Mom & Me & Vatican II

I received a catalog from Roman Catholic Books in which was a prominent ad for an anti-Vatican II book which included the word "blarney", as in "don't believe the blarney...(of the benefits of the Council)". Which reminded me of how last year, visiting my parents, I played the traditionalist because I liked the chutzpah it takes for a post-Vatican II baby to lecture pre-Vatican II folk on the real truth. And because I must like arguing. I told my mother "at least we can agree on the reverence of the Latin Mass" and she reluctantly agreed though she said that no one paid much attention to the Mass because it was in Latin and only the altar boys knew Latin. Everyone else just said a rosary or said prayers out of their prayer book.

I grimaced and moved on, since this seemed an unpromising field to hoe. I said, "how do you explain how bad things are now compared to the way things were before the Council?". And she had a ready reply that I didn't expect - she said that Protestants were much better before the Council too, at least as measured by divorce rates and crime and other indicators.

It appears that it was the culture that swamped the Church and I've suspected that one way to have avoided the culture's devasting influence was not to blame the Council but to have avoided affluence. Affluence brought us the suburbs, which brought us out of our Catholic ghetto and into the larger culture. When JFK became president and Catholics were perceived as acceptable, we seemed to lose our way. We became influenced by the culture instead of influencing the culture. And the cost has been enormous.

But back to the Latin Mass. I do have a soft spot for those who think a return would make more saints. I catch a glimpse of that sometimes in the Byzantine liturgy when I wonder the same thing...