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When Vatican II came to the Bronx, Part II
The conclusion of a story began last weekend
Jun. 25, 2009
Pope Paul VI (CNS photo)
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PDF versionIn the late sixties, for the first time I could remember, priests came to the house for dinner. Fr. Eugene was a favorite because he always performed a few magic tricks over coffee. Fr. Ignatius, who oversaw the altar boys, somehow scrounged up enough money from the modest parish fund one Christmas to buy each of us knock-hockey games.
There was Sr. Richard, of course, who taught us folk songs. Sr. Stephan was her best friend. By 1970, they would be allowed to revert to their birth names: Maryann and Karen -- it was a revelation to know them by their actual names, and picture them as real daughters who once wrote their own book reports and drew their own Mother's Day cards. By 1971, they would lose the face-enveloping nun's habits, too, and wear only a small scarf on their heads. But they were never demystified to me. They were always the face of the church in my eyes: only now that face had cheeks and hair -- and a smile.
In 1968, Sr. Maryann and Sr. Karen together decided to touch the third rail of Catholic politics -- a move no doubt inspired by Vatican II, and something conservatives might point to as Exhibit A in their case against the Council and how it ruined the minds of working class believers. I'm talking, of course, about sex.
The sisters decided the fifth grade needed to be taught about sex right way -- before we picked up too much from the street. They worked out a curriculum for separate classes by gender -- Sr. Maryann would teach the boys.
But we would need our parents' permission. I was shaking like a man in the midst of a malarial fever as my mother read through the permission slip. I was racked with regret, astounded by my own stupidity -- no doubt, she'd have dozens of questions I didn't want to answer: why did I, at age 10, feel the need for this class? What, exactly, was I expecting to learn in this class? Why didn't I come to her with these things instead of going to a class?
But then: nothing. My mother nodded to herself, grabbed a ball-point pen from the far regions of her purse, and signed the permission slip. She handed it to me, put on her apron, and stepped into the kitchen to turn on the transistor radio. I sat there for a moment, staring at the signed slip. Mom called out over the sounds of The Association's hit "Windy" and asked if I wanted a snack. I managed a "sure" and folded the paper into my back pocket.
When Sex Ed class started up a week later, every boy from 5th grade but one attended. What could have seemed radical was accepted.
How a nun teaches sex: very carefully. Much clinical discussion about body parts, hormones, and their various functions. Many reminders about how sex is something only husbands and wives did in order to have children. Still, Sr. Maryann's tone was always relaxed, never nervous, and Catholic guilt about the havoc adolescence was soon to bring down on us was completely absent.
But I've got to say this: we never actually got to an explanation of "the act." We did learn about ovum, sperm, etc. -- all, I assumed, a lead-up to discussions of "the act," about which I'd picked up only vague and coded communiqués from older kids on the street. Suddenly, however, it was June: the last class on the last day of school. Finally, desperately, I was compelled to raise my hand and ask in my shaky, pre-adolescent voice: "But how does the sperm get to the ovum?" Sister replied slowly: "It happens at night. The sperm travels to the ovum at night because the mother and father are deeply in love."
Then: the bell rang. The semester and the class were both over. For the last time in our lives, we boys dropped all thoughts of sex in favor of running outside to celebrate summer. I understand now that sister timed it that way, perfectly.
***
Given the current church environment, I'm astounded to think about that class now. Imagine what a Catholic school might have to go through today to teach something similar -- lawyers for the local diocese with reams of contracts, disavowals and disclaimers for parents to sign. Parents demanding to run the teachers through special checks with local law enforcement authorities. But, mostly, cynicism and incredulity -- that members of a Catholic religious order would have anything real to impart on the subject.
That cynicism has nothing to do with Vatican II, but instead with another key church moment that came one month after my fifth grade sex-ed class ended and summer vacation began.
***
In July of 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his famous encyclical banning contraception, Humanae Vitae. Paul overruled a committee of bishops studying the issue and seemed to side with more conservative forces.
Humanae Vitae marked a change in my house, with my mother. By the late sixties, Immaculate Conception was a Vatican II wonderland of jam-packed "hootenanny" Masses featuring guitars and tambourines. Foreboding statutes of Italian saints were replaced by those brightly-colored banners with free-style felt lettering that called out: He Is Risen! And gospel readings were studied from a hip new book titled, not "The New Testament," but "Good News For Modern Man" -- a perhaps too-contemporary translation into simple English vernacular.
My mother really liked this. She was different in church, more alive than the woman I remembered watching me altar-serve in third grade.
But shortly after July 1968, her attitude toward the church began to shift. Suddenly, it was just "a bunch of old Romans trying to tell everyone what to do." Over the years, my mother still went to Mass but participated less; she told me recently that she now just went to church to get some quiet time for herself with God, and tuned everything else out. She was once again like the old ladies in black of my childhood.
I was much older when I finally did the calendar math and understood why. In 1967, at age 40, my mother became pregnant. I learned about this when I came home from altar practice one afternoon and found her crying in the kitchen uncontrollably, my dad trying to comfort her without success. She'd had one very rough delivery with my brother thirteen years before, and knew the additional risks of pregnancy at her age.
My sister was born in February of 1968. The delivery was easy, but then my mother began to hemorrhage -- nothing could stop it. I was jolted awake in the middle of the night by a slammed door at my grandmother's house, where my brother and I were staying. It was the sound of my father rushing in from the hospital, crying to his mother, desperate now about this delivery, afraid his wife was going to die.
My mom doesn't remember her own mother. In poor health after giving birth to eleven children, she passed away in child birth when my mother was four years old. So, as she lay on the operating table, Mom had one thought in mind: the same fate now awaited her newborn baby girl. I know this, of course, because she did pull through -- thirteen blood transfusions later. The whole saga -- the crying, the bleeding, the surviving -- is one of my family's great stories now, more emotional with every telling. But in 1968, still recovering from her ordeal when Humanae Vitae was issued, my mother fumed at the thought that Rome would tell a woman preventing pregnancy was immoral, no matter the age or the circumstances. What could they possibly know about that?
***
The American ethos into which Italian families in the Bronx were rapidly assimilating assumed people high up needed the consent of the people below, but Humanae Vitae showed the church -- for all its attempts at spiritual democracy -- was not ready for that. The retreat from Vatican II had begun.
Many clergy came to realize this, too -- the energy and optimism they brought to their vocations in the 1960s were increasingly hard to sustain. In 1974, three years after I graduated eighth grade, Sr. Maryann left the Pallotine nuns and Immaculate Conception School. She had spent nearly seven years there and was just a few months shy of taking her final vows. Sr. Karen drove her home, then decided to leave, too.
Years later, Maryann told me she left because the leadership of the Pallotine order was not incorporating enough of the changes from Vatican II, even though rank-and-file nuns wanted this. Maryann noticed that, seven years on, she was still the youngest nun in the convent -- no one had joined since she entered, and the place was losing its vitality.
***
In some conservative Catholic circles, Vatican II may now be viewed as foolishness or worse -- but today, as back then, the real test is on the ground. There, the principles of that era spark the American Catholic church in ways so commonplace, they are taken for granted.
This is Immaculate Conception Church today: still working class and poor, now home to 2,500 families, larger than in 1967. As my family did, most Italians moved out of the Bronx parish and into the suburbs in the late 1970s -- but some remained, now joined by Hispanics and a growing number of African-Americans.
The church has a Web site, on which it proudly proclaims itself "a multi-cultural Catholic community." Proof of that: Immaculate now has four choirs -- an adult gospel choir, a children's gospel choir, a Spanish choir, and a traditional choir. The church will happily sell you a CD it's produced of all the groups.
The 7:00 pm Mass is now the "youth Mass," music provided on alternating Sundays by the "Franciscan Troubadours" and a Folk Choir. It's pretty close to the "hootenanny" services of my time.
The Pallotine sisters left the grammar school about twelve years ago, due to age and reduced numbers. This was the very direction Maryann had foreseen -- not because Vatican II somehow pushed women out of religious life, but because the Council's promised changes regarding that life were too often thwarted. Now ten nuns culled from three other orders work alongside lay teachers.
Still, imagine this parish today without Vatican II: Masses said in Latin, not in Spanish or Italian or English; choirs singing from a small list of approved traditional hymns, with gospel music nowhere to be found; certainly no youth Mass or troubadours.
That's a very different kind of place, and I doubt 2,500 families would want to worship there. Two generations have passed since the Second Vatican Council; people have come to expect more from their church -- successful parishes know that.
This is certainly true where Maryann goes to church -- she's still a Catholic. When I spoke to her recently, she'd just retired after 35 years of teaching special education students in public school -- a sacrifice even more demanding than her days as a nun in The Bronx. She married 21 years ago and heads up a large pride of step-children, step-grandchildren, and, not long ago, the birth of a step-great-grandchild. At her parish, Maryann gives lectures on the Eucharist and the sacraments. The pastor and assistant pastor find lots of ways to use her talents -- though, she tells me, she lets others play guitar and sing at Mass these days.
What would have happened to her without Vatican II? In an isolated world of cut-off clergy, she could have felt too much fear and never left her order, remaining to become one of those bitter nuns that every angry ex-Catholic has apparently encountered. Or she could have found the courage to leave, but then hidden that side of herself, never daring to approach a pastor and get involved in her faith again. The chances of her actually becoming a normal, happy, participating member of the Roman Catholic church would have seemed as theoretical as the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
I think about Maryann, my old church and my old school all the time these days, now that I have two daughters of my own. They go to a Catholic grammar school at our Los Angeles parish, where families clamor to get their children in. The school was run for years by a recently-retired nun who didn't even wear the simple head scarf anymore; she was a great feminist role model for my girls, kept a giant jar of candy in her office, and was never the nightmare reason some kid turned away from his or her faith.
There is no towering dome or stained glass in our Los Angeles church -- it is modern, with rivers of natural light and a simple altar. I watch from the blond-wood pews as my older daughter helps with Mass as an altar server. It's yet another memorable scene in my life made possible by the spirit of Vatican II.
The Curia -- in one of its more retrograde moods -- issued a draft document on June 5, 2003 that said using girls as altar servers should be avoided "unless there is a just pastoral cause," i.e., no boys want to do it. Reaction was swift and negative; by late June, the draft was rejected. It seemed few in the pews thought altar girls were anything unusual, and certainly nothing into which Rome should be sticking its nose.
In the Mass now, the priest is holding up the Eucharist. I watch with a nostalgic smile as my daughter energetically rings the tiny set of bells -- for all the changes of the past 40 years, that's still every altar server's favorite part of the job. Her eyes search for me subtly and catch my expression. The same expression my mother used to give me as she watched from the pews. My daughter sends back a slight, proud smile of her own.
That smile is a small victory for her and for everyday parish life as it is now lived. Here in Los Angeles, and back there in The Bronx. And it is another small victory for my Vatican II.
[Editor's Note: The first part of this remembrance appeared last weekend on NCRonline.org.]
Joe Ferullo lives in Los Angeles and works in the television industry. He blogs for NCR at NCR Today.
Oh good grief. This sounds
Oh good grief. This sounds like the same old spiel. No one really understood what was going on at Mass. The Priest had his back turned to us (yes, and I remember how upset too I would get when my Mommy would turn around so I couldn't cling to her skirt). No one paid attention at Mass. Of course, the massive drop in vocations, Mass attendance, baptisms, conversions, weddings, really had nothing to do with the changes made after Vatican II, but because Vatican IIwas not implemented strongly enough!
And since there was far greater Mass attendance prior to Vatican II and the changes in the liturgy, even when the teaching on birth control was still in place, it is logical to assume Mass attendance would not nearly have suffered the drop it did after the changes were made. Because ultimately people desire beauty and reverence (and even mystery); not felt banners and mediocre prayers.
Brennan, I don't know how
Brennan, I don't know how old you are and whether you grew up being Catholic pre Vatican II. I remember the church before Vatican II. I would not want to go back to it. The beauty and reverence you speak of pre Vatican II was not exclusive to that time and place. I find the liturgy as reverent and meaningful in the post Vatican II church. As for the felt banners back then what's the big deal? People for the first time were experiencing an awakening of their faith which they hadn't felt before. Banners were simply an outward expression of their faith coming alive. Today I can live without them. I believe the Church is only in it's infancy of renewal despite what seems a going backwards. Human beings by nature are impatient. I believe the Spirit is at work. Like an infant we are being spoon fed food what our communal body is only able to assimilate for now. There is much more we will be fed as we grow and mature as Church. The fruits of Vatican II are yet to come.
Actually, it is not logical
Actually, it is not logical to assume that Masss attendance would not have suffered precipitously were the Vatican II changes were not made. There are many reasons to believe that Vatican II actually kept the Church alive and functioning. It does not cease to amaze me that people would think that the vast majority of us would prefer to go to Mass where we understand nothing, rather than to participate in mass that we understand.
The current Mass has beauty and reverence. The mysteries that count are the mystery of the Incarnation, of the life of Christ, of the fellowship of Christians and of the Holy Eucharist. How can any of that be insufficient? I'm not sure why felt banners would be offensive, in and of themselves. Neither do I understand how prayers are found to be mediocre. How can communication with God be mediocre?
Hi Alexandra, First off, I
Hi Alexandra,
First off, I don't in the least assume that if the Church suddenly reverted back to the Gregorian Rite that we would (or did) "understand nothing". Most of the Mass does not change. Latin is not hard to learn to read. Further, there are plenty of Latin-English missals. Hence, if one truly does not understand anything, whose fault is that? I'm sure if we reverted you are dedicated enough to be able to understand what is going on.
All of these "what ifs" are
All of these "what ifs" are spectulative, I know. Yet, I will offer my own sense of "what if" there was no Vatican II. I doubt that if there was no Vatican II, that there would not been effects siminlar to what happend to The Church in the late 60's and early 70's with Vatican II. All of society was changing and my feeling is that I don't think The Church could have isolated itself from the effects of these changes. It was just too pervasive. I think the rebellion that was occuring outside The Church were deep psychic shifts in the culture. Most were experiencing changes as to how they see and interact with life, their changing place in the culture. I can't imagine that they would have - or could have - abandoned the effects of these changes just because he/she walked thru the doors of a church which was resisting change.
As someone who shared Joe's
As someone who shared Joe's experience, I take exception to the rhetoric employed of "same old spiel." It is not a "spiel," it is our lived reality, for those of us who lived with one foot in pre-Vatican II and one foot in post-Vatican II. My soul usually thrives on Eucharistic celebrations--it does not matter to me if they are contemporary, traditional, "speed Mass" dailies, as long as the Body of Christ gathered is there to celebrate faithfully the presence of the living Christ among us. The fact, that for me, my most profound experiences of Mass are either contemporary or quiet dailies, does not mean that others in my parish who wish another worship experience do not have that choice. Does this mean that I do not revel in the mystery of a Corpus Christi procession, now celebrated not in some blind, uncatechized, unformed sense of "mystery," but in a reverent, awe-filled giving over to the "mystery" that forms and binds? Certainly not! Does it mean that my very being does not resonate with the smell of incense and childhood with the first three bars of "Tantum Ergo?" Definitely not!
I am sorry that so many claim to have bad catechesis and formation--that was certainly not the intent of Vatican II, nor was it in any of the documents. As a former DRE and Youth Minister, I met many post Vatican II adults, many of whom were uncatechized in their faith, but usually because their parents had been angry at the Church and not practiced Catholicism in any meaningful way. I have also met many angry young adults in their 20s and 30s who feel that they have been "cheated" of their Catholic birthright because they don't have the direct catechesis, devotionals, etc. Why is there an assumption that knowing and having memorized articles of doctrine, engaging in private prayer such as the Rosary during the Eucharistic celebration, and the like is a mark of a more formed, more catechized Catholic. I think Christ would be offended if he found us praying privately or reading a book, ignoring his presence among the Eucharistic assembly with our private devotions, would he not? Otherwise, why would he have chosen a corporate action, such as the Passover celebration, to ask his followers to do this always in remembrance of him? Christ chose a corporate action because he realized that being Body of Christ is more important than rote memorization and recital, that we must own the theology within our souls and hearts, as much as in our minds, if we hope to be the transformative power of the Gospel in the world.
So, although I understand the somewhat misplaced "anger" of some post Vatican II people and some who blame all the Church's ills on VII (rather than on the birthing struggle of moving into a post-modern, highly secularized world), also understand that the Church of post Middle Ages/post Enlightenment and pre-Vatican II was not the utopia that many post-Vatican II Catholics idealize it to be. The issues are with us, the living Church, to be Christ in the world for one another and for ourselves.
A mediocre prayer is not a
A mediocre prayer is not a function of the language it is prayed in (certainly, there's nothing magic about ecclesiastical latin) but of the mediocre soul doing the praying. I'd look to my own prayers were I you and not so much toward everyone else's.
I am looking to the prayers
I am looking to the prayers as they are translated in English in the U.S. for Mass. They are notorious for being poorly translated which is precisely why the Vatican and the Bishops are looking to have them more faithful to the Latin. Of course that does not get into the wholesale changes made to the prayers in the original Latin with the introduction of the New Mass.
Brennan, If the new
Brennan,
If the new translations are more faithful to the original Latin than the words currently in use, then I submit that much of the original Latin was poorly written. That's a possibility, you know. Nothing says that the original was well done, in any language. Those authors were human and fallible just like today's translators.
Also, English is a Germanic-Latin hybrid language, and doesn't follow directly the grammar of either language. Insisting on transliterating the word order, for example, is dumb. Sometimes it works, but often the result simply doesn't make sense, or is very clumsy, in English.
I've read the new propers on the NCCB website, and some of what's there is absurd, to say the least. I'm blessed with a good education and ability with language, and I found much that was almost incomprehensible. Um, I'll bet that most folks pray better when they aren't distracted by trying to figure out just what they're saying, or annoyed by the clumsiness of it all. I know I do, anyway.
So, when they tell me that all of this is now mandatory, and musical settings of the Gloria must not deviate so much as a syllable from the published text, I may just give it up as un-doable. When the words get in the way of prayer, it's time to find another way.
I attend a rural church in
I attend a rural church in Michigan. Our parish is growing all the time. We have many young families and I enjoy the service. I remember latin too and I enjoyed it. I sang in the choir and thought the music was etherial. The drop in vocations is because we are a very self centered country and will not sacrafice our lives. Ultimately remember God is in charge and He won 2009 years ago on a cross.
A beautiful inspiring story
A beautiful inspiring story of sticking with the Church. It reminds me of a description I heard from a modern prophet and priest -- that part of our calling as Catholic Christians is to be willing to hang on the cross with Our Lord amid all of the ambiguities, contradictions and uncertainties, and placing all our trust in Our Living Lord with the absolute certainty that God has called us and has first loved us along with ALL of the humanity that God has created whom we are to serve however humbly in the best way we can manage. The hardest part of this for me is to love the "managers" of the Catholic Church who seem to bustle about nervously patching up here and there with dismissals, warnings and condemnations in their futile attempts to thwart the Spirit. At the same time we must be mindful that they too are part of the humanity we must love and serve.
Thank you, thank you, Joe.
Thank you, thank you, Joe. What a great vignette of life at the "opening of the door" of the church! I was not as fortunate, in that there was no sex ed. taught by nuns in my experience. The mysteries and prohibitions hung over us and many learned in the most damaging and hurtful ways possible. Indeed...imagine the church without Vatican II. I shall keep your stories.
My own is a sad, tired story
My own is a sad, tired story of not sticking with the Church. Between 1937-45, I attended a two room Catholic school and was taught by two Sisters of the Precious Blood, one of whom made algebra as simple and clear and logical as it is.
At a Catholic college, 1949-53, I was puzzled by a faculty divided among, as I later learned, those who anticipated Vatican II, and those already in opposition to it. Among the former, one in particular spoke of the "apostolate of the laity," stressing a simple, almost scientific, algorithm: "observe, judge, and act". An algorithm which, he insisted, was to be used to transform, for Christ, the conditions of life most relevant to whatever vocation we pursued. A like-minded colleague, more attuned to the academy than to the factory floor, told his admiring student-disciples to put "intelligence to the service of Christ the King."
And so I tried.
Unfortunately for my relationship with the Church, it never seemed to me that putting intelligence in the service of Christ the King involved becoming obedient to any man or woman, or accepting without critical scrutiny, any number of pious declarations and practices. These are the conditions of the vocation I have pursued. I have done my best to put my work in the service of Christ the King, but that very effort, over the last 56 years, has taken me farther and farther away from the Church on earth.
It does not seem to me that the Church on earth cares very much about deep conversation with those of us it must see as over-educated, vain-glorious, mind over heart, ex-Catholics. It has done little or nothing to preach the Gospel in a language we can understand. For me, late in the game, this is still a simple matter of "observe, judge and act."
My own is a sad, tired story
My own is a sad, tired story of not sticking with the Church. Between 1937-45, I attended a two room Catholic school and was taught by two Sisters of the Precious Blood, one of whom made algebra as simple and clear and logical as it is.
At a Catholic college, 1949-53, I was puzzled by a faculty divided among, as I later learned, those who anticipated Vatican II, and those already in opposition to it. Among the former, one in particular spoke of the "apostolate of the laity," stressing a simple, almost scientific, algorithm: "observe, judge, and act". An algorithm which, he insisted, was to be used to transform, for Christ, the conditions of life most relevant to whatever vocation we pursued. A like-minded colleague, more attuned to the academy than to the factory floor, told his admiring student-disciples to put "intelligence to the service of Christ the King."
And so I tried.
Unfortunately for my relationship with the Church, it never seemed to me that putting intelligence in the service of Christ the King involved becoming obedient to any man or woman, or accepting without critical scrutiny, any number of pious declarations and practices. These are the conditions of the vocation I have pursued. I have done my best to put my work in the service of Christ the King, but that very effort, over the last 56 years, has taken me farther and farther away from the Church on earth.
It does not seem to me that the Church on earth cares very much about deep conversation with those of us it must see as over-educated, vain-glorious, mind over heart, ex-Catholics. It has done little or nothing to preach the Gospel in a language we can understand. For me, late in the game, this is still a simple matter of "observe, judge and act."
Thank you, thank you, Joe.
Thank you, thank you, Joe. What a great vignette of life at the "opening of the door" of the church! I was not as fortunate, in that there was no sex ed. taught by nuns in my experience. The mysteries and prohibitions hung over us and many learned in the most damaging and hurtful ways possible. Indeed...imagine the church without Vatican II. I shall keep your stories.
Vatican II is alive and well
Vatican II is alive and well in the hearts of Catholics today... It should not be simplisticly identified with mere programs and practices. Rather, it is the vision and spirit that enables so many to continue to support the Church - even when our weaknesses and failures are on public display - weaknesses and failures whose foundations were laid before Vatican II began to address their reform.
How well I remember the nuns
How well I remember the nuns in the Forties! As evidence of their care in not teaching about the body in detail, they once had a mimeographed medical explanation of how the kidneys work as a Health handout. The word "kidney" had been blacked out (redacted?)throughout. I asked the nun why and she replied that the word was "vulgar." As you might expect, we really never did get to Sex Education.
It's a very complicated
It's a very complicated situation. I know people in rural Poland from that time who were delighted and thrilled to have Mass in Polish, but if asked what they would have done if the parish priest got rid of those 'foreboding' statues of saints in the church, their reaction is quite the opposite. I suspect that in most polish villages the priest would have been chased out of the parish with pitchforks!
It's ironic that you mention the bells as being the servers favorite part, I was taught by many people(falsely of course) that Vatican II got rid of them, just like the other things you mention in your articles, the communion rail and the statues.
While, girls serving at the altar was only permitted, long after Vatican II, by Pope John Paul II in 1995, shortly after he proclaimed that women can't be ordained to the priesthood, and the same time Rome has emphasized that no priest can be forced to have girls serving at the altar and that bishops can forbid it in their diocese. So it is at any moment reversible.(I think that girls serving at the altar is a good thing and that women should be ordained, but i digress).
At the same time though, I'm not sure that the liturgical reforms have done much to keep people in the church, ironically Mass attendance was higher both in this country and in Europe when the Mass was in Latin.
I don't think that this article does justice to the diversity of the situation in the church. Sure you have traditionalists who want to return to the traditional Latin mass. Sure there aren't too many of them, but they have their own parish, they have monasteries, and even seminaries, you have priests ordained today who only celebrate Mass in the pre-Vatican II rite. At the same time, you have many conservative Catholics who are happy with the Mass in English, and with 'hootenany' type liturgies, but who consider themselves very much in line with Rome on issues such as woman's ordination, birth control, and homosexuality. All of this in addition to people more to the left, in the direction of this fine publication.
As for the decline in religious orders, somehow I think it is too simple for them to blame their difficulties in attracting recruits on Rome.
God is the source and goal of
God is the source and goal of life. God became man not to show us the mystery of life, which from the beginning until now has challenged, puzzled and confused us. God wanted to let us know that by taking on our humanity he could share with us his divinity and reveal the beauty of life. This is why Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Mary breast-fed him, potty-trained him, taught him to walk and talk. Joseph, his guardian, taught him about the Law and the Prophets, showed him how to craft wood and helped him prepare for his ministry. This was all done in the vernacular, Aramaic most probably. It was in the manner and customs of his time and culture, Galilee and its environs in the first year of our Lord, 0 AD.
The mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption is that it happened once and for all. One time for all times; one time for all of God's creation. It happened in the everyday life of God's children in a way that they could see and sense that God is with us, Emmanuel. God wanted us to safeguard and share our Salvation History, from the beginning when things were just being named to the time when families became tribes and began to form nations, from the time of the Tower of Babel to the moment of Pentecost.
Jesus our Lord became Jesus our Brother so that we could see and hear and feel the word of God directly from the Word of God made flesh. The Way, the Truth and the Life spoken in words we can understand: this is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are created in the image and likeness of God who was, who is and who is to come. God has no limits or boundaries. This is what God willed to share with each and every one of us.
To show us how miraculous our birth is, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, was born in a manger in a timely manner simply and humbly and miraculously. All of this is everyday ordinary now, thanks be to God, because God was born man in the same way we were born. Genuflecting or bowing before every breath might be a sign of reverence, but simply breathing is human as God willed and Jesus chose to take on. Every breath is a sacrament of the miracle of life. In Baptism, we are initiated and received into the Mystical Body in, with and through Jesus. This is the simple Way, this is the revealed Truth, this is the everlasting Life. This is what our Fathers at Vatican II gathered to remember, restore and refresh.
Litany, plainsong, chant, SATB, polyphony, Gospel, charismatic, folk, contemporary and so many other remembered or emerging ways of making a joyful noise to our Lord: this is liturgy. When we gather together to celebrate our liturgy, this is Eucharist, this is thanksgiving. Deo Gratias. Emmanuel. Pax et Bonum. How can I keep from singing?
I remember Pope Pius XII and his successors. Pope John XXIII is my holy father of fondest memories and strongest incentives: In essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity. To this day, I think that he was the most empathetic Servant of the servants of God because he listened to our brother and father Francis of Assisi: I have done my duty, may Christ show you yours. Paz y Bien, Rolando.
I'm glad Vatican II still is
I'm glad Vatican II still is alive and well at Mr. Ferullo's old parish. Immaculate Conception in the Bronx reminds me of my parish in Portland, OR, the Catholic Community of St. Andrew. Both are vibrant, multi-ethnic parishes with multiple choirs. My parish is enriched by the many talents of its parishioners, including former sisters and priests.
I'm glad Vatican II still is
I'm glad Vatican II still is alive and well at Mr. Ferullo's old parish. Immaculate Conception in the Bronx reminds me of my parish in Portland, OR, the Catholic Community of St. Andrew. Both are vibrant, multi-ethnic parishes with multiple choirs. My parish is enriched by the many talents of its parishioners, including former sisters and priests.
A great story. I don't
A great story. I don't quibble with anything the author narrates but my early exposure to "the sisters" was different even though it evolved...slowly. What I learned of them later mitigated but did not excuse them. Those I met later altered my opinion but not my experience. A caveat here, I had met sisters in high school whom I admired and liked (one even a bit of a crush but heck, I found out later I was not alone).
What I learned at my class reunion forty years later, from a couple who attended, was that most had grown up in "Catholic girl's school", entered convent immediately after and with virtually no training - definitely no life experience - "sent" to our rough "catholic-protestant" divided mining town. Their mentors obviously advised them to terrify us in direct proportion to how terrified they were of us. It worked. It also created and maintained a distance, a sense that the real church began with them, spreading to priests and bishops and pope and just got worse regardless of the "breaches" from time to time. "Vocation" was a scitzoidal vortex in concept and worse to feel that one might be or become "infected".
In the lower grades they, by their horrifying inferences, made us afraid of sex before we knew what it was and not even biology class dealt with reproduction. I can't speak for the "domestic science" girls though and they never talked.
Maybe Vatican II did cause the diminution in women religious. If so it was not generally for the reasons the pius traditionalists claim. What it did do eventually was to create an environment within which women could be female "people" in a consecrated environment. I firmly believe that it also taught young women who might otherwise be traped by "Catholic guilt" to appreciate that not entering was not a rejection of God's call to goodness. Being a "friend" of a religious women was not a leash to be dwawn into their world but a friend to be respected and proud of.
God is the source and goal of
God is the source and goal of life. God became man not to show us the mystery of life, which from the beginning until now has challenged, puzzled and confused us. God wanted to let us know that by taking on our humanity he could share with us his divinity and reveal the beauty of life. This is why Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Mary breast-fed him, potty-trained him, taught him to walk and talk. Joseph, his guardian, taught him about the Law and the Prophets, showed him how to craft wood and helped him prepare for his ministry. This was all done in the vernacular, Aramaic most probably, and in the manner and customs of his time and culture, Galilee and its environs in the first year of our Lord, 0 AD.
The mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption is that it happened once and for all. One time for all times; one time for all of God's creation. It happened in the everyday life of God's children in a way that they could see and sense that God is with us, Emmanuel. God wanted us to safeguard and share our Salvation History, from the beginning when things were just being named to the time when families became tribes and began to form nations, from the time of the Tower of Babel to the moment of Pentecost.
Jesus our Lord became Jesus our Brother so that we could see and hear and feel the word of God directly from the Word of God made flesh. The Way, the Truth and the Life spoken in words we can understand: this is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are created in the image and likeness of God who was, who is and who is to come. God has no limits or boundaries. This is what God willed to share with each and every one of us.
To show us how miraculous our birth is, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, was born in a manger simply and humbly and miraculously. All of this is everyday ordinary now, thanks be to God, because God was born man in the same way we are born. Genuflecting or bowing before every breath might be a sign of reverence, but simply breathing is human as God willed and Jesus chose to take on. Every breath is a sacrament of the miracle of life. In Baptism, we are initiated and received into the Mystical Body in, with and through Jesus. This is the simple Way, this is the revealed Truth, this is the everlasting Life. This is what our Fathers at Vatican II gathered to remember, restore and refresh.
Litany, plainsong, chant, SATB, polyphony, Gospel, charismatic, folk, contemporary and so many other remembered or emerging ways of making a joyful noise to our Lord: this is liturgy. Gathering together to celebrate our liturgy, this is Eucharist, this is thanksgiving. Deo Gratias. Emmanuel. Pax et Bonum. How can I keep from singing?
I remember Pope Pius XXII and his successors. Pope John XXIII is my holy father of fondest memories and strongest incentives: "In essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity". To this day, I think that he was the most empathetic Servant of the servants of God because he listened to our brother and father Francis of Assisi: I have done my duty, may Christ show you yours.
Mr. Ferullo, thank you for
Mr. Ferullo, thank you for sharing your story. I would like to point out, however, that Vatican II did not abolish Latin in the liturgy...as you seem to suggest when you say, "Still, imagine this parish today without Vatican II: Masses said in Latin, not in Spanish or Italian or English." On the contrary, Vatican II emphasized that in the Roman Rite, apart from exceptional cases, the use of the Latin language must be maintained.
In my personal experience, I have found that Catholics are more attracted to tradition than "hootenanny". In the different parishhes I have attended, there are greater numbers where the priest emphasizes the sacrificial element of the Mass and defends the Faith in his homily, and where the church itself has beautiful statues of Our Lord, the Blessed Mother, and the saints. Meanwhile, the numbers are smaller where the church is filled with ugly modern art and un-inspiring music, and where the priest turns the Mass into a meal and swings the Host about during the Consecration. Perhaps the reason there were no more vocations in the religious order you mentioned following Vatican II, was that the sense of the "supernatural" had been stripped from the Church's religious communities - turning them into guitar-playing social activists instead of people who have made their lives the worship of God.
You also said that this "hootenanny" was made possible through the "spirit of Vatican II." Pope Benedict has repeatedly warned against an incorrect interpretation of Vatican II. He has distinguished between the "hermeneutic of rupture" (which seeks to create a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church) and the "hermeneutic of continuity" (which seeks renewal but only within the boundaries of the ancient Deposit of Faith). I remind you of the words of Pope Paul VI, spoken at the close of Vatican II: "What Christ willed, we also will. What was, still is. What the Church has taught down through the centuries, we also teach."
To Brennan: What is your
To Brennan:
What is your objective in trying to invalidate one man's personal experience? Does it bring you comfort? His mystery is not your mystery - but that doesn't make any the less real or sacred.
One can not argue or present
One can not argue or present cases logically if one goes from the specific to the general. Logic dictates that one argues from the general and uses specifics to round out ones arguement.
What was written was a cute story from one man's childhood. Fair enough. It can not be relegated to explain in a general over view the success and/or failure of Vatican II.
There is much good that came from Vatican II that has been enumerated in letters above. There has also been many libertys taken with it as well that have led to abuses which should not be tolerated.
Hi Richard, I am not and
Hi Richard,
I am not and cannot invalidate one man's experience. However, I do object to observations such as this:
"That distance from God was reinforced at the baroque altar: the priest faced away from the congregation, of course, and muttered Mass to himself. I recited prayers and responses from a laminated card printed in Latin. My favorite altar boy contribution was ringing a small sets of bells, as the priest held up the body and blood of Christ -- it was one of the few times I understood what was going on.
No one else seemed to pay full attention, anyway. ... In the pews were about fifty old ladies in long black peasant dresses and black veils, each with a dark rosary in her hands, shiny from years of rubbing, counting and recitation. They never stopped their own prayers during Mass -- the priest and altar boys were just a backdrop to their individual devotions. The "active congregation" that evangelicals and many other Protestants took as a given was rarely present.
...Despite her pastels, my mother seemed as caught up in her own cares as the others.
On Sunday, it was pretty much the same thing, albeit in front of a much larger crowd with a better demographic."
So if he prefers all the changes, fine. But I have heard over and over again from certain sources how no one really knew what was going on and weren't really participating and my question is, how do you know? I mean, you can know for yourself, but how does one glance at a congregation and assume no one is really participating and doesn't understand what is going on?
Hi Richard, I agree with
Hi Richard,
I agree with Sparch's comment. I also would say that I do not and cannot argue against someone's personal experience. What I object to is the overall idea that not just him, but pretty much everyone did not know what was going on at Mass and were disconnected with it just doing their private devotions and not really participating. I don't think one can know what is going on in someone's heart interiorly just by looking at a congregation.
Dear Joe, great article.
Dear Joe, great article. Vatican II is alive and well. With the exception of a few obtuse conservatives I think most Catholics today would agree with you. Today's Catholic is much better informed and despite all the complaints, better catechised. Given the choice to worship Christ in an environment that allows participation versus an environment that doesn't allow participation but prefers devotions, they choose meaningful participatory worship. In my diocese our church is full at all masses, we are the only church allowed to keep all of our masses in our cluster whereas the more traditional churches have had their masses reduced because of decreased attendance. Our church doesn't have an organ, but rather guitars and all the "hootenanny, all three masses full, almost 350 each mass. The cathedral has had one Tridentine mass for 15 yrs, average attendance 22. Believe me, Catholics do indeed know the difference.
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