At Crisis there is a must read piece by Anthony Esolen.
Here’s how it starts…
Hello. My name is Tony. I am a restorationist.
I wasn’t always this way. I grew up in the 1960s and the 1970s, and we all took for granted everything the priests and bishops said we had to do according to the directions of the Second Vatican Council. None of us had read the documents, but we figured that our leaders had, and we obeyed. They counted on it.
When our pastor removed the marble communion rail with its mosaic inlays of Eucharistic symbols (a basket of five loaves, two fish, a bunch of grapes, the Lamb of God), we figured he knew what he was doing, and we submitted. When he whitewashed the church walls, eliminating stenciled patterns of the fleur-de-lis, so that what had been warm and shady was now bare, with no color connection between the stained-glass windows, the mural paintings of figures from the Old Testament, and the painted ceiling above, we figured he knew what he was doing, and we obeyed. When he covered the hexagonal floor tiles, white and dark green in cruciform patterns, with a bright-red carpet, we wiped our feet and obeyed.
3 comments:
This describes my experience perfectly. I trusted that someone in the chain had read and understood Vatican II. Few had read any parts of it or had been fed edits embedded in interpretation that led to predetermined conclusions.
I wonder now if we would not lose even more clergy and more laity if they are shown what Vatican II actually says versus what they were told it said and what they were told to do that it did not direct to be done.
Nicely stated!
Those of us of a certain age have painful recollections of what was lost or destroyed.
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