Read my intro here for background on these posts and on me personally. I write this in a spirit of conversation and thoughtfulness.
Hi friends. It’s fun, isn’t it, discovering all the richness of the Catholic Church. So many feast days, opportunities for indulgences, and Saints we never knew about. You might be a cradle Catholic or a convert, but either way a lot of us weren’t raised with all of this!
It can be tempting, in all this excitement, to take a short-sighted perspective of recent Church history. I grew up in the 90s, with lukewarm Catholics all around me in my parish-school bubble. Therefore, maybe something was wrong with the faith of the time? Maybe we should, perhaps, go back to some former halcyon days of the Church?
Here’s the thing – that thinking is as limited in Church history as it is in the rest of history. We can look back and see the 50s as some ideal time, but admittedly there were some major problems like institutional racism and lacking protections for women. Perhaps, as we look back at the 20s, or 40s, or whenever, in the Church, we can admit similar shortcomings. Ill-trained priests struggled to pastor a laity who had concerns other than eternal life. Abuses such as reservation schools in the US and Canada and homes for un-wed mothers in Ireland continued. A religious order was founded in the 1940s to treat priests who struggled with substance abuse and/or sexual misconduct. We cannot pretend these scandals are, at least entirely, the result of changes following Vatican II.
This can feel so overwhelming. Thankfully, we have the words of our savior to hold to: “The Father…will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth…” (Mt 28:20). Our Church hasn’t, and cannot, go off the rails. Vatican II did not break us away from the tradition of the Church. The more I research, the more I believe that the work of the last 60 years, of beloved popes, has borne beautiful fruit that we are only now beginning to see. My husband comes from farmers; they know the painful reality of pruning. It seems the plant might die of a mortal wound. But, with patience, new buds bring growth that could never have happened before the pruning.
If I haven’t been blunt enough before, I’m really going to be now. Good Catholic families leaving their parishes for ‘traditional’ parishes makes me sad. Imagine, if the five most committed families at a local parish fought hard for reverence. Fought hard to celebrate the liturgical year, supported the priest in exploring Latin, ad orientem, Gregorian chant, and other treasures of our faith. Fought for men’s and women’s groups that do life together, supporting each other in faith. Instead we see them just slip away, leaving the more tepid behind for a group more like themselves.
Mother Angelica said, “If it weren’t for people, we could all be holy!” Here, I see danger to myself if I were to ensconce my family in a ‘traditional’ parish: the dangers of trying to only congregate with other rad-trads, of ignoring my local community (or worse, speaking self-righteously to the local community), of judging the actions of others.
Do we really imagine that repeating the past will bring us to a brighter future? I’m going to write about some of the truths I’ve learned about Vatican II, about where we can go from here. But, for today, I just want to leave you to ponder this: could there be a reason that Vatican II was called, and overwhelmingly the bishops agreed to revise the Mass? Could it be that they understood the cultural moment and, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they helped the church enter a new phase of growth? (Notice that this trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit is exactly what we believe as Catholics bound to the hierarchy.)
Because this is just a start to my thoughts, I feel the need to clarify: I have no issue with attending the TLM. Many close friends do, and I’ve attended as well! This is my attempt to think through recent Church history in order to come to a deeper understanding. We all want to follow God’s will and be welcomed into heaven. ❤️
I’d love for you to continue to join me as I search.
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