How the Zeitgeist Affected the Catholic Church in the U.S. after Vatican II

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.

Michealangelo took the pagan artwork of Ancient Greece (and Egypt) and Christianized it.

No doubt, the artists' patrons were Churchmen when the Church wielded an enormous amount of wealth and temporal power. So their subjects reflect that. It seems entirely appropriate to produce Christian art for places of worship. Nonetheless, a sculpture like David is idealized man (Platonic).

Which Baroque artists are you talking about?

You brought up El Greco and Tintoretto.I put them after the rennaisance. I bring up baroque to represent how the times change and the subject matter and style change as well. And the prchasers of art change. Certainly you would agree that the artists of today aren't following the church by any stretch of the imagination. Their patrons are young men who like to see action movies and libidinous teenyboppers obsessed with anything sexual. Artists have to eat. But I already conceded that the Church was the art consumer at a particular time in history.

You are looking at the post-Vatican II world.

Am not. Marx and Lenin preceded V2, as did the concept of a government sans Church, as in our constitution. V2 has nothing to do with a lot of things that grip the world right now, and a lot of things that grip it preceded V2.

I will grant that Germany had unique problems stemming from World War I, but I would hardly call it the center of Christianity nor of the Church at that time. In any case, it was the abruptness of the collapse of the Church after the Council that is so startling and noticeable--the precipitousness of the decline that is so stunning. No one doubts that the twentieth century was a furious cauldron of mutual hatreds and vice as you indicate--but the Church was in the thick of the fray every step of the way, not giving an inch either to Communism or Nazism. Vocations rose exponentially during this period. Mass attendance held steady somewhere in the high 70 percentile. Missions flourished. Even the popular culture reflected a respect that today would amaze young people--Fulton Sheen was a television star who was more popular than Milton Berle. On the Waterfront was a distinctly Catholic movie--and it was a critical and popular success, winning many oscars. Nor was it an isolated phenomenon. Sound of Music, the Cardinal, The Ten Commandments--all were big hits at the time. So I don't buy any of what you say. It was the Council that caused the abrupt declines in the Church--and at an expedited rate. And the collapse was systemic and in every single category measuring institutional health. All this happened within ten years of the close of Vatican II. There is no getting around it.

***Read Aquinas. He was as apt to cite Aristotle as Scripture. And without scholastic philosophy, you would never have had the flowering of the great universities of Europe.***

Interesting. Paul was able to build his theology without them.

"For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom (READ "PHILOSOPHY"), lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. (READ "CHRISTIANITY + PHILOSOPHY = POWERLESS CHRISTIANITY")

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise (READ "PHILOSOPHERS"), and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

Where is the one who is wise? (READ PHILOSOPHER) Where is the scribe? Where is the DEBATER of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (READ "... MADE FOOLISH PHILOSOPHY") For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, (READ "THOUGH PHILOSOPHY") it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs and GREEKS seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, (READ "PHILOSOPHERS") not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being[c] might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom (READ "CHRIST HIMSELF IS OUR PHILOSOPHY") and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

Thoughts?

What an asinine and terribly unlearned statement.

You certainly have a rude way of joining a conversation, but I appreciate your interest anyway.

As if all of our greatest artists were of a monolithic, uninspired and secular mind.

Didn't imply that at all. I'm just saying that the great rennaisance artists were neo-classicists and Platonists. The Church didn't teach them how to paint. It merely dictated what to paint-to an extent-for every religious theme there was also a "School of Athens" or "Primavera".

Would you mind explaining how the philosophy of Plato has anything whatsoever do with with the works of Rembrandt?

I never brought up Rembrandt, can't say I'm too familiar with him, but I think it highly unlikely that the Church had anything to do with inspiring his most common subject----himself.

***I will grant that Germany had unique problems stemming from World War I***

As did France...

***it was the abruptness of the collapse of the Church after the Council that is so startling and noticeable***

Agreed. It is very noticable.

***Even the popular culture reflected a respect that today would amaze young people--Fulton Sheen was a television star who was more popular than Milton Berle.***

America is a WHOLE different story. I was addressing Eurpoe.

***All this happened within ten years of the close of Vatican II. There is no getting around it.***

As far as I can see it VII was the RCC's under-the-radar acceptance of the ideas first forged by liberal German theology. This is what I strongly picked up from my readings of Hans Kung.

German theological liberalism eventually gave us amoral Nihilism of the Nazi flavor.

It took about 70 to 100 years. What fruit will VII bear? I don't know.

--it was a force to be reconned with right up to the close of the Council.

And well after.....you should trumpet the Church's efforts and contributions to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 80's and the rise of democracy in Latin America. Let's not forget Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Phillipines.....come to think of it, the post V2 church has been more an agent for positive political change than the pre-V2 church.

But Paul was trained as a Pharisee and was intent on preaching the Gospel of salvation, not on elaborating a theology for the contemplation of scholarly minds. But there is much in Greek thought nevertheless that helped great minds such as Augustine and later Aquinas penetrate theological mysteries which might otherwise have been even more inaccessible than they now are. Classical metaphysics and ontology, for instance, helped Church theologians formulate queries into the nature of the soul, of Christ's personhood, of the Triune God, of Transubstantiation. All of these profound lessons derive from Christ himself and are mentioned in some way in Scripture--but Greek thought allows us to penetrate their mysteries more deeply.

***not on elaborating a theology for the contemplation of scholarly minds.***

Scholarly minds not, but Romans is rather elaborate.

Being from the cosmopolitian Tarsus, he would be well aquainted with the Greeks.

***But there is much in Greek thought nevertheless that helped great minds such as Augustine and later Aquinas penetrate theological mysteries which might otherwise have been even more inaccessible than they now are.***

Though I agree in some part, I believe it is the Holy Spirit that illuminates minds and truth. He can do so without the aid of the Philosophers. No NT writer made any major use of them. (And let's not forget, most of them were buggerers of young boys).

***--but Greek thought allows us to penetrate their mysteries more deeply.***

I think the one who penetrates the mysteries of God is the submitted believer who faithfully studies the Word of God and who is helped and aided by the Holy Spirit.

All that being said, you have to admit that Paul ws rather dismissive of philosophers and philosophy in the previousley cited passage.

Here's a passage from Seneca, Nero's tutor (Nero later ordered him to commit suicide), a stoic philosopher and a contemporary of Paul. He is writing to a young Roman:

"God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucullus--a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. He it is that gives noble and upright counsel. In each good man 'a god doth dwell, but what god know we not.'"

This was Epistle XLI. Doesn't it strike you in some ways as rather remarkably similar to what any Christian might think--except for the final line? And you'd be right. Much of what was later common Christian thought and morality was derived from stoicism. Seneca opposed slavery, he warned young men against gladiator shows and other spectacles, he condemned abortion and contraception. There was a lot that Christians learned from the stoics.

but I'd hardly call the collapse in Eastern Europe the work of the Church. It was Reagan who did the heavy lifting.

Reagan's role is exaggerated. What took place in Poland was a non-violent uprising that had been fostered by Cardinals Wyszynski and Wojtyla for decades. They had nurtured the intellegentsia clubs and underground publications that inspired the peaceful dissent for many, many years, and had even helped spread those kind of efforts to Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, and Hungary. There can never be enough attribution given to the Polish Church for the miraculous overthrow of their Soviet oppressors.

Just the opposite, it was friendly with the socialists, not those who pushed for democracy.

Socialist and democratic are not negating terms. Needless to say, the brutal military dictators were removed with the encouragement and help of the church. There are plenty of Catholic martyrs for the cause of freedom to attest to that fact.

I certainly cannot argue with the statistics which you have presented........but neither can I retract what I said regarding the attempted destruction of Christendom/European Christian society, and the slaughter of millions of Catholics.

But let me say this - to which you may agree.......prior to 1962 the Church showed great strengths and growth in some quarters. Yet is had also been showing signs of petentially fatal weaknesses for quite some time.

In turn, secular society was engrossed with a growing materialism, consumerism, humanism, socialism.......and every other kind of "ism".......except the "ism" of Christ. This was due to increasingly powerful liberal thought stormtroopers in schools and government, who spoke a very new "gospel" to the people.

By the early 60s the stage was set for either a continued growth in number and strength, or a sharp and precipitous decline.

There was, at that point, great zeal and fervor. Yet there was also the lingering malaise of Modernism, which had merely been driven underground - where it festered for a few generations & grew stronger, and plotted for a resurgence.

So what happened? Pope John XXII refused to obey the requests of Our LAdy at Fatima, and started.....make that lurched into the most disasterous and ill prepared for Council in Church history which has done more damage then I can possibly describe.

"......by 1960 things will be clearer".

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