Thursday 12 June 2014

We were all guilty....before Vatican II



My good friend Mike Carroll who does such great things for the Faith in Lincolnshire, sent me a link to a video clip that induced immense feelings of guilt within me.

You see, I think all of us who were around pre V2, still bear that guilt.....a common guilt that we will carry to our graves.

We guilty of being part of a Church that was One (unified by the Latin and the unchanging form of the Tridentine Latin Mass), we were Holy (the depth of reverence and piety is not a thing of distorted nostalgia, it existed and was so all embracing that you could cut  it with a knife). And we were Apostolic (we had bishops who could articulate matters of Faith and Doctrine and who were not afraid to swim against the flow of secularism - men like Cardinal Heenan and Archbishop Fulton Sheen).

Of course, we had luke warm Catholics then but they were a minority; most of us were bound together by Christ's commonality. We were constant in our devotions and we were not afraid to stand up and be counted as Catholics in the work place or wherever.

Mike's video clip brought memories flooding back and, if you are over the age of sixty five, you may enjoy those memories also.

If, however, you are a child of Vatican II, you may like to watch the clip and try and imagine what life was really like when we were all Catholics.



17 comments:

  1. I'm sorry, but we should be wary of viewing the pre-Vatican II Church as some sort of perfect golden age. We must remember that every single on of the first generation of priests, brothers, monks, and nuns who abandoned their Churches, monasteries, or convents was formed in the pre-Vatican II period

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    1. ACC92

      I agree with you absolutely.

      Plus, there never has been a golden age. Read Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

      Useful book is Enthusiasm, by Ronald Knox. It's decidely timeless, although written in 1950.

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    2. Tom Mushroom, I never used (and never would use) the term 'golden age'. That came from ACC92.
      My point is simply that we had a much better, fitter Church pre VII. Go back a further 50 years and you could say the same about the early part of the 20th century. We have been on a decline for some years, VII was the accelerant.

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    3. Richard

      But if the Church was "better, fitter", why did so much go so wrong, so quickly?

      I suggest that the Church was unprepared for the political and social revolution that swept thru the West in the sixties.

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    4. Tom, it went wrong because we were conditioned to believe and do whatever was asked of us by our pastors. We did not question whether or not we should obey God...our pastors were all. The political and social revolution backed that up. God bless.

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  2. ACC92 - why so? What we had then was immeasurably better than what we have now. Those religious who abandoned all are not too blame, that is a burden that must be borne by the bishops.

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  3. I am sorry, but I do not think that ACC92 have got their facts right here.

    The video is wonderful.

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  4. Anon @ 1.03, thank you, I agree, the video shows a Catholic world now all but lost to us.

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  5. The piety of the people was no myth.I saw it with my own eyes,and was won over by it.As a sixteen year old girl, the great Tridentine Mass was an experience I shall never forget,and at the end of it I knew that I must become a catholic,and I did, in spite of parental opposition.The church then, seemed to me to be a pearl of great price.Golden age?Well so I believed it to be,and in view of what came afterwards,so it was.
    Sandy.

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    1. Thanks Sandy and it was a golden era if viewed, as you say, in the context of what was to follow.

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  6. There is another video of a massive Rosary rally in San Francisco of all places, led by the great Fr. Peyton. An entire world submerged like Atlantis in our lifetimes. What Hell threw up in wreaths of smoke in its place is a shame.

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  7. SCB...Fr Peyton - a great man. I even recall his Rosary Crusade when it came to London.

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  8. It was as you describe - and a world apart from the annihilation that has since occurred (though obviously many seeds of the disaster had been sown, unbeknown to many).

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  9. Yes I am of the pre Vat II period. The Church was confident, growing, respected, attracted so many prominent converts - and was Catholic. My Catholic pals were not particularly special. We chased the birds on Saturday night like all the others, but wouldn’t dream of missing Mass on Sunday. And we even made an attempt to go to Communion sometimes, certainly at Easter or thereabouts! Non Catholics respected our position even if they disagreed.

    This is not false nostalgia. That is how it was.

    How and why it collapsed into the mess it is now, 50 years later, is something future historians will debate, but our bishops – and Popes, will not come out of it well.

    The Church will recover again, when I don’t know, but the liturgy, a return to the pre-Vat II liturgy, will be an inherent part of that recovery.

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  10. That was truly wonderful! So many memories. How lucky we are who have experienced the True Catholic Church.
    No-one compares to God so when they placed the priest in prime position is that why it feels so empty during the 'Celebration' so that Bishop/ Priest plays an instrument or wears a painted clown face or has balloons, dancing girls/men, beer fest /circus/ carnival, even Sister Act during the Mass. Every novelty going including the 'one crying out to heaven for vengeance'. What do you think?

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  11. I grew up in the pre Vat2 Church. It was truly a wonderful thing. It still is; in its sacraments. But what went out was discipline. The Holy Catholic Church has been torpedoed by its enemies and it is listing very dangerously. The jesuits, the elite defenders of the Faith, were targeted, and went under. Now we no longer have a jesuit order we can have confidence in.
    My generation had the best of the Church and the best of our beloved England. Now both are in meltdown. I wonder if the two processes are connected? ?

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