The Breakdown of Catholic Culture
One of the sufferings of the Church in America today is the breakdown of Catholic Culture. Understanding how a vibrant Catholic Culture works and how we lost it, can help us learn how to rebuild it.
In the early 1600’s, the first Catholics came from Scotland and populated Mary-Land. Today, of course, that is the state of Maryland. They were fleeing persecution from Protestant Scotland, where many had been killed for their Faith and Mass was illegal. About the same time, Catholic French Missionaries landed and began to work their way up the east coast and into Canada. On the west coast, Spanish Missionaries set up Missions up from Mexico and up through the state of California. Catholics populated Florida and gator country. Later came the Irish, who fled their native lands because of persecution from Protestant England, not to mention their desperate hunger from the potato famine.
Those Catholics who came from Europe were not evangelized in the same sense as those who learned the Faith from the Spanish. These European Catholics brought their Faith heritage with them. They had already suffered much persecution and when they landed in America, they found a less-than-sympathetic to Catholic, Puritanical society. In order to live in peace, they had to be quiet about their Faith. They had already spent much of their lives hiding their Faith in order to survive, so when they came to America, they naturally continued to do the same. They were the original Closet Catholics.
Catholics lived in "closed communities" and you still see that in some places today: Polish Catholics in parts of Chicago and Saint Louis, Irish Catholic communities in New York, and so on. Because of language and cultural issues, Catholics stuck together by ethnic groups. This went on for more than three hundred years and since parents are such a powerful influence on their children, those children grew up and raised their own children in the same kind of environment.
Did you know that the whole "separation of Church and State" issue started in this country with a 1920's court case in Oregon? A Protestant anti-Catholic tried to force a small group of children being taught by Nuns into the public school system so they could be indoctrinated with Protestant teaching. The case actually went in favor of the Catholics and since then, that court case has been used as a precedent to keep any kind of religion out of the public arena.
In the late 1800's a lady named Elizabeth Ann Seton (now a Saint) converted to the Catholic Church from Anglicanism (Episcopal) and started the parochial school system. The government was now forcing all children (after Child Labor Laws were passed) into the public school system, where the Protestant perspective was taught and obviously, Catholic parents objected. So through the efforts of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and others, Catholic schools were started all over the country. These schools were usually (probably ALWAYS would not be a stretch) next door to or connected to a parish.
So Dads went to work and Moms dropped the kids off at school and then went to Daily Mass and worked in the parish or helped in the school. Brothers from the Order of the Jesuits taught in all-boys schools. And the Ursaline Sisters taught the girls. And there were so many Catholic schools that any kind of athletic competition was within the community: St. Pius vs. All Saints or Blessed Sacrament vs. St. Timothy's.
Catholics also lived within the same communities. If you take New York City, for example, you'll find whole communities like Bensenhurst, Sheepshead Bay, Canarsey, that are either Irish or Italian -- to this day. You can find the same in Saint Louis, Chicago, or Cincinnati. Catholics lived, worked and worshipped within the same communities. They lived and died within the same communities. And they married within the same communities. This was the hey day of Catholic Culture. A Catholic learned their Faith mostly from their community -- their parents, their school, their parish. The Catechism of the day -- the Baltimore Catechism -- was very small because it was only used to flesh out the few things that faithful Catholics might not pick up in their day-to-day lives because the Catholic community was so strong and vibrant.
And it began to crumble in the mid-to-late 1950's.
World War II hit hard and women had to enter the workplace. But something more significant happened some 20 years earlier: the Lambeth Conference, the annual meeting of the Episcopal/Anglican Communion, where a resolution was passed (or some such legal form) that said that it was okay, in some medical circumstances, for contraception to be used.
Well, the outcry from the Pope at the time was swift and loud! Contraception had NEVER been accepted within the Christian community, and you can even read tirades against contraception by Martin Luther and John Calvin on the same subject. The counter-cry from the Protestant community was equally loud (actually louder in America because we are still a predominantly Protestant country) -- they claimed that Rome was trying to force its Popery on Protestants and they vehemently denied that birth control was wrong.
The rest, as they say, is history. One Protestant church after another -- denominations, anyway, fell like dominoes as their people demanded birth control. Every, single, mainline denomination began to allow birth control and still does today.
And Catholics wondered what the big deal was. Why couldn't they practice birth control? They had been taught that the Rhythm Method was okay (which didn't work because it assumed that every woman's body worked the same), and they couldn't see the difference.
As you can imagine, this contraceptive attitude -- sex is for fun, and we can procreate if we want -- led up to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. And Catholics started asking their priests, "why can’t we use birth control?"
Pope John XXIII called for the Council of Vatican II, which opened in 1962 and INCLUDED the issue of contraception on the agenda. He died before the conclusion of the Council and Pope Paul VI was elected and he REMOVED contraception from the agenda. Instead, he formed a Commission to investigate whether or not contraception was acceptable with the Original Deposit of Faith. And that Commission UNANIMOUSLY recommended that the Pope allow birth control to be used within marriage.
Four years went by, Vatican II closed in 1965, and the results of the Commission were leaked. Some Bishops and Priests, particularly in Europe and the United States, began telling their good parishioners in the Confessional, that any day now, the Holy Father would lift the mandate about birth control and not to worry about it. Most of the Western World anticipated with great joy, the freedoms to be gained from the lifting of the Church’s mandate on birth control.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI published an Encyclical called Humanae Vitae (on Human Life) that rocked the world. He said, in total opposition to what his Commission recommended, that contraception was NOT acceptable in light of Christ's Teachings. The media went nuts. And much, much worse -- before the ink was dry, (literally within 24 hours of his announcement) more than 200 theologians, priests and scholastics took out full-page newspaper ads across the country and told American Catholics that the Pope's decision was not binding, was not infallible, and that "in the spirit of Vatican II" they were fully capable of using their own consciences and making the decision themselves about whether or not birth control was acceptable. They didn’t mention that consciences needed to be formed in light of Church Teaching.
Another problem with American understanding of Vatican II had to do with one of the documents called the Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People. In it, the Church more clearly identified the laity's role in the life of the Church. Before this document came out, Nuns and Brothers were very instrumental in the inner workings of the Church. This document, improperly understood, seemed to demote them, and give control to the laity. It did no such thing but that was the liberal “spin”. The Decree did explain that the non-clergy, non-Order lay person had a very necessary place in Liturgy, in education, and in all apostolic areas of the Church. Since Trent, Catholics had this idea (fully encouraged in some cases, by the clergy) that it wasn't THEIR job to do the Work of the Church, it was the clergy's job.
There were other issues, too, like the confusion of changing the Mass from the Tridentine Rite -- Mass in Latin (which had only existed since Trent, anyway) and putting the Liturgy in the vernacular (English in our case). There was a lot of confusion at the time and much of it caused by poor implementation of the Decrees of Vatican II. In defense of the Church, however, it usually takes the Church 100 years to recover from Council decisions, anyway – the information has to be translated, dissected, disseminated, and that take an inordinate amount of time with in a Body as large as the Catholic Church.
These issues, compounded by their sheer complexity, caused a mass exodus from the Church. Nuns and Brothers felt they no longer had a place. Priests were embarrassed by the Pope's pronouncement about birth control when they had been assuring people that it was okay. Lay people left because they didn't like the Novus Ordo (the new Order of the Mass), or from the fact that they couldn’t practice their birth control.
Suddenly, there was no cheap labor (Nuns and Brothers) to teach the children. Tuitions began to rise and parents who were struggling financially could no longer keep their children in parochial schools. The Church was forced to hire teachers who were not even Catholic to teach academics.
And those who left either went to some protestant denomination or just didn't go to church at all. The entire Catholic Culture broke down and because of the changes in circumstance: Moms working outside the home, kids now going to public schools, people leaving these Catholic communities for work. The Church created the CCD or PSR programs (Public School of Religion). And parents, out of guilt in so many cases, began to drop their kids off at PSR but not go to Mass. Or they went to Mass and PSR but didn't have any other involvement in parish life. Sports were no longer played between Catholic schools but rather public schools. The Catholic schools became so poor (because they were now having to pay salaries that rivaled public school salaries instead of enjoying the free gift of labor from Nuns) they could no longer offer recreational programs. And parents sought that elsewhere and have become too busy to do anything with their parishes.
Well, we've lost several generations. Along with the "spirit of Vatican II" came liberal education methods and little Catholic boys and girls heard only "God is love" for 13 years, were Confirmed, and told they were now Soldiers for Christ with NO education. It's a sad, sad state. And it still exists today.
Have I depressed you yet? Believe it or not, there IS good news! The USCCB has been screaming for Adult Education (Catechesis) for some times now. Pope JPII wrote about it almost at the beginning of his Pontificate in the late 1970's. Popes have been screaming about it for years, actually, and yet people go on with their own selves and don't listen. And with the Priest shortage and the Priest scandals and various other problems within the American Church, there are few to do the work anyway. The harvest is great and the laborers few.
We have a LONG road to recovery. Long. And hard. And you know who is leading the pack? Catholic media opportunities like EWTN and Saint Joseph Communications, Apostolates (Ministry in Protestant-speak) such as Opus Dei and Regnum Christi. Former Protestants who have reconciled themselves to the Church, such as Scott Hahn, Tim Staples, Steve Woods, Alex Jones, Steve Ray. And Reverts to the Catholic Faith such as Jeff Cavins and John Martignoni,
There is great hope of renewal within the Church! The Church must be constantly reforming, hearing and acting upon the call to holiness by doing Good Works within this Mission Field. Through hard work and determination, and the gift of Grace from the Holy Spirit, we will rebuild Catholic Culture.
One community at a time.
In the early 1600’s, the first Catholics came from Scotland and populated Mary-Land. Today, of course, that is the state of Maryland. They were fleeing persecution from Protestant Scotland, where many had been killed for their Faith and Mass was illegal. About the same time, Catholic French Missionaries landed and began to work their way up the east coast and into Canada. On the west coast, Spanish Missionaries set up Missions up from Mexico and up through the state of California. Catholics populated Florida and gator country. Later came the Irish, who fled their native lands because of persecution from Protestant England, not to mention their desperate hunger from the potato famine.
Those Catholics who came from Europe were not evangelized in the same sense as those who learned the Faith from the Spanish. These European Catholics brought their Faith heritage with them. They had already suffered much persecution and when they landed in America, they found a less-than-sympathetic to Catholic, Puritanical society. In order to live in peace, they had to be quiet about their Faith. They had already spent much of their lives hiding their Faith in order to survive, so when they came to America, they naturally continued to do the same. They were the original Closet Catholics.
Catholics lived in "closed communities" and you still see that in some places today: Polish Catholics in parts of Chicago and Saint Louis, Irish Catholic communities in New York, and so on. Because of language and cultural issues, Catholics stuck together by ethnic groups. This went on for more than three hundred years and since parents are such a powerful influence on their children, those children grew up and raised their own children in the same kind of environment.
Did you know that the whole "separation of Church and State" issue started in this country with a 1920's court case in Oregon? A Protestant anti-Catholic tried to force a small group of children being taught by Nuns into the public school system so they could be indoctrinated with Protestant teaching. The case actually went in favor of the Catholics and since then, that court case has been used as a precedent to keep any kind of religion out of the public arena.
In the late 1800's a lady named Elizabeth Ann Seton (now a Saint) converted to the Catholic Church from Anglicanism (Episcopal) and started the parochial school system. The government was now forcing all children (after Child Labor Laws were passed) into the public school system, where the Protestant perspective was taught and obviously, Catholic parents objected. So through the efforts of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and others, Catholic schools were started all over the country. These schools were usually (probably ALWAYS would not be a stretch) next door to or connected to a parish.
So Dads went to work and Moms dropped the kids off at school and then went to Daily Mass and worked in the parish or helped in the school. Brothers from the Order of the Jesuits taught in all-boys schools. And the Ursaline Sisters taught the girls. And there were so many Catholic schools that any kind of athletic competition was within the community: St. Pius vs. All Saints or Blessed Sacrament vs. St. Timothy's.
Catholics also lived within the same communities. If you take New York City, for example, you'll find whole communities like Bensenhurst, Sheepshead Bay, Canarsey, that are either Irish or Italian -- to this day. You can find the same in Saint Louis, Chicago, or Cincinnati. Catholics lived, worked and worshipped within the same communities. They lived and died within the same communities. And they married within the same communities. This was the hey day of Catholic Culture. A Catholic learned their Faith mostly from their community -- their parents, their school, their parish. The Catechism of the day -- the Baltimore Catechism -- was very small because it was only used to flesh out the few things that faithful Catholics might not pick up in their day-to-day lives because the Catholic community was so strong and vibrant.
And it began to crumble in the mid-to-late 1950's.
World War II hit hard and women had to enter the workplace. But something more significant happened some 20 years earlier: the Lambeth Conference, the annual meeting of the Episcopal/Anglican Communion, where a resolution was passed (or some such legal form) that said that it was okay, in some medical circumstances, for contraception to be used.
Well, the outcry from the Pope at the time was swift and loud! Contraception had NEVER been accepted within the Christian community, and you can even read tirades against contraception by Martin Luther and John Calvin on the same subject. The counter-cry from the Protestant community was equally loud (actually louder in America because we are still a predominantly Protestant country) -- they claimed that Rome was trying to force its Popery on Protestants and they vehemently denied that birth control was wrong.
The rest, as they say, is history. One Protestant church after another -- denominations, anyway, fell like dominoes as their people demanded birth control. Every, single, mainline denomination began to allow birth control and still does today.
And Catholics wondered what the big deal was. Why couldn't they practice birth control? They had been taught that the Rhythm Method was okay (which didn't work because it assumed that every woman's body worked the same), and they couldn't see the difference.
As you can imagine, this contraceptive attitude -- sex is for fun, and we can procreate if we want -- led up to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. And Catholics started asking their priests, "why can’t we use birth control?"
Pope John XXIII called for the Council of Vatican II, which opened in 1962 and INCLUDED the issue of contraception on the agenda. He died before the conclusion of the Council and Pope Paul VI was elected and he REMOVED contraception from the agenda. Instead, he formed a Commission to investigate whether or not contraception was acceptable with the Original Deposit of Faith. And that Commission UNANIMOUSLY recommended that the Pope allow birth control to be used within marriage.
Four years went by, Vatican II closed in 1965, and the results of the Commission were leaked. Some Bishops and Priests, particularly in Europe and the United States, began telling their good parishioners in the Confessional, that any day now, the Holy Father would lift the mandate about birth control and not to worry about it. Most of the Western World anticipated with great joy, the freedoms to be gained from the lifting of the Church’s mandate on birth control.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI published an Encyclical called Humanae Vitae (on Human Life) that rocked the world. He said, in total opposition to what his Commission recommended, that contraception was NOT acceptable in light of Christ's Teachings. The media went nuts. And much, much worse -- before the ink was dry, (literally within 24 hours of his announcement) more than 200 theologians, priests and scholastics took out full-page newspaper ads across the country and told American Catholics that the Pope's decision was not binding, was not infallible, and that "in the spirit of Vatican II" they were fully capable of using their own consciences and making the decision themselves about whether or not birth control was acceptable. They didn’t mention that consciences needed to be formed in light of Church Teaching.
Another problem with American understanding of Vatican II had to do with one of the documents called the Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People. In it, the Church more clearly identified the laity's role in the life of the Church. Before this document came out, Nuns and Brothers were very instrumental in the inner workings of the Church. This document, improperly understood, seemed to demote them, and give control to the laity. It did no such thing but that was the liberal “spin”. The Decree did explain that the non-clergy, non-Order lay person had a very necessary place in Liturgy, in education, and in all apostolic areas of the Church. Since Trent, Catholics had this idea (fully encouraged in some cases, by the clergy) that it wasn't THEIR job to do the Work of the Church, it was the clergy's job.
There were other issues, too, like the confusion of changing the Mass from the Tridentine Rite -- Mass in Latin (which had only existed since Trent, anyway) and putting the Liturgy in the vernacular (English in our case). There was a lot of confusion at the time and much of it caused by poor implementation of the Decrees of Vatican II. In defense of the Church, however, it usually takes the Church 100 years to recover from Council decisions, anyway – the information has to be translated, dissected, disseminated, and that take an inordinate amount of time with in a Body as large as the Catholic Church.
These issues, compounded by their sheer complexity, caused a mass exodus from the Church. Nuns and Brothers felt they no longer had a place. Priests were embarrassed by the Pope's pronouncement about birth control when they had been assuring people that it was okay. Lay people left because they didn't like the Novus Ordo (the new Order of the Mass), or from the fact that they couldn’t practice their birth control.
Suddenly, there was no cheap labor (Nuns and Brothers) to teach the children. Tuitions began to rise and parents who were struggling financially could no longer keep their children in parochial schools. The Church was forced to hire teachers who were not even Catholic to teach academics.
And those who left either went to some protestant denomination or just didn't go to church at all. The entire Catholic Culture broke down and because of the changes in circumstance: Moms working outside the home, kids now going to public schools, people leaving these Catholic communities for work. The Church created the CCD or PSR programs (Public School of Religion). And parents, out of guilt in so many cases, began to drop their kids off at PSR but not go to Mass. Or they went to Mass and PSR but didn't have any other involvement in parish life. Sports were no longer played between Catholic schools but rather public schools. The Catholic schools became so poor (because they were now having to pay salaries that rivaled public school salaries instead of enjoying the free gift of labor from Nuns) they could no longer offer recreational programs. And parents sought that elsewhere and have become too busy to do anything with their parishes.
Well, we've lost several generations. Along with the "spirit of Vatican II" came liberal education methods and little Catholic boys and girls heard only "God is love" for 13 years, were Confirmed, and told they were now Soldiers for Christ with NO education. It's a sad, sad state. And it still exists today.
Have I depressed you yet? Believe it or not, there IS good news! The USCCB has been screaming for Adult Education (Catechesis) for some times now. Pope JPII wrote about it almost at the beginning of his Pontificate in the late 1970's. Popes have been screaming about it for years, actually, and yet people go on with their own selves and don't listen. And with the Priest shortage and the Priest scandals and various other problems within the American Church, there are few to do the work anyway. The harvest is great and the laborers few.
We have a LONG road to recovery. Long. And hard. And you know who is leading the pack? Catholic media opportunities like EWTN and Saint Joseph Communications, Apostolates (Ministry in Protestant-speak) such as Opus Dei and Regnum Christi. Former Protestants who have reconciled themselves to the Church, such as Scott Hahn, Tim Staples, Steve Woods, Alex Jones, Steve Ray. And Reverts to the Catholic Faith such as Jeff Cavins and John Martignoni,
There is great hope of renewal within the Church! The Church must be constantly reforming, hearing and acting upon the call to holiness by doing Good Works within this Mission Field. Through hard work and determination, and the gift of Grace from the Holy Spirit, we will rebuild Catholic Culture.
One community at a time.
posted by Dixie @ 9:52 PM
2 Comments:
At 1:04 PM,
Dixie said…
Yes! Isn't that interesting? Separation of Church and State is a Baptist Distinctive.
At 8:18 PM,
Dixie said…
I hear ya! And I think the Liturgy changes to the Novus Ordo had a lot to do w/the breakdown of Catholic Culture, too. Some have taken the opportunities for change WAY too far.
In order to bloom where you're planted, you often have to accept a side order of suffering, eh?
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