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.

I have no intention of diverting the discussion of this thread to that of international politics - or political systems........nor to lecture you or anybody in re political realities, but..........

You would seem to be saying that what happened to teh various countries in Latin America, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Phillipines was ....."good"? What scares me is the thought that you might be serious about this.

".....come to think of it, the post V2 church has been more an agent for positive political change than the pre-V2 church."

I am sorry, but that statement is a result of grossly uninformed thinking. A lot of what happened to the nations which you mentioned were the result of the machinations of thoroughly Marxised clergy who actively worked with the various military juntas/regimes via the mesmerizing hold of Liberation theology over the citizenry, to guarantee the success of "the revolution". This is particularly and patheticly true south of the border.

As to any involvement/credit ascribed to the Church behind the Iron Curtain for helping to bring about the "fall of Communism" - that is all due to the pre-V2 Church, which in essense is what ruled the hearts of those various countrymen prior to 1989.

It was not "liturgy in the worship space"....."gathering"........"praxis", or any other post V2 concept which held sway in the minds of those people. Indeed, rather it was the concept of "Polonia Sacra", and "Mary, Queen of Poland", and the like which brought fire and strength to their minds and hearts.

You certainly have a rude way of joining a conversation...

I agree with that assessment Chuck, buy your cynicism is also rude. For example:

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".

Who exactly are you referring to? Certainly not Caravaggio, Bellini, Rafael, Tintoretto or even Rembrandt because they don't have a vegetable or greek theme for every Biblical theme. Their secular works are few and far between while their religious works are vast. Probably 8 or 10 to 1 if I was forced to guess.

Caravaggio's greatest works were not done while the Church "dictated what to paint", but while he was on the run being wanted by the Church for murder. Have fun with Rembrandt, but despite any perceived flaws such masterpieces would have been impossible without deep inspiration. He also suffered a great deal throuhout his life. 'The Prodigal Son' was completed just after the last of his four children died, shortly before his own death.

Do you suppose Rafael is buried at the Pantheon because he did as he was told when the Church "dictated what to paint"?

I could go on, but perhaps you could point out these secular based, greek-inspired artists who merely created what the Church instructed.

Don't know exactly, but look at the results. Many of them may be so insulting to Our Lord, and the disposition of those assisting so bad that even though they could be valid there is very little if any grace. A satanic mass can be valid, but do you think it imparts any grace? I imagine that the amount of grace is probably a reverse correlation to how "people centered" or horizontal the mass is, but I didn't mean to suggest I had an exact formula. If vocations have decreased 90% does that mean there is 90% less grace? Who knows.

Think of the Israelites, when they chose to stray from worship of God in the way He desired, He withdrew His protection from them, like saying, "you want to have things your way instead of mine go ahead". He allowed them to be conquered by pagan people, He allowed them to suffer because of their own choices. That's what is happening now. Just look at all the statistics. Why is it that the most faithful dioceses have higher numbers of vocations than less faithful dioceses, within the same country? It cannot be due to the effects of the culture because those effects are the same for both.

He's not going to force Himself on us. He'll let us have our own way, but that has consequences, denial of grace.

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.

But it's not necessary. A crude fish on the wall is enough for an icon. But what the Church did was point to the successful aesthetic pracitices of the pagans and the natural uplifting quality they have and focus them on the right teaching of the Church. Any painting of a crucifixion is fine for an icon or altarpiece but that doesn't make it good art. Conversely all good art is not appropriate for altarpieces. But the Church put both to their highest function. So, if you want good art and you want to know about it, you'll be treated to a good sermon in stone or paint by default.

Nonetheless, a sculpture like David is idealized man (Platonic).

The idea that "David" is an idealized man as some Platonic statement is purely subjective. You are reading that into a sculpture that intrinsically cannot make that statement. Objectively a sculpture like David is an intelligently designed sculpture in terms of the flow of line and the play of light along with the textures represented in the Stone. It successfully serves it's aesthetic purpose. As iconography, the subject matter of David is certainly referring to something that is taught in the context of the Church as a whole. The quality of the craftsmanship of the Greeks reaches a higher level of meaning when the natural aesthetic value can be tied to the supernatural subject matter that the Church supplies.

You brought up El Greco and Tintoretto.I put them after the rennaisance.

Well since, Tintoretto lived between 1518 and 1594, I'd say he was in the mix. And also El Greco since he lived between 1541-1614. His real name was Domenico Theotokopoulos I would say that the Church had a strong influence on him, his art and those who came before and after him.

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.

. 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.

What you are missing is the fact that Vatican II should have been the defense against those things which grip the world and it wasn't because Vatican II was a bust. In fact 500 Fathers put together a document at Vatican II to condemn Communism and Marxism but John XXIII nuked the idea.

Actually it was more than a bust, it wrecked the Church's defenses against modernism. Now, instead of the Church conquering and purifying all of the old cultural attachments, the Church's culture is now being paganized and corrupted by the pagan cultures that it is supposed to be catering to.

Three final points:

One, You keep referencing Rembrandt as being some kind of ego maniac for the self portraits that he did. Simultaneously you say you don't know that much about him. Which is it? I've seen hundreds of Rembrandts right in front of me. There are few self portraits in proportion to his entire output and those of his apprentices.

Two: Some clarification of terms. Subject Matter is the matter that is being painted. Portrait, still life, landscape etc. Subject is the point of the work of art. An example since you referenced it is "David" The subject matter is the character of David, his sling, the other characteristic traits showing the illustrative aspect of the work.

The subject of the statue is defined in terms of broad aesthetic qualities: Power, forms in space, balance, texture, the play of light and line, the colors of the stone.

Three. The discussion is about the massive influence for morality that the Church provides. As I posted earlier, most people do not even realize how much of how we live has an origin in the teaching of the Church, "Goodbye" being a truncated version of "God be with you." The Pretzel being the product of monks shaping the extra dough into a shape reminiscent of children's hands folded in prayer, along with Art and music, etc. The Church had always up to Vatican II provided an ever stronger resistance to the evil let loose in the world. If the Church decides to exert her full weight on the culture of the World. The gates of that Culture will not prevail against it. Instead Vatican II eased up on that pressure. Now the pressure is on the gates of the Church and they are and have collapsed severely.

UR,

One of the truest examples of real development of doctrine is that of understanding the Eucharist. Paul obviously had much in the way of infused knowledge. Nobody as far as I can tell in Church history had God made it so known that he was going to win over.

Paul knew from faith and his zeal probably spread that faith in the Eucharist. All he could explain was the need to know about it and know how to partake worthily.

By the time Augustine rolls around, he's got to explain that Our Lord's flesh is real flesh and not a metaphor for some lofty spiritual ideal. He (amazingly) knew just to take it on faith that "somehow" God made it possible for Man to partake of his flesh while appearing as bread and wine. He described this as a "latent mystery"

Along comes Aquinas. He's dealing with Muslims who don't have the Jewish tradition as the Jews knew it. So, he unravels this "latent" mystery by providing a model based on reason alone, that combined with divine revelation allows one to grab hold of the faith against the testimony of the senses.

Aquinas on an Intellectual level did what Paul did when he addressed the people to the temple of the "unknown God" That was a Latent mystery to the people of Paul's day. He unwrapped it. Aquinas then did the same to the "hard saying" of Our Lord. Transubstantiation is no more or less mysterious or miraculous for Aquinas as it is for Augustine, or Paul. But Aquinas provides the argument that refutes the Lutheran heresy of "consubstantiation" or "transignification" which Paul was never questioned about.

***Paul knew from faith and his zeal probably spread that faith in the Eucharist.***

I believe you are reading that into the historical material. Though Paul addressed the communion and held it in the highest regard, Paul was all about PREACHING the message of the Gospel.

***Along comes Aquinas. He's dealing with Muslims who don't have the Jewish tradition as the Jews knew it. So, he unravels this "latent" mystery by providing a model based on reason alone,****

Never the less, Paul, who was much closer to living Greek philosophy than Aquinas, cut the knees out from under the Greeks in 1st Corinthians. There is no such thing as reason alone. Christianity is a revealed religion.

***Aquinas on an Intellectual level did what Paul did when he addressed the people to the temple of the "unknown God" That was a Latent mystery to the people of Paul's day. He unwrapped it. Aquinas then did the same to the "hard saying" of Our Lord.***

Bad analogy. The Greeks were just guessing about the unknown God. Had God needed philosophy to unwrap Gospel mysteries He would have given us a Greek apostle. (Besides, how much unwraping does "Take up your cross" or "Love you neighbor" need anyway???)

It may be that Medieval Scolasticism was more isogesis than exogesis - reading Greek ideas into the Scriptures.

***God is near you, he is with you, he is within you.***

But ultimatley Seneca was wrong. Paul describe the state of pre Christian pagans...

"Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called "the uncircumcision" by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands-- remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and WITHOUT GOD in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."

***XLI. Doesn't it strike you in some ways as rather remarkably similar to what any Christian might think--except for the final line?****

I can see that. But I can see the same words on the lips of any New Ager! An outside observer might find alot of similarities between Christianity and New Ageism - but we know they are literally worlds apart. The devil's in the details.

Christianity, ultimatley, is not defined in terms of morality but of relationship - relationship to the person of Christ. Very moral people can still be very lost and on their way to hell.

***There was a lot that Christians learned from the stoics***

I have to admit it's been a while since I've studied the Stoics. It's relationship to Pauline theology was, at one time, a very "hot" theological topic.

I'm referring to Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Raphael, but especially to the de Medici's who founded the Neoplatonic Academy and whose patronage was largely responsible for many of these guys' careers. The ceiling of the Sistine chapel is a depiction of Platonic metaphysics. Even in a religious painting such as Botticelli's "Adoration of the Magi" the de Medici clan are pictured as the worshipping kings. So, is the artist painting from Christian inspiration or secular flattery? Raphael's "School of Athens" is an overt depiction of the ideas that were influencing the culture's art. But since the mural was painted in the Vatican, the Church approved of it.

Of course these ideas and the novelties they led to were probably responsible in large part to the reformation when folks recognized that the Church was not completely espousing Christian ideals. The counter-reformation made religious art much more....Christian, thus Caraveggio, Bellini, and Tintoretto were not as pagan-influenced as their earlier counterparts.

As for Rembrandt, he couldn't possibly have been influenced and inspired by the Church, as he was brought up in a strict Anabaptist family and if anything his religious art is noteworthy for the lack of Catholic iconography it contained. He's most famous for his paintings of guild members and landscapes...and his 62 self-portraits. I don't know how or why he got brought into the discussion.

What I'm arguing against is the belief that the church had such a hold on people in previous eras that everything that they thought and did originated in the piety that the Church instilled. While perhaps true in some eras, like the high middle ages, and while true in some individuals no matter in what era, the Italian renaissance was not one of them, because of the abundance of other ideas; namely neoplatonism, neoclassicism, and humanism. Plus, there are varying eras within a man's lfetime as well. Will future generations view Mel Gibson's life's work as divinely inspired through the influence of his faith, because of one film, or will it rightly see him as reflecting the obsession with pictorial violence because of most of his films?

Another point is that we don't know what these heroes painted all the time. That their religous work was preserved in churches doesn't mean that they were exclusively religious artists, just that their religious art was better preserved.

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