobs and overtime, numerous vocations to priesthood and religious life, religious revival (Billy Graham, Bishop Sheen, Fr. Peyton, Thomas Merton), labor and capital both thriving and cooperative, and an explosion of Catholic institutions.
By the numbers, this thriving world collapsed, catastrophically and rapidly, starting in 1965 as the Council concluded and the cultural revolution exploded: flight out of the priesthood and religious life, decrease in Catholic practice, theological confusion, polarization between progressives and conservatives, the priest scandal, and other.
Understandably, we who are aging in a world of relentless change, are tempted to despise the new and the contemporary and project a sentimentalized, idealized image upon the past. This is neither wholesome nor holy. God is present, working always in the present. He builds upon the past, Tradition and memory, but is ever new, eventful, creative, refreshing...moving us into an ever more glorious future, eventually an Eternity of Joy.
We do well to balance gratitude for the past, with realistic scrutiny of it, but rejoice always in the Gift of the Present as a foretaste of a promised future and Eternity. In an exercise of renouncing toxic nostalgia, let us consider six bad things of the postwar period, specifically urban, ethnic Catholicism 1945-65 and ten good things of 60 years since then.
The Bad
1. Superficial Spiritually. If that Catholic culture was as strong as the numbers suggest, as we like to imagine it, it would not have collapsed so completely, so quickly. The roots and foundation were not deep and strong.
In large measure, Catholicism was not evangelical or Christ-centered. We were not clearly evangelized into a personal relationship with the divine-human person of Jesus Christ as savior and lord. We were well instructed in the fundamentals of dogma, morals, sacraments and prayer but all of that was not deeply, coherently anchored in Christ. We were not conversant with the Bible, in contrast to our Evangelical neighbors.
Pious behavior (Sunday, weddings, baptisms,) was pervasive but in large degree habitual, motivated by social pressure as well as fear of eternal retribution.
2. Intellectually Weak. Laity, mostly ethnic immigrants, were largely uneducated. Their piety was familial, populist, deeply felt, but not highly intelligent. Priests were the intellectuals, but their seminary training was limited: focused on Thomistic philosophy and theology, but largely removed from the broader, thriving cultures of the sciences and humanities. Catholic colleges were considered relatively weak, although they did teach the faith. Influential bishops and priests were often good builders and administrators rather than theologians.
3. Tribal and Narrow. To their credit, ethnic parishes elicited coherence of life, loyalty, certainty, and stability. The darker side was a tribal bias against the Other. Prejudice...against blacks, Jews, Protestants and other ethnicities...was commonplace.
4. Clericalism. We dearly and deeply revered our priests as authorities, as dispensers of the Mysteries. But that could elicit pride, arrogance, condescension from priests. Many clerics did not relate well to women. Alcoholism was a common problem.
5. Misogyny. I do not speak here of patriarchy, in the ideological sense, as I revere our patriarchs. But in cultures modern and traditional the immature male fails to appreciate and reverence the female in her very womanliness. This was, and is, a problem within the priesthood, but also in family life. If anything, the sexual revolution and ideological feminism hav made this worse. This problem manifested differently in various cultures: for example, the Italian male has a different dysfunction than the Irish.
6. Sexuality. Catholicism has always maintained a profound reverence for sexuality as a sacred gift from God to be cherished within marriage. This has also been accompanied by shame, guilt, and fear. I personally never received a negative catechesis; rather, it was a taboo subject, not mentioned. This was at once a reverence; but also an awkwardness, an embarrassment. And so, an admirable reverence coexisted with anxiety, guilt, shame and negativity. As a result, we were unprepared for the sexual revolution.
The Good
1. Vatican Council II While its implementation was corrupted into the progressive "Spirit of Vatican II" by the overwhelming headwinds of the Cultural Revolution, the Council itself was the work of the Holy Spirit and a miraculous ecclesial event:
- The documents, fruit of an unprecedented gathering of theologians, were all overwhelmingly approved by huge majorities of bishops in a clear consensus. It was unequivocally an authentic act of the Catholic Church.
- Centered Catholic life in the person of Jesus Christ.
- Opened the Church to engage the broader culture appreciatively but critically. Although probably not critically enough!
- Ecumenically reconciled with our brethren in Christ beyond our Catholic boundaries.
- Renounced anti-Judaism with a new-but-ancient "love of the Jew," a deepened appreciation for our own roots and a glimense of the providential nature of rabbinic Judaism.
- Recognized clearly the call to holiness of all the baptized and the value of lay leadership, especially in culture and family.
- Highlighted the importance of freedom of religion and conscience, in its orientation to Truth.
- Retrieved a broader study of the Church fathers and doctors. While Thomistic language was not used, the underlying philosophy of St. Thomas (e.g. analogy) as well as that of John Cardinal Newman was retained.
2. Lay Renewal Movements. Under mostly lay leadership, these: focused on the person of Jesus Christ (evangelical), reception of Scripture, the activity of the Holy Spirit, community, retrieval of traditional values in fresh expressions, a pronounced sense of the supernatural in resistance to a world gone secular. These include Charismatic Renewal, Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare, and others.
3. Divine Mercy. This devotion, received through St. Faustina in the 1930s, spread informally and steadily, largely among the laity until the papacy of John Paul who elevated it into prominence and expressed it in his powerful encyclical Dives in Misericordia. "Full of Mercy."
4. Papacy of John Paul II. Arguably the most consequential pontificate in Church history, he manifested our ever-ancient-ever-new faith in his own personal drama of holiness and teaching on: the centrality of Christ, an authoritative interpretation of the Council, the dignity of the person, the triumph of Divine Mercy, catechesis on sexuality, a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with contemporary culture, an agonistic struggle against ideologies including fascism, communism, and sexual liberalism, a profound social doctrine and more.
5. Papacy of Benedict XVI. Ratzinger was the primary collaborator with John Paul but was himself a theologian and Churchman of immense significance: the youngest, startlingly brilliant theologian at the Council; a man of humility and holiness; a brilliant scholar of Scripture, theology and contemporary culture; and a master catechist who expresses our faith with incomparable sweetness.
6. Theology of Balthasar and the Communio School. In an extraordinary partnership with mystic Adrienne von Speyr as well as collaboration with Resourcement Theologians Fr. Balthasar articulated a majestic, encyclopedic Catholic-yet-contemporary theology of holiness, beauty, and drama.
7. Pentecostal Movement around the Globe. This includes but transcends the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as it has spread like wild fire in Pentecostalism, through mainline Churches and around the globe, notably in the Southern Hemisphere.
8. African Church is thriving demographically but also spiritually in its contest with militant Islam. It is purified in persecution. It retains, against the secular-progressive West traditional Catholicism as has become a missionary Church, serving the Church-in-decline to the north.
9. Countercultural Catholicism. With the hegemony of secular progressivism in Western elite culture, Catholicism has partnered with Evangelicalism and other allies to articulate a passionate, profound countercultural Christianity: prolife movement, defense of sexual chastity and marital fidelity, protection of the incompetent and weak, freedom of religion, and articulation of the supernatural. This finds expression in a rich range of new, small but intense institutions: the Latin Mass, homeschooling, new religious orders (Friars of Renewal, Sisters of Life, etc.), classical schools, and intensive Catholic colleges. Additionally, we have benefited from striking apostolates to the poor: Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, and others.
10. Twelve Step Programs. This miraculous legacy of Bill W. and Doctor Bob grew in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous from the 1930s into the 1970s but was significantly expanded to address other forms of addiction: gambling, sex, drugs, eating, workaholism, and other. It works beyond the boundaries of any Church religion as it welcomes all beliefs but offers a program clearly rooted in the Christian revelation and is a powerful work of the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
We rightly remember with joy and gratitude the graces of God received in Catholicism in the postwar period. We avoid idealistic nostalgia as we see the systemic shortcomings of the time. We retrieve all that is good as we attend to the workings of the Holy Spirit in the present, guiding us always to a more glorious future. Thanks be to God!
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