Monday, July 12, 2021

Did The Second Vatican Council Ruin Everything?

There's an amorphous faction in the Catholic Church that's often called "traditionalist" that often embraces themes like more comprehensive restoration of the Latin mass, as well as less common and more extreme beliefs like sedevacantism, the view that the Holy See has been vacant since the death of Pius XII. Even if many traditionalists aren't formal sedevacantists, there's a more widespread view that Pope Francis is a heretic.

In most cases, although there doesn't seem to be a single, unifying traditionalist manifesto, the view seems to be that Vatican II represented a preemptive surrender to modernism, and a return to a single mass rite in Latin, including the Roman Canon, is the cure. (If anyone can refer me to something that might effectively summarize this set of beliefs, I'll be delighted to hear of it and pass it on.)

My impression is that many traditionalists are too young to have lived throuh the 1960s, when the Second Council took place, and haven't looked closely at the 1950s, where many of the trends that dominated the 1960s became visible.

I put together the following timeline that suggests the Second Council took place, first, in a context where Christian figures recognized cultural trends and worked to counter them well before the Council; second, that the Council was also a major response to those trends; third, that key events that define the current era took place before and during the Council; and especially fourth, that the implementation of the novus ordo mass took place only after most of the relevant events had actually occurred.

At minimum, the Council can't have caused any of the problems that traditionalsts attribute to it, as they manifested themselves either well before or during the Council.

  • 1948 Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
  • 1949 Billy Graham Los Angeles crusades make him a national figure
  • 1951 JD Salionger publishes The Catcher in the Rye
  • 1952 Fulton Sheen begins Life is Worth Living television series
  • 1952 Christine Jorgenson undergoes gender reassignment surgery in Denmark
  • 1953 Hugh Hefner publishes First issue of Playboy
  • 1957 Jack Kerouac publshes On the Road
  • 1958 Death of Pius XII
  • 1959 Fidel Castro overthrows Batista regime in Cuba
  • 1960 birth control pill first approved by US FDA
  • 1960 Episcopal Bishop James Pike publicly opposes John Kennedy's election as US president due to his Catholic beliefs
  • September 1960 Kennedy insists no politician should request or accept instruction on public policy from the pope
  • 1961 Joseph Heller publishes Catch-22
  • 1962 US Supreme Court in Engel v Vitale rules compulsory school prayer unconstitutional
  • 1962 Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest published
  • 1962 John XXIII opens Second Vatican Council
  • 1962 Hugh Hefner begins serailizing the Playboy Philosophy
  • 1963 Timothy Leary fired by Harvard for LSD experiments
  • November 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy
  • 1963 Sacrosanctum Concilium, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy
  • 1964 Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
  • 1964 Dr Strangelove film released
  • 1965 Dei Verbum, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation
  • 1965 Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World
  • 1965 US Supreme Court outlaws government restrictions on birth control in Griswold v Connecticut
  • 1966 avant-garde comic Lenny Bruce (no relation) dies of heroin overdose
  • 1967 The Graduate film released
  • April 1968 Martin Lutrher King assassinated
  • May 1968 Jesuits Daniel and Philip Berrigan, with other Catholic activists, use homemade napalm to destroy draft records in Catonsville, MD
  • June 1968 Robert Kennedy Assassinated
  • July 1968 Paul VI promulgates Humanae Vitae
  • 1969 Paul VI promulgates Missale Romanum, beginning process of implementing vernacular mass and other revisions
  • 1970 Kent State shootings
  • 1973 US Supreme Court issues Roe v Wade, protecting a woman's right to abortion
  • 1974 Richard Nixon resigns as US president

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