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.

***You make the blunderous mistake that Aquinas and Augustine are using unpurified philosophy.***

Paul did his work WITHOUT RECOURSE to philosophy..

"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")

Are Aquinas and Augustine better expositors of the grace of God than Paul?

Are Aquinas and Augustine better expositors of the grace of God than Paul?

Expositors of the grace of God? Since Aquinas and Augustine were also ordained they were at least his equal in being vessels for grace. As far as explaining the Gospels? Yes. They were exactly who should be explaining what St. Paul meant to those who don't understand him. And St. Peter agrees that Paul was not self explanatory but needed someone learned to explain him. "And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you: 16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; ****in which are certain things hard to be understood,**** which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction."

It's simple. Aquinas and Augustine were fully capable of explaining the Gospel with words of eloquent wisdom without emptying the Cross of it's power. Paul merely admits that he is not capable of doing this. Just as Moses needed Aaron to speak for him. Paul provided several inspired Scriptures that would require the learned to decipher properly. Nowhere does Paul condemn anyone who can do what he can't.

Are you Catholic? Because your position that man can no nothing by reason is condemned as a heresy called "traditionalism" from the 18th century. Also called "fideism".

Did we loose the explaination along the way, or did folks just sit around in the dark for 1200 years?

No. They didn't sit around in the dark. They invented heresies in trying to understand these hard sayings. The Church spent centuries wrestling with these issues until Aquinas was able to define and catalog concepts that would carry an explanation of Divine Revelation that would provide protection against heresy. Aquinas was quite possibly the greatest intellect ever encased in a mortal and exclusively human frame. His achievement has yet to find an equal in human enterprise. Paul's explanation of the Eucharist was straightforward, Augustine had to answer deeper questions, so his answers were deeper. Aquinas got to deal with the deepest accessible parts of the mysteries. So, his answers are the most complete. Nothing added, no difference in what is being discussed, yet Aquinas reasoned things down to a base concept that holds logically and denies nothing. It's miraculous and so beautiful.

I don't see much Greek philosophy in Luke. The closest you'll get is the "logos" in John.

I didn't say that you'll find Greek philosophy in them. But you can use the Augustinian or Thomistic models to understand Luke or any other Scripture. Just as you can used "pagan" Mathematics to understand the architecture of the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant or Noah's Ark. God forbid Pythagoras actually stumbled onto a truth that would help one understand something Divine. Why stop there? Why did any of the Apostles speak other languages beside Syriac? I mean, why should they have spoken the pagan languages of Latin and Greek?

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?

Actually whether or not it is the Medici family pictured in an accurate depiction is irrelevant to the quality of the work. That is an extra-artistic factoid, that has nothing to do with the subject or the subject matter. Renoir painted his son in dresses and with long hair so he would look like a little girl. The paintings are of little girls with hair that curls in conformance with the composition of the picture. The fact that it is Jean Renoir or Chaim Soutine's Mother modeling is irrelevant to the work.

Actually whether or not it is the Medici family pictured in an accurate depiction is irrelevant to the quality of the work.

The quality has never been the issue. The issue is the inspiration and influence of the Church. Botticelli's "Adoration" glorifies the de Medici's as much as the infant Jesus. Botticelli painted himself amid the group too, another tendancy of humanistic influences, self-promotion.

Dante of course had Popes and bishops of his day burning in Hell.

Michealangelo in his "Last Judgement" placed bishops, cardinals and prelates as part of the damned. One in particular getting his crotch bitten by a snake.

Some of the gargoyles on Notre Dame Cathedral are based on the taskmasters in charge of the artists.

Those are all creative incidentals that have nothing to do with the subject or the subject matter. The fact that its the Medici family is no more valuable than whether a painting was rescued from a monastery fire. That's all just incidental trivia.

By the way, how do you know Botticelli was purely involved in self-promotion by placing himself in his paintings?

Mirrors cost a lot less than models. Sometimes it is most expedient for the artist to use items and people that are closest to him. Perhaps it was easier to do a great work if the Medici family was used as models. Maybe they were tasteless and needed to be distracted by the artist. So, he put them in it to shut them up as far as criticism goes.

That is all speculation. Any story can be made up to explain the various motivations.

Apparently so. The war ended in '45. Vatican II closed in '65. In the twenty years between, the Catholic Church was at its zenith with vocations and schools and hospitals and missions and church attendance and baptisms and conversions and the faith itself at an all time high. Bishop Fulton Sheen was more popular on tv than Milton Berle. On the Waterfront and Sound of Music were huge hits. Within ten years of the close of the Council, the Church had precipitously imploded. Now it's the subject of Hollywood jeers.

***Within ten years of the close of the Council, the Church had precipitously imploded. Now it's the subject of Hollywood jeers.***

These effects must be due in part to something else.

Protestants are also the subject of jeers.

(Side note: you may very occasionally get a sympathetic Catholic priest role. You will never see a Protestant minister portraied as anything but a lunitic or murderer.)

*** Since Aquinas and Augustine were also ordained they were at least his equal in being vessels for grace.***

Amazing! I've never heard anyone come close to claiming that.

***Paul merely admits that he is not capable of doing this.***

No, he says he specifically avoids it. No offense meant, but you are twisting what he said to the breaking point. Look at the verse again.

"For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power."

He was not discarding "words of eloquent wisdom" becuase he wasn't capable of using them, but because reliance on them would strip the Gospel of its "spiritual" power. He speaks further about this here (1 Cor 2)...

"... And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual."

***Are you Catholic? Because your position that man can no nothing by reason is condemned as a heresy called "traditionalism" from the 18th century. Also called "fideism".***

No, I am an evangelical. An before you go branding me a fideistic heretic :) - may statement was...

"There is no such thing as reason alone. Christianity is a revealed religion."

Which is basically a restatement of...

"For since, ... the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."

Pretty clear. The world did not come to know God through "wisdom" so God sent men to reveal his will. Logic and reason didn't do it, so God brought men truth in the power of the Spirit.

"These effects must be due in part to something else. Protestants are also the subject of jeers. "

Just the opposite. These effects are due to the exact same cause--modernism. The New Theology was a virus that passed from the mainline churches to Catholicism by way of the Lutherans in Germany. The German bishops led the charge in Vatican II. Lutherans participated in the fabrication of the Novus Ordo.

Look at which churches have been losing steam since the sixties: the liberal ones. The mainline Protestant pews are empty, not the pews of evangelicals. Nor are the pews of conservative Catholic churches empty. It is liberalism, catering to the world, that destroys the faith, nothing else.

When I was in the seminary back in the 80s, there was much visiting back-and-forth between seminarians of mainline churches and ours. They were subject to the very same deconstruction of Scripture as we. They had their Raymond Browns and their Walter Kaspers. So it wasn't "something else" as you say. The cause for collapse was the same--accommodation to modernity at the expense of faith.

***I didn't say that you'll find Greek philosophy in them.***

Point is, if Greek philosophy were necessary for understanding the scriptures correctly then God would have incorporated it into the text - which He did not.

***Just as you can used "pagan" Mathematics to understand the architecture of the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant or Noah's Ark. ***

Good illustration! Let me use it for my purpose. You can use geometry to understand the temple but this is akin to a person using their knowlege of bookbinding to study the scripture. You any know all the details of the angles and lengths of the temple but this can not help you penetrate the spiritual meaning of the temple.

Only the Spirit of God can open a persons eyes such that they can see and spiritually appropriate the truths incorporated into the design of the temple and by means of those truths come to "see" God with the eyes of the heart. It is the Spirit that gives life.

***I mean, why should they have spoken the pagan languages of Latin and Greek?***

For the sake of mass communication! Or as someone else said, "Who lights a candle and puts it under a basket?"

Just to make my previous point clear--Hollywood respects success. As long as the mainline Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church were flourishing and influential, Hollywood was respectful. As soon as Hollywood sensed weakness and the loss of influence, it began to do what came naturally--go on the attack. It is the way of the world.

***Hollywood respects success. As long as the mainline Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church were flourishing and influential, Hollywood was respectful.***

Interesting point. I've also learned that when the Church is spiritually strong it will influence the world. When the Church is spiritually weak it will be influenced by the world.

***Just the opposite. These effects are due to the exact same cause--modernism.***

Though I believe that is a definite factor I wonder if it might not also be attributable to something else - sin and compromise in the life of the real believers.

We know the Church is composed of wheat and tares, the saved and the lost. Churches which preach modernism have a strong appeal for who don't really want to know the truth. Specifically the truth about themselves and their sin before a holy God.

Modernism is mainly composed of tares (no doubt with a few confused stalks of wheat thrown in for good measure!) As such they are "non-players" in the true game - the invisible game on the spiritual plane. They are not really on God's team.

Those people who truly believe, who have accepted the message and the rule of Jesus in their lives no matter what the personal cost - these are the ones who are spiritually alive and they are on God's "team" so to speak.

Now the question is why is God's "team" loosing? Could it be because those who truly belong to God are not living for Him as they know they should? Could it be also that they are spiritually "alseep" having been seduced by the cares and riches of the Western world and have allowed sin and compromise to go undealt with in their lives?

When is the last time you heard a priest or minister strongly rebuke sin in the lives of his congregation?

A side note. God's "team" seems to be winning in the third world (Ex. China has seen the growth of the underground church from appx 900,000 to 100,000,000 in a one hunderd year period - Africa has a similar growth rate.)

I have two reasons for disagreeing with your analysis. First, sin and compromise have characterized the people of God from the beginning. There never was a time when the attractions of sin were not a factor. The early Christians had all they could do to keep their young away from gladiator shows and lascivious theatrical productions. Second, the fall-off was too precipitous to attribute it to anything other than a widespread adoption of liberal theologies. In many ways evangelicals have the very same gripes as traditional Catholics.

*** The early Christians had all they could do to keep their young away from gladiator shows and lascivious theatrical productions.***

This is interesting. Could you point me towards a resource for reading more on this issue.

***Second, the fall-off was too precipitous to attribute it to anything other than a widespread adoption of liberal theologies.***

Making your point, liberal theology is not widely accepted in Asia/Africa. They are stong because the simply open the Bible and obey what they read.

***In many ways evangelicals have the very same gripes as traditional Catholics.***

Yes, and we've been fighting it since the mid 1800's.

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