'That sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress, careful investigation is always to be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be revised. This investigation should be theological, historical, and pastoral. Also the general laws governing the structure and meaning of the liturgy must be studied in conjunction with the experience derived from recent liturgical reforms and from the indults conceded to various places. Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.' (Sacrosanctum concilium, 23)
As we survey the waste and devastation that lays before us each Sunday, we see the extent to which the above-stated norm has been ignored at almost every step in the so-called reform of the sacred liturgy.
Lately the question nags me, which Dr. Blosser and Ralph Roister-Doister have both raised: why the Council?
I am a post-Vatican II convert. I was not present at the destruction; it had already happened by the time I got here. Although I've participated in a Traditional Latin Mass a few times, I do not arrive at my opinion of the current form of the Mass by comparison. It's a gut instinct. "Ma, somethin' don't smell right here."
So, can someone tell me, what was the impetus of the Council? More specifically, what drove the perceived need for liturgical reform? Why did the Council Fathers, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, say that it was time for a change -- not a radical change, but change nevertheless?
I look today at the Traditional Latin Mass and I ask: what was wrong with this? Yet, like I said, I wasn't there. There had to be some compelling reason for the Council Fathers to call for a reform of the liturgy. What was it?
Dave, I'm 50, so I am hardly old enough to be an expert on pre-VII. But I did have a few years of being taught the Baltimore Catechism by nuns in habits and even remember the Latin Mass (just barely).
Like many young people, I would like to see a return to reverence, tradition, and more Latin.
But my perception was that, in the old days, there was a heavy emphasis on rote learning -- e.g., standing up and reciting answers to the catechism with no attempt to have you understand it -- and, at the adult level, simply accepting what you were told without understanding why. There was also a heavy emphasis on "prohibition" with very little emphasis on anything positive. For example, we were taught we should go to confession because what would happen if we got hit by a car while we had a mortal sin on our soul? I was never taught, and only figured it out 40 years later by God's grace, that confession gives you the grace to make it easier to avoid sin and BE GOOD. A "Theology of the Body" would have been unheard of -- much too positive a view of sex!
So, I suspect one of the reasons for VII was to move away from memorization, "prohibition," and mindless (as opposed to knowledgeable and joyful) obedience.
IMHO, the treatment has been awful, and to this day I still find myself "mourning" the loss of Catholic things about my childhood, like all the stores closing from noon to 3 p.m. on Good Friday - not to mention altar BOYS, beautiful music, high altars, etc. But I guess the jury is still out as to whether VII will have been a good thing for the Church in the long run. Forty years in the context of the Church is still a very short time. I am optimistic about Pope Benedict.
Thanks, Robin.
Your perceptions are consistent with what my Dad has told me. He is a stodgy old liberal, fallen-away cradle Catholic, who nevertheless still considers himself a Catholic, and who, by the way, looks like Pope Ratzinger's lost twin. (He is the descendant of Franco-Germans from Alsace Lorraine, so we wonder if it is in fact a family resemblance!)
I can see the pre-Vatican II Catholic culture that Robin describes as driving a need for catechetical reform. How, though, did that cultural situation translate into a need for liturgical reform?
'Your perceptions are consistent with what my Dad has told me. He is a stodgy old liberal ...'
I hope that wasn't taken in any way as a comparison to Robin -- who I'm sure is neither stodgy, old (about my age), nor (too) liberal! 
Dave:
I'm afraid that in many quarters the characterization of the pre-Conciliar world is caricature, not reality. I look at what I see around me, both among those who remember the pre-Conciliar days and among those of us who are "born out of time" as St. Paul puts it, and see those who wish to love God with their whole heart, soul, mind and strength. When we read the saints (St. Thomas comes to mind, but also St. Bernard, St. Ambrose and St. Alphonsus) in their prayers and hymns to God, these people KNEW Whom they worshipped. God isn't and wasn't an academic theory, but a real, living, loving, merciful and just God.
Rote learning? How awful! How positively medieval! The self-congratulatory innovation and pee-in-the-street "freedom" of today's modern man-child's approach to religion is much to be preferred, I suppose.
Not everyone can be a doctor of the Church. But even rote memory of, say, the Nicene Creed, is preferable to reinventing it (or, more likely, not learning it in the first place). A great many religious truths are frankly mysteries -- one does not get to a point of understanding in any case. For the average, workaday, non-academic shmoe, a description which likely fits most of us, a religious awareness achieved by "rote memory" is preferable to one comprised of random carcass-pickings from the secular land fill -- which is all some Commonwealspiel catechists, and even some priests, have to offer us.
By the way Robin, I am not attacking you in any of the preceding.
I believe that one reason why V2 happened was that in the last century a great many churchmen were influenced deeply by the ambassadors of modern culture -- psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, educational theorists, etc. The influence was so deep and so profound that, in the case of a great many clerics, it eclipsed the influence of the dogma and traditions of their own faith.
Having witnessed the disintegration of modernism into a post-modern vapor, perhaps one day our leaders will consent to view with fresh eyes the extent of modernism's influence upon the church -- so many of whose leaders lusted after it -- and reevaluate the fruit of that cross-pollination. Perhaps by doing so they will glean the real lesson of the Holy Spirit in this forty year self-deconstruction. Perhaps they will even act on that knowledge.
Ralph, thanks for the clarification! I agree that memorization has its place (though I do think they over-emphasized it in the old days). If I had to choose between over emphasis and no emphasis, I would most definitely choose the former.
(I had 7th graders in Faith Formation who didn't know the Ten Commandments and stumbled over the Our Father!)
I also agree with your analysis of the secular influences on V2.
Dave, no offense taken whatsoever! I am indeed stodgy and old (ish) -- but not liberal!
I'm a few years older than Robin. I don't remember the time of which he speaks as years of unrelieved negativity -- far from it. To be sure, there was emphasis on prohibition, but ask yourself, how do you teach religion to kids, especially younger ones? They understand and respond much more readily to rules, clear statements of do's and don'ts, than to an open-ended anything-goes-as-long-as-you-mean-well indulgence that they, with the intuitive genius of children, interpret as indifference.
What is one to make of the admission, at the beginning of the Mass, that we are sinners and require God's mercy, if that admission carries no sense of consequence, and is not mentioned anywhere else (sometimes not even in confession)? Sort of a pro forma barnacle that can be removed by some future liturgical committee?
I think there was a far better balance of love and justice, charity and truth, in the approach to religion of those days. In more recent times, heaven has become Willy Wonka's candyland, the passport to which is not purchased by choosing good over evil, but by merely breathing. Children are not taught, but indulged, tolerated, and spoiled. Eat all the candy you want, boys and girls. Gobble it up, gobble, gobble, gobble, and when you vomit, trust your guardian angels to mop up the slop.
A link to an interesting blog:
http://traditionalromanmass.blog...s.blogspot.com/
Adam Barnette doesn't update it much, but what's out there is worth careful consideration, IMO.
'I believe that one reason why V2 happened was that in the last century a great many churchmen were influenced deeply by the ambassadors of modern culture -- psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, educational theorists, etc. The influence was so deep and so profound that, in the case of a great many clerics, it eclipsed the influence of the dogma and traditions of their own faith.'
I find this analysis compelling, yet it seems a strange impetus for an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Could it be that the Holy Spirit inspired the Council as a means of teaching us all an object lesson? Could it be that the lesson is more important in the long run than any of the actual decrees and their implementation?
Again, not what one would expect from an ecumenical council. Is Vatican II an anomaly in the history of the Church -- a teachable moment and a chastisement? Is there any precedent for this?
An interesting link in Adam's blog:
http://traditionalromanmass.blog...965-
missae.html
I am reminded of what Ratzinger said in Milestones about the Missal that he used as a child, and how it shaped his love of the liturgy, fostered a deep sense of the organic development of the liturgy over the centuries, and, above all, underscored the truth that the Holy Mass is the work of God, not of man.
http://www.institute-christ-
king...ighMass2006.htm
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For those who are interested in reading more by James Hitchcock, I personally suggest the book 'Catholicism and Modernity: Confrontation or Capitulation? (New York: Seabury, 1979)'. I read it many years ago, but remember it as being quite good. Thanks!
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