Posted on 03/05/2005 7:15:51 AM PST by AAABEST
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, held from 1962 to 1965 at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, had as its objectives the renewal of the Catholic Church and to modernize its forms and institutions.1 Unfortunately, during and after the Council, the Zeitgeist – the German term for “spirit of the age” – was largely responsible for the decline in certain key aspects of the Catholic Church in the U.S. These aspects are the number of priests and religious, weekly church attendance by its members, and the state of Catholic marriage. The Zeitgeist also fostered the rise of dissident Catholic organizations and individuals who have often misrepresented the teachings of Vatican II in order to promote their own agendas.
Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis researched and compiled a number of statistics which he titled “Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II,” published in 2003. Among his findings:2 While the number of priests in the U.S. more than doubled to 58,000 between 1930 and 1965, since then, that number has fallen to 45,000, and by 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left; the number of seminarians declined over 90 percent between 1965 and 2002; in 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns, but by 2002, that number had fallen to 75,000; a 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended Mass on Sundays, but a recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend; Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments rose from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.
One area of decline that can, and should, be explored more in detail is Catholic marriage. In the Church, marriage (matrimony) is considered one of the seven sacraments. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses' community of persons, which embraces their entire life: ‘so they are no longer two, but one flesh.’ They ‘are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving.’ This human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ, given through the sacrament of Matrimony…” (no. 1644).
This brings us to the issue of annulments. The term is usually used in reference to the sacrament of matrimony. Marriages can be declared invalid for a variety of reasons: lack of canonical form if one party is Catholic and thus required to be married in the presence of a priest, deacon or bishop; the existence of an undispensed impediment; the presence of psychological factors that render one or both parties incapable of knowing what they were doing or of assuming the fundamental responsibilities of marriage.3 Church officials, in the form of a tribunal, are required to investigate all aspects of a marriage and divorce before declaring that marriage null and void. Once an annulment is granted, the parties involved are free to marry in the Church.
One reason for the large increase in the number of annulments in the past three decades has to do with procedural changes in canon law. The main, reason, however, appears to be the fact that the divorce rate, from 1960 to 1991, increased 133 percent.4 The percentage of marriages currently ending in divorce is debatable, but it nonetheless is significant.
There are, of course, a number of reasons why a marriage might end in divorce. An oft-overlooked (and politically incorrect) reason is the widespread use of contraception, even among Catholic married couples. In a published lecture titled Contraception: Why Not?, Dr. Janet E. Smith, Chair of Life Issues at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Mich., discusses why the divorce rate doubled between 1965, when 25 percent of marriages ended in divorce, and 1975, when 50 percent of marriages ended in divorce.5 Smith cites the research of social scientist Robert Michael, who concluded "that as the contraceptive pill became more and more available, divorce became more and more popular."6 In fact, Michael attributed "45 percent of this increase [in divorce] to increased use of contraceptives."
There are three reasons for this, according to Michael. First, his statistical data showed "that those who use contraceptives have fewer children and have them later in marriage…those who have the first baby in the first two years of marriage and another baby in the next couple years of marriage, have a much longer lasting marriage than those who don't." Secondly, Michael found that "since contraceptives have arrived on the scene, there is much more adultery than there was before."
Observes Smith: "People have been tempted, for the history of mankind. It's easy enough to think about wanting to have an affair, but wanting a child out of wedlock is another story. But if most every woman is contracepting, then most every woman is available in a certain sense and there is no real reason to say no. Adultery is absolutely devastating to marriages."
The third explanation, says Dr. Smith, is "that women are financially more independent. They do have fewer children. They do go into the work place. And, again, when they have difficulties in the marriage, it's much [easier] to say, ‘Take a walk,’ than it is to work it out because they need their husband for one fewer reason than they did before."
Between 1960 and 1991, abortions increased 800 percent.7 The general consensus is that, subsequent to the 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions legalizing abortion-on-demand, there have been, and continues to be, well over 1,000,000 surgical abortions committed each year. The number of chemical abortions, caused by abortifacient birth control, is estimated to be 14,000,000 each year.8 Sadly, despite the Catholic Church’s clear teaching on abortion – that it is an intrinsically evil act – a 1996 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute has shown that Catholic women are more likely to procure abortions than Protestant women.9 In fact, Catholic women make up 31 percent of the population and account for 31 percent of the abortions.10 (An interesting side note: A major finding of the survey was that 57.5 percent of women aborting their children say they were using a contraceptive the month they became pregnant.)11
Also between 1960 and 1991, child abuse increased more than 500 percent.12 This, of course, has been a problem even in the Church, specifically in regard to sexual abuse by members of the clergy and religious, which has made national and world headlines in the last few years. A study commissioned in 2002 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), done in response to hundreds of sex-abuse accusations that were made in nearly every U.S. Catholic diocese, found that from 1950 to 2002, there were 10,667 cases of abuse.13 Interestingly, the study found that 81 percent of sex crimes committed against children by Catholic priests during the past 52 years were homosexual men preying on boys.14
Such is an illustration of how the Cultural/Sexual Revolution influenced – perhaps “infected” would be a better term – a number of Church officials who seemingly let sexual deviants into the priesthood. Indeed, one could even say that deviancy was promoted at certain seminaries. Catholic author Michael S. Rose, in his 2002 book Goodbye! Good Men, quotes Father John Trigilio about an incident at the seminary in the 1980’s: 15
“‘We had the state police come in and arrest one of my classmates because he allegedly went to some 15-year-old kid’s house during the afternoon and took pictures of him in his underwear. The rest of us never found out how he knew this poor kid, but we were having an evening class when the trooper arrived with a warrant for his arrest, cuffed him, and took him right then and there in front of everybody. The next day in the local newspaper ran a full story on a Catholic seminarian charged with corruption of the morals of a minor and other things.’ Trigilio pointed out that up to the moment of that seminarian’s arrest, the suspect was getting excellent evaluations because he was ‘tolerant, flexible, and liberal-minded,’ i.e., he went along with the faculty on everything.
Other notable aspects of cultural decay between 1960 and 1991: the teen suicide rate increased 214 percent; cohabitation increased 279 percent; the percentage of single-parent families increased 214 percent; the juvenile violent crime rate increased 295 percent; the illegitimate birthrate increased 457 percent; and the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) increased 245 percent.16 In fact, today there are more than two dozen varieties of STDs, from pelvic inflammatory disease (which renders more than 100,000 American women infertile each year) to AIDS (which presently infects 42 million people worldwide and has already killed another 23 million).17
This brings us to the subject – or person, rather – of Alfred C. Kinsey. Kinsey (1894 – 1956) was the director of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University.18 The degenerate zoologist, known in certain circles as the “father of the sexual revolution,” almost single-handedly redefined the sexual mores of everyday Americans.19 His books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female weakened the bonds of personal chastity and sexual restraint in the U.S.20 Kinsey was a man who attempted to use science to promote his disordered sexuality. An overview of an investigative report by WorldNetDaily.com, titled "Obsessed with Sex: How Kinsey's fraudulent science unleashed a catastrophic 'revolution' in America," states: 21 Kinsey, the ‘heroic scientist’ whose ‘research’ launched the sexual revolution and provides the ‘scientific’ basis for it to this very day, was a fraud. He relied on interviews with hundreds of prisoners and sexual psychopaths, while pretending he was surveying normal citizens. He threw out large amounts of data that didn't fit his predetermined conclusions. He encouraged his wife and fellow ‘scientists’ to engage in wild group sex, and filmed these sessions in his attic. Though Kinsey's widely publicized conclusions that Americans are amoral sexual animals were fraudulent, far worse was the indisputable fact that he encouraged criminal pedophiles to conduct horrifying, Dr. Mengele-like sexual experiments on hundreds of children. That's right, Kinsey relied on friendly child-molesters, whose identities he protected from the law, to sexually abuse literally hundreds of children, ranging from just a few months of age up to 15 years, to gather his ‘scientific data’ on child sexuality. Ultimately, the sixties culture did influence Catholics who were trying to find their way in the secular culture in regard to sexual morality, with sad consequences in the years to follow.22 To quote Catholic author and social critic E. Michael Jones:23 “The Catholic Left, otherwise known as dissent, is made up of the Catholics who sided with the Enlightenment during the Cultural Revolution of the `60s. Their issue is and was contraception.”
Indeed, in 1968, when Pope Paul VI promulgated the encyclical Humanae Vitae – which reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s constant teaching that contraception is intrinsically immoral - a number of American Catholics, clergy and laity, reacted with public dissent. There had been speculation that the Pope would “reverse” the Church’s teaching, primarily because an advisory commission he formed to study the issue advised him to do so. But such was not the case, much to the dismay of the Church’s secular critics and the Catholic dissenters. It is currently estimated that 80 to 90 percent of Catholic couples use some form of contraception, in violation of Church teaching.
In the 1970s, Call to Action was formed. Call to Action is a group of purported Catholics who dissent from the Church’s teachings on issues pertaining to contraception, homosexuality, the male-only priesthood and other matters. These dissenters on the left speak of an endless array of stunted imitation “churches” such as AmChurch, HouseChurch, GreenChurch, FemChurch, NewChurch, WomenChurch, FutureChurch, FreeChurch, WeChurch and MeChurch – anything and everything but the authentic Roman Catholic Church.24 As they implement concepts such as “small faith communities” and “constitutions” at every level, the dissenters hope that the Church will be reduced from a single immovable rock to a disorganized heap of pebbles, each of which is completely different from every other.25
In conclusion, it is all too apparent that the decline in key aspects of the Catholic Church in the U.S. were due, directly and indirectly, to the zeitgeist: specifically, the Cultural/Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, which had its roots in the Enlightenment. Essentially, the corrupt clergy and laity in the Church have been infected, to varying degrees, by the very worst elements of society. Of course, this is no way absolves their misbehavior and, in some cases, outright criminal activity. If anything, they should know better. Everything considered, however, it makes more sense to blame the crisis in the Church on the widespread cultural and moral decay instead of on Vatican II itself.
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"Such is an illustration of how the Cultural/Sexual Revolution influenced – perhaps “infected” would be a better term – a number of Church officials who seemingly let sexual deviants into the priesthood. Indeed, one could even say that deviancy was promoted at certain seminaries. Catholic author Michael S. Rose, in his 2002 book Goodbye! Good Men, quotes Father John Trigilio about an incident at the seminary in the 1980’s"
I'm reading this book right now. It's an excellent read...starts off slow and makes the same point over and over but it has an important perspective. We need to know how we got to where we are in order to combat the non-traditionalists.
To Matt Abbott,
"Why can't you blame both?"
He's got it backwards. The widespread cultural and moral decay in the world is because of the widespread cultural and moral decay within the Church. So goes the Church, so goes the world.
You know, you would think these people were the first to fall prey to the very worst elements of society, the way it's being protrayed here.
The 60s crowd was no less inately moral than any generation that preceeded it. It was afforded a greater opportunity to chase the immoral because everyone had a lot of time on their hands, that previously had to be used for mere existence or subsitence. That was part and parcel of this great economic expansion.
Had the Church remained firm in her committment to tell it like it is, always with open arms for her prodigal children, perhaps when the hippies came back to her after they'd taken their share of the fortune, wandered far, wide and dissatisfied, and found the Open Arms of the same Father, the current seemingly irreparable ditch could have been avoided. But you can't tell bureaucratic eggheads anything.
So now it's the Zeitgeist? I don't buy this explanation at all. The Church survived two World Wars stronger than ever. It survived the French Revolution stronger than ever. It survived the fall of the Roman Empire stronger than ever. Those were zeitgeists far more influential and powerful than Kinsey or the pill. It was the spririt of Modernism which infused the Council and caught traditionalists unawares that has decimated the faith. It has been doggedly pushed by two modernist popes despite scandal after scandal and failure after failure. Both Paul VI nor John Paul II despised Catholic Tradition and did all they could to undermine it. The Novus Ordo Mass and Assisi I and II are their monuments to faithlessness. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
nor=and
Ugggh......please......no more Zeigeist!
I had some for dinner last night, along with a big side helping of Praxis, and a drink of Diversity.
My system will never be the same.
***The 60s crowd was no less inately moral than any generation that preceeded it. It was afforded a greater opportunity to chase the immoral because everyone had a lot of time on their hands, that previously had to be used for mere existence or subsitence. That was part and parcel of this great economic expansion.***
This is an excellent point. So often in discussions about the sorry state of the Church or society at large, people tend to idealize previous generations as more moral than we are. But people are people and have always sinned (or wanted to). It has simply become more easier to commit certain sins these days.
Actually, I think the fall of Christianity in Europe was caused directly by the two World Wars, and the corresponding decline in the Catholic Church (you can't have a Catholic Church without Christians) was accelerating by the time WWII was over.
In the Propechies of St. Malachy, Pope Bendict XV (1914-22) is listed as "Religio Depopulata".........religion depopulated.
Your very astute observation is all too true.
There's no evidence for what you say, though defenders of Vatican II will never admit this since it calls into question their wisdom and ideology. The Church in 1962 was at the height of its influence and growth. It was showing signs of steady exponential growth at the time the Council opened. Below is the story of what has happened since its close. The decline has been sudden and precipitous.
__________________________________________________________
An index of Catholicism's decline
A review by Pat Buchanan
As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974 diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic Church may be covering up a far greater calamity.
Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism. Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II. His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself. Here are Jones's grim statistics of Catholicism's decline:
Priests. While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000, between 1930 and 1965, since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half of these priests will be over 70.
Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes.
Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.
Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II.
Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight. In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389. With the Christian Brothers, the situation is even more dire. Their number has shrunk by two-thirds, with the number of seminarians falling 99 percent. In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only seven.
The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.
Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million – from 4.5 million.
Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones' statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.
Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.
Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend.
Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception. Fifty-three percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic. Sixty-five percent believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry. Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to mass on Sundays. By one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics in the age group 18 to 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus.
At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?
Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.
Through the papacy of Pius XII, the church resisted the clamor to accommodate itself to the world and remained a moral beacon to mankind. Since Vatican II, the church has sought to meet the world halfway.
Jones' statistics tell us the price of appeasement.
This article is taken from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/pb20021211.shtml
Pope Paul and Cardinal Wojtyla were the two men most responsible for preserving tradition in Humanae Vitae, despite the "zeitgeist" found even among the men appointed to advise them on the matter. Therefore your statement that they despised tradition and did all they could to undermine it is false, hollow, mistaken, and wrong. If Paul had granted Catholics permission to contracept, then you might be correct that they did everything they could have to undermine traditionalism, but since he didn't grant permission tto Catholics to contracept, then he didn't do everything he could have to undermine the Church.
Your comparisons are ludicrous. Wars and social upheavals are not remotely similar to an ethos of sexual liscence. Of course the church is stronger during wars and revolution, as it is a source of consolation to a fearful people. The sixties were populated by anybody but a fearful people. In fact, I'd venture to say they were a pretty self-satisfied lot.
In 1947 Karol Wojtyla, while visiting France, expressed his shock in a letter home, that only 75% of French Catholics attended Sunday mass. Apparently, at least in his mind, the exodus had begun.
Since when?
The pope's done a great job of reversing that trend, huh?
If Paul had granted Catholics permission to contracept, then you might be correct that they did everything they could have to undermine traditionalism, but since he didn't grant permission tto Catholics to contracept, then he didn't do everything he could have to undermine the Church.
However, if you want to place blame on the post-conciliar popes for the way people disobey or ignore the Church's teachings, then you would be correct, for it is Humanae Vitae that is most responsible, and therefore the two men responsible for it.
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