The Second Vatican Council (Part I): One Immediate Context
One immediate context from which the Second Vatican Council emerged was modernity. John O’Malley refers to the long nineteenth century and has in mind that time stretching from the French Revolution (1789-99) to the death of Pope Pius XII (1958). Characteristic of this period, he believes, is the quality of the relationship between the Church’s hierarchy and representatives of modernism; between the teaching authority of the Church and its engagement with the social, scientific, theological and philosophical changes of the era. One way to understand such a relationship is to compare texts put forth by the teaching authority of the Church to specific changes in social, scientific, theological or philosophical matters.
For instance, in the Syllabus of Errors — an appendix to the 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura by Pius IX — the teaching authority of the Church presents the following as errors: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true (Proposition 15).” Rejected also, by the teaching authority of the Church, was that “it has been wisely decided by law, in some countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship (Proposition 78),” or that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization (Proposition 80).”
Proposition 15 or 78, for example, have religious freedom as their interest, and the tendency is to address the matter rather differently today, but Avery Dulles suggests that the horizon of persons during that long nineteenth century — a Pope like Gregory XVI (1831-1846) or Pius IX (1846-1878), for example — was different from our own. Dulles suggests that such persons were “speaking within the relatively narrow horizon of Catholic Europe and Latin America, where traditional religion was under attack from militant[ism].”
That a text deserves the respect of being read in its own context is non-negotiable, but I question the wisdom of letting persons such as Gregory or Pius off the hook. A more insightful person of that time could have noted the way in which an ideal (like liberty) was being abused, and could have modelled the ideal rather than issue a blanket condemnation and rather than disengage with such a prominent idea of the era. It was not until 1967, for example, that Spain legalized non-Catholic public worship, and this emerged, in part, as a consequence of the Second Vatican Council’s changing perspective on the relations between religious and civil society. That is the influence a proper modelling of the ideal could have had. As John Courtney Murray observes “a work of discernment needed to be done and was not done. This work had to wait until Vatican Council II.”
Existing within this long nineteenth century were all sorts of reform movements (liturgical, biblical, ecumenical…). For example, O’Malley identifies Pius X (1903-1914) as having “enunciated [the] principle [of baptized Christians having an active role in the liturgy] that the decree on the liturgy at Vatican II would take to its logical conclusion,” and O’Malley views someone like Pius XI (1922-1929) as expressing enthusiasm for a group like Catholic Action, a movement of baptized Christians whom the Pope saw as participating in the work of the hierarchy. Pius XI, in O’Malley’s view, gave “impetus to the proliferation of such organizations throughout the world,” and in doing so laid the groundwork for the focus on the laity that would prevail at the Second Vatican Council.
Having said this, these moments were fewer than they should have been, and in the fourth encyclical of Pius XII, Humani Generis (written in 1950), condemned were the “false opinions” and “novelties” that threatened, in Pius’s view, to undermine the Catholic faith. Theologian Henri de Lubac (who would later participate in the Second Vatican Council, and be made a Cardinal in 1983), was not only banned from teaching after this encyclical, but was forbidden to live where students of theology were housed lest those students be corrupted by his influence. Henri de Lubac was understood as a prominent voice, and perhaps even a leader, in la théologie nouvelle, a movement which opposed the dominant way theology was being done, and instead called for a return to the sources of Christian faith.
In 1958 Pius died, and a seventy-eight year old man was elected who was not expected to enjoy a long reign, nor was he expected to alter the nature of the Church’s relationship with modernity. Almost immediately, however, the expectations of persons were challenged by John.
Is there interest in continuing this (by ‘continue’ I mean to ask whether future posts on the subject of the Second Vatican Council would be appreciated)?
K.
Kelly Wilson is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. Besides Vox-Nova, he writes at his blog Musings.
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Yes.
For what it is worth you have my total fiat and personal imprimatur to continue this terrific line of thought. I will think about your points and answer more later. In the meantime I would like to quote one of my most favorite poems in the world, which is by Robert Frost, and seems perfect as a way to say yes to this particular investigation, from my vantage point:
“Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds’ song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Good summary of O’Malley and the run-up to Vatican II. Keepo it going. I’ll be interested in how you view Benedict’s reversal of the ecclesiology that emerged from the Council.
I am not convinced Benedict reversed the ecclesiology that emerged from the Council, but if in subsequent posts, when we hit the topic of ecclesiology, you feel comfortable bringing forth your own view in more detail then please do so.
Yes. A good and interesting post!
Kelly,
On reflection, it seems that a background assumption for your post is that Popes are somehow presumed to be people of insight. And that “more insightful” people, had they been Pope, might have thought thus and so. Popes have been many things on the gamut from clever to holy. But insight is a quality of the critical mind, and there is little in the Catholic Church’s history to suggest that it would ever have appreciated that quality in its highest office. That is why there have been so few of those insightful types in the Chair of Peter. What would be fair and more realistic to say would be that certain Popes could have been simply less on an extreme. This is because of the human commonsense notion that extremism has at least a tinge of danger, and often more than that. That so many Catholic Popes have been rather extreme characters is really the issue. Seen from that analytical position, it becomes easy to see why they have often gotten into so many contretemps.
It has been interesting to see how the current Pope is contextualized by Catholics now. When I was in the Church, even Ratzinger’s greatest fans almost gloried in his extreme characteristics. He was seen as someone with a nasty edge, which people liked and also applied the now famous canine adjective. Now that he is Pope, the very predictable change began almost immediately. Almost overnight he became — however improbably — the avuncular and harmlessly scholarly character he is relentlessly portrayed to be now. I think this change, which any reasonable person can have seen even just by watching the Vatican’s own talking- heads on TV, no less, tells us everything, almost in reverse.
The best leaders, in almost any sort of organization, are people of vision. Such people tend to surround themselves with people who are smart enough and loyal as well to implement that vision. But that always means people who they can trust, and not necessarily rigidly control. In fact vision is the opposite phenomenologically from rigid control. But rigid control has long been part of the ethos of the Catholic Church. I say this recognizing fully that there are other aspects, and I understand fully and respectfully that such are probably why an impressive guy like you is in the seminary at this moment in time. But we are talking about the top office here, and its broad characteristics. My point is that even recent history lays bare why the history took the form it did. It is not just that a bit of insight was lacking, but that the governmental style is in need of salutary revision. No one would care if they wanted to do it themselves. But they must get at it. The significance of John XXIII is that he got this, and was one of the rare exceptions. The following Popes have progressively (!) turned it around. So perhaps we can turn Santayana’s dictum around in this case. Those who forget the present will live in the past. Or something like that.
Please do continue. It seems to me very few Catholics really understand what happened there. Reactionaries have nothing good to say about it, of course, although they give lip service to “the documents” as opposed to “the spirit” of the Council, while “progessives” use “Vatican 2″ and “the spirit of Vatican 2″ as clubs to disparage virtually everything about Church practice and ritual before 1965. But the far bigger truth is before Vatican 2, the Church, at least in its official documents, had never accepted, much less favored, either religious or political pluralism, much less spoken in the language of individual human rights.
That a text deserves the respect of being read in its own context is non-negotiable, but I question the wisdom of letting persons such as Gregory or Pius off the hook. A more insightful person of that time could have noted the way in which an ideal (like liberty) was being abused, and could have modelled the ideal rather than issue a blanket condemnation and rather than disengage with such a prominent idea of the era.
I worry that this is, in fact, nothing other than to read the Syllabus of Errors without regard for its context; it was, as it claimed to be, merely a summary of condemnations already made, attached as an appendix to an encyclical addressed to bishops. There is no blanket condemnation of anything in the Syllabus; every single item in the list, except for item 7 which is essentially the error of claiming that everything distinctive about Christianity is a poetic fiction or mere myth, has a reference to an original context. One can, of course, question the wisdom of summarizing things in this particular way, but this ends up being a criticism about nothing but rhetorical presentation. I think it is certainly true that looking back the rhetorical presentation doesn’t seem to have done Catholics much good, while doing some harm, but I think it ends up being a stretch to fault Pius IX for wanting to provide bishops, for teaching purposes, a handy list of errors recently criticized by the Holy See, complete with references for further research. Far more serious, I think, is the development of the idea of Modernism itself and the widespread reaction to this idea in the hierarchy, which really did run out of control but which also had many different contributing factors.
I would definitely be interested in any continuation; I always find your posts and comments on subjects in the vicinity of this topic interesting.
Brandon, thank you for your comment, but it’s hard for me to understand your perspective. You suggest, in light of a conclusion I draw about holding persons like Gregory and Pius IX responsible, that I have approached the Syllabus without regard for its context. I do nothing more than identify three propositions, offer a text from Avery Dulles to help us understand the context from which such statements might have emerged, and offer my own opinion that rather than modelling an ideal being abused representatives of the Church heirarchy disengaged (which is backed up by John Courtney Murray when he says that “a work of discernment needed to be done and was not done. This work had to wait until Vatican Council”). I’m unsure on what grounds this could be disputed.
I do nothing more than identify three propositions, offer a text from Avery Dulles to help us understand the context from which such statements might have emerged, and offer my own opinion that rather than modelling an ideal being abused representatives of the Church hierarchy disengaged….
Your original comments talked about ‘blanket condemnation’; my point was that the Syllabus, despite its notoriety, is a bad example for the purpose of illustrating blanket condemnations associated with the struggle against Modernism; it can only be read as such if it is read out of context. The Syllabus itself is merely (1) an appendix to an encyclical and (2) one long list of references to other discussions, in light of which each of its propositions is clearly meant to be understood. Both qualify and contextualize the Syllabus. We learn, in fact, very little about the struggle against Modernism from the Syllabus itself, and likewise very little about what is Pius’s responsibility or not in these matters; to find out any of that requires that going into the context of the Syllabus, since the Syllabus itself is merely an appendix consisting almost entirely of pointers to context.
Indeed, at this point the Holy See didn’t have Modernism as such in sight; the Quanta Cura, and the Syllabus, is an attack on premises that had been used in arguments to undercut the authority of the Church so as to insist on the superiority of the authority of the State. Indeed,I suspect that if Pius IX were faced by your diagnosis, he would be baffled; the ideal being abused, as far as Pius IX had identified it, was that of temporal authority, and he pretty much always made an effort to set forth that positive ideal. He wasn’t fighting the battles of Pius X, but was dealing with a set of problems that half a century later had become integrated into a much more massive complex of problems. The very conception of the problem changed over time.
Hmnm. I’m not ready to concede your point.
You need not connect my statement about “blanket condemnation” with the Syllabus, because although I mention three propositions from the Syllabus, and also note that today — on a matter like religious freedom — we tend to frame our conversation rather differently, I identify my interest in Gregory and Pius IX specifically, rather than the Sylabbus. We might read the quality of engagement offered by such persons in the light of Dulles’ “narrow horizon,” or we might read it in terms fo Murray’s “a work of discernment needed to be doen and wasn’t done.”
Perhaps you agree more with Dulles, and overall are impressed with the quality of engagement such persnos offered. I side with Murray.
Hi, Kelly,
It doesn’t really have anything to do with agreement with Dulles or Murray; as a historian of ideas, I just worry about conflating very different things under a single label and identifying things as representative that are in fact simply currents in a much larger river. We really only get a full-blown account of Modernism with Pius X; some things that Gregory and Pius IX did and said were integrated by Pius X into his theory of Modernism, but in getting to this we see a clear shift in emphasis away from the concerns of Gregory and especially Pio Nono, who are chiefly concerned with intrusions by the State into ecclesiastical matters (as always with political maneuvers, such things occur under the cover of a value: in the name of reason, in the name of liberty, in the name of tolerance, in the name of conscience, etc.). This was almost the only thing Pius IX could see, and this is not surprising given the events surrounding Pius IX: when Mastai-Feretti began as a theology student, the Pope of the time, Pius VII, was in a French prison for refusing demands made by Napoleon; when he himself became Pope he was essentially made a prisoner for a while in the late 1840s for refusing to support a war against Austria; the overwhelming bulk of the Papal States were simply taken over by the rising Kingdom of Italy in the early 1860s; anti-clericalist governments had been seizing Church property in Mexico and Spain for decades; at several points with armies marching on Rome he had had to ask non-Catholic foreign governments if, should he have to flee, they would grant asylum, and he fretted about the complications of what seemed often to be a possibility, another Avignon-like period in the papacy; etc. etc. And this is just leading up to the year he wrote Quanta Cura. That is what is in view when we talk about Pius IX’s condemnations of Modernism (he didn’t call them that, of course; the use of the label in the sense relevant here is much later); it’s all about political theology and political philosophy and the relation of Church and State. (His condemnation of the proposition on liberty of conscience, for instance, if you look at the original contexts and at Quanta Cura itself, is actually a condemnation of the argument that one has the right to ignore any and all authority, and in general to both political and religious revolution, on the basis of liberty of conscience.) But by the time we get to Pius X, these issues have become generalized and added to, and responses to them generalized and expanded, in ways that Pius IX could simply not have foreseen in the 1850s and 1860s, when he was largely criticizing anti-Catholic and anti-clerical political ideologies.
These are, I think, points that really do matter for understanding the Church’s actual failures in the struggle against Modernism; what we would call an attack on Modernism in Pius IX would simply not have been seen as such by him, because the idea of Modernism was itself not yet fully developed; a number of things that what we look back and see as key parts of the struggle against Modernism had not yet become major issues; and so forth. The entire period of the struggle against Modernism is itself a struggle of the Church to figure out what the problem was in the first place; and the answers of one generation to this question — what the problem even was — were not the same answers as those given by the next. And that’s mostly what I was suggesting we need to keep in mind when talking about Modernism, especially about the early history; there’s constant danger of anachronism.
Kelly,
Thanks for not worshipping Popes in their context….an internet rarity. Confusion on the relation of religion to coercion had Pope Pius IX adopting a Jewish boy whom his papal police kidnapped (see below link) from the boy’s parents due to a clandestine baptism by a maid of the then ill boy. How to solve it? Trust in God in lieu of kidnapping. A corollary control problem was that Pius IX was one of the 29 Popes still involved with the castrati system ( a topic blocked out at new advent’s encyclopedia) which was ended by Pope Leo XIII in 1878 for all time but 70 years after opera ended their involvement. In both the castrati issue (done when boys were 9-12 years old) and in the kidnapping of Edgardo, boys have no rights…are treated well after an intrusive action….but have no rights. Control resides in adults over organs and thus over emotional future….or over location of home and emotional future of Edgardo. These were the existential results of being doctrinally wrong about the rights of man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgardo_Mortara
My two cents here, apropos Bill’s comment: there are a lot bigger issues here than castrati, fascinating as it is for opera type discussions. Let’s get to the big issues, like Bishop Verot at the First Vatican Council. Now there’s an interesting discussion!
[Maybe so, but it won't be happening here unless the topic is connected with my post. KJW]
Peter,
The castrati issue is not about opera at all in my post; it’s about control…control… of another person’s body and future when they are too young to understand what they will be missing in not having a wife and children. That phenomenon matched the attempted control by some Popes of the human conscience in the search for religion.
Control of others is the common denominator.
From Sixtus V (1585) til Leo XIII (300 years), the castrati was one way of filling the Churches each week throughout the extensive papal states according to one Pope who had misgivings about it and was inclined to stop this system but didn’t… which system was begun in the Church by Sixtus V in a bull which introduced the castrati into the papal choirs. Pius XI, whom Kelley mentions in a progressive context of fostering lay movements like Catholic Action worldwide, also is the first Pope to write against sterilization as “mutilation” appropo the writings of his contemporaries on eugenics from that modern movement which sought control over “defective” people in order to stop them from reproducing. The 29 Popes who cooperated with the castrati system along with the Italian fathers involved did not I’m sure use the word “mutilation” for what they were doing to boys from 1585 til 1878; Pius XI, fifty years after Leo XIII stopped the castrati system, used that word “mutilation” about sterilization sought by eugenicists who planned a coercion similar to that of which the castrati were victims.
Thus the Church was moving away from controlling the bodies of others and the consciences of others in Leo XIII’s action on the castrati and in Pius XI’s trust in laity as capable of running religious organizations and in his fight against especially coerced sterilization with eugenics. The new problem post Humanae Vitae is the laity seeking control of their own bodies often in a way similar but not identical to the 300 year castrati phenomenon.
Bill,
Don’t get me wrong: of course I agree with you. My flippant comment was only meant to hint at a more serious matter here, which could well sound tiresome. So… my awkward humor.
The issues raised by our intrepid seminarian here are very broad and worth concentrating on per se. The castrati issue is of course related to the elite eunuch phenomenon in many cultures (think China!). Thus, it is not precisely germane to the what makes the Catholic Church very different. Kelly is raising some very precise issues which are to be narrowed down in Catholic Church history. I like Kelly as an interlocutor here quite a lot. But I want to see him explain all this stuff in excrutiating detail hopefully. That’s what us religious history mavens call entertainment. Also, it tells a lot about how these issues are currently being handled in seminaries. I tell you what, making excuses for the Syllabus of Errors was not even on the table in my day. I don’t want to give the end of the movie away here, but I believe our screenwriter Kelly has already tipped his cards at the denouement by quoting Avery Dulles, (whom virtually all seminarians at TC in my time called Darth Vader. btw.) They didn’t make him Cardinal for nothing. And if you can contextualize a syllabus of errors all of which are utter howlers in light of modern history, you have provided a very “narrow” definition indeed, one that is magically very wide as well.
That poem by Peter Paul is one of the most beautiful things I have read in ages, and I also hope that Mr. Wilson continues studying the Second Vatican Council here. I’m one of those who feel that, although John Paul II and Benedict XVI HAVE wished to repeal its ecclesiology, Paul VI did not, but lost his nerve, in proceeding with it.
I can see that the relationship between the ecclesiolgy of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict and that of the Second Vatican Council is going to be issue here in disuccsion. I just don’t see a dramatic break, however, but let’s leave the conversation for the post which highlights the ecclesiology of Vatican II.
digby,,
Just making sure you understood that the poem is by Robert Frost.
I have written some poetry seriously, but often I just enjoy doggerel as a diversion:
There once was a Pope named Ben,
And for Mozart he had a yen,
For Ave Verums he did yearn,
Of Papal Councils to discern,
That Misereres matter, not Zen.
I like this PPF…
Oh, you are fabulous Kelly, in my book. With that approbation allow me to digress on a matter relating to something you mentioned. Namely, lack of religious liberty under the Franco regime. This is one of the most telling vortices for the historian of religion. Is it fascism? Or just Catholic reaction? My scholarly vote is that it is just Catholic reaction, and not fascism. It is not that the regime in Spain did not meet the repressive requirements of a fascist state. But it did not meet the bizarre “aspirational” ones like Hitler and Mussolini. It stands as an example that Catholicism as a phenomenon when it is reactionary becomes authoritarian. But it does not have to be that way! That is the whole point!
I just caught a whole interview on C-SPAN between Deepak Chopra and some scientist named Mlodinov or something, who had funnily written for Star Trek AND Steven Hawking!! Chopra was there as always talking about “consciousness” as if it were “deliciouness” at a restaurant. Funnily the interview was from the Sixth and I Synagogue in DC exactly around the corner from Full Kee Our favorite restuarant. If thy told us they were going to serve us “deliciousness” for lunch we would revolt. Religion is all in the details and Deepak does not get that/ Editor!
Do It! Plus I was fortunate to read the latest book (2008) by O’Malley on the Vatican II Council, “What Happened at Vatican II.” A good overall summary of Vat-II by a layperson. I’m also trying to work my way through the best direct commentary on it during the time of the council, the “Letters from the Vatican” series.
Julian, I am glad you had an opportunity to read this book. It really is quite good. John O’Malley, perhaps you didn’t know, is a Jesuit priest, and not a lay person…
Oh…. well I would have known had I seen “S.J.” on the front cover. Thanks for the information!
Hmnm. I don’t think there is an S.J. on the cover. Nonetheless, O’Malley is a Jesuit. :)
Keep it up Kelly.
I just finished Louis Dupre’s Passage to Modernity. It provides a long-view analysis of the collapse of Catholic theology between, basically, Trent and de Lubac, though he has good things to say about Ignatius and Francis de Sales. You might find it interesting. His Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture gives a shorter synopsis of this dynamic.
Thank you for the suggestion. I always look forward to encountering other perspective on this era. I enjoyed John O’Malley’s overview, but will keep Dupre in mind.
In coming to terms with changes of mind/heart in the life of the Catholic Church, we are confronted with our seeming inability to admit fault. That is certainly true in the area of religious freedom. It is true in our recently revised teaching on capital punishment. And I think it is true in other areas as well. Repeatedly we seem to feel a need to save face in accounting for past situations in which our official teaching led to unnecessary human suffering. Every Christian is called to examine his conscience and adjust his behavior in light of the gospel. Why is it not a source of pride for Catholics when the Church as an institution does the very same thing?
It is for me, Ron.
Newman is very, very good on what Ron is talking about, but I seriously doubt that very many Catholic seminarians or theologians are going to try very hard to illuminate, for lay people, or, in particular, for right-wing ecclesiastical politicians, the difference between being “in full possession of the Truth, and being gradually LED to the Truth (by the Holy Spirit) in a time-space continuum that is affected by weaknesses inherent in language.
Buddng Catholic theologians writing at websites like Vox Nova need to keep in mind that the average layman has never had a philosophy course involving epistemology, and hasn’t even had the good “basis for knowledge” course that we international educators call the “Theory of Knowledge” course of the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Most Catholic laypeople want to believe that they’re enrolled in an elite cult that POSSESSES “Truth” (as if human “Truth” is ever anything but a PROCESS that one either lives in, or chooses not to live in.
digby,
Your last paragraph gets at the central aspect of how the Catholic Church does self-defense. Its essential rationales and, yes, profound understandings, are hidden in a de facto sense. You need a good bit of training to even grasp the basics. I have written that this relates particularly to Thomism, but that is a detail in a way. It devolves to a more basic sense of posture in the world, which involves not being understood in fact. Then when press people comment on the Church the easy rejoinder is– they are out of their competence. They don’t understand. They have not been trained to understand “us”, What they most hate is when someone actually does understand. That is because the Catholic Church does not want to be understood. This is not because, as it might seem, because of some Wizard of Oz phoniness. In fact as an institution it has been around long enough to have a lot of real accomplishments in world culture. It does not want tot be understood because a certain segment of it want to continue in a particular way. And some of us, unsurprisingly would identify that as a quite corrupt way. It now has reached such a pitch that Archb. Dolan at the Bishops Conference actually said that the more sin there is in the Church that such actually proves somehow that the Church is right. It is a form of insanity in the form of a complex theology. For of course that statement comes from that complex realm of understanding. That does not make it, when understood, as anything less than insanity.
It devolves to a more basic sense of posture in the world, which involves not being understood in fact. Then when press people comment on the Church the easy rejoinder is– they are out of their competence. They don’t understand. They have not been trained to understand “us”
Long ago the Buddhists figured out that, in order to last eternally and in order to successfully propogate their “good dharma,” it would be better to appeal to intelligent people of a mature spirituality who would love the dharma sufficiently to turn around themselves and preach it to their posterity. It seems to me that Roman Catholicism’s “secret doctrine,” to follow your line of thought–that she does not “possess” but is being LED into “gradual possession” of the Truth by a “Spirit” that lives within her communion–is her strongest card in claiming her uniqueness and legitimacy as the true “synagogue” that Jesus Christ established. I believe that fully embracing and propogating this “truth” (and publicly advertising that it is the only way to make sense of Sacred Scripture) would win her the allegiance of intelligent Christian youth and the rejection of the masses. In NOT proclaiming it, however, she gets to be, in the eyes of many of those who’d save her from modernity’s conundrums, the insane old uncle in the attic that you are suggesting.
digby,
All I can say is fabulous! They are in possession of a tradition that in my view has produced the most highly developed artistic creations in human history. You would think it would be easy to capitalize on that fact. I am one of those self-described nuts (and for once I am proud to own the epithet) that thinks that certain cultural developments are higher and better than others. OK. Sharon Osbourne, burn me at the stake for thinking Mozart and Bach’s Masses are in a stratosphere unlike rock n’ roll. To say nothing of rap. Go ahead. Tar and feather me for being insensitive. But with all this, the Catholic Church is devoted now to being as reactionary and ill-advised as possible, and as brutally common denominator as possible. I saw, while channel surfing tonight, Dale Alquist on Catholic Cable actually saying that the “contraceptive mentality” is responsible for the economic crises of the world. For the first time I understood that people like this are not just badly misguided, but insane. Catholic people, these are your confreres. Deal with it, and reclaim your mission in the world, if there is one left. . The rest of us are tired of it.
I agree that Mozert & Co have the ability to transcend human ordinariness if you are looking for that. Unfortunately, too many people don’t look for it and think it is odd when they find it. As for Alquist and Catholic cable, give a big Deo Gratias that they reach a small portion of Catholics and an even smaller portion of the general society.
Brandon, I can see your point that my summary of another person’s summary, can run the risk of (and can be guilty of) over-generalization…