DID VATICAN II’S CHANGES IN THE CATHOLIC LITURGY AND DEVOTIONAL LIFE, SPIRITUALITY IF YOU WILL, CAUSE THE DRAMATIC DECLINE IN CATHOLICS PRACTICING THE FAITH OR REMAINING AFFILIATED WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH?

Why have Catholics in the UK and US been leaving the Church since Vatican II?

Theologian and sociologist Stephen Bullivant says a big part of his argument in Mass Exodus is “that the ‘social architecture’ that had sustained and strengthened Catholic life and identity was well on the road to passing away by the time the Council came along.”

Yes, Vatican II is the culprit but not exclusively as people who comment on my blog would write. There are in fact three culprits as highlighted by Dr. Bullivant in The Catholic World Report interview which you can read in full by pressing the title above. Below are some money quotes from that interview.

What I have always emphasized Stephen Bullivant confirms. Catholics prior to Vatican II who had a “ghetto” experience of Catholicism (something positive not negative in terms of Catholic identity supported by the community in which one lives) experienced after Vatican II a fragmentation of that community which brought them to an “ecumenical” world of a variety of people and less of a connection with a Catholic ghetto experience. Vatican II’s implementation exacerbated this fragmentation and disengagement from Catholic identity by mocking all things pre-Vatican II and erasing Catholic cultural experiences such as the Latin Mass, nuns in habits, surety of doctrine, uniformity, devotions as well as fasting and abstinence.

Vatican II also demanded engagement with other Christians, non Christian religions and secularism itself as though these were on an equal footing with Catholicism. This helped to erode the surety of Catholic identity and being a part of the “True Church” in which salvation could be experienced and only experienced in the true Church.

The second generation of Catholics living in a not so homogenous Catholic culture became less attached to things Catholic and a strong Catholic identity. Then their children brought up with even a less connectiveness to the Church could take her or leave her and many leave with no real worry about doing so.

CWR: You nicely frame one of the key Catholic debates of the last fifty years as “post concilium ergo propter concilium?” You note that Catholics generally divide into “three broad tendencies” in how they answer that question. Give us a brief sense of those tendencies and whether you think one of them has stronger arguments than the others.

Bullivant: In very rough, stereotyping terms: There are those who chiefly blame something – normally something liturgical, but not necessarily—that Vatican II directly brought about, whether intentionally or not. Then there are those who chiefly blame some stifling, thwarting, or mitigating of the Council’s positive vision – Humanae Vitae is often the culprit here, often as the harbinger of some bigger “conservative crackdown” under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. And finally, there are those who really play down there being a Catholic-specific story to tell at all, pointing instead to wider social and cultural trends already well afoot before the Council, and affecting many of other mainstream denominations too.

One of the real motivations for writing the book was my conviction that, actually, each of these basic stances has a good deal going for it. Which is why, I suppose, serious scholars and commentators can be cited in support of each.  What I try to do in the second half of the book is to offer an historical account of British and American Catholicism “since Vatican II” – though, in fact, to do that you have to start with the Second World War and its aftermath, since neither the Council nor its aftermath make any sense without that background.

Ultimately, though, liturgical changes and the “customs” and little “t” traditions completely abandoned in the 1960’s, to include habits on nuns and Catholic schools filled with nuns escalated the crisis of Catholics who no longer claim to be Catholic either by joining other Christian groups, non Catholic religions or no religion at all (nones).

CWR: I read with keen interest the details in your fifth chapter on liturgical changes at and after the council along with the decline in Marian devotion and fasting. You seem to suggest that all these changes (and others) were damaging to what Mary Douglas calls “thick” religious identity and the take-it-for-grantedness of Catholic life. Do you see any ways to repair some of this damage?

Bullivant: Well, a great deal of the damage cannot simply be undone. The whole rich tapestry of Catholic devotional life was very swiftly torn away. But a re-emphasis on things like the rosary, lighting candles for sick friends, reinstating Friday fasting (as the bishops of England and Wales did a few years ago) – all the little day-to-day things that were de-emphasized because they (supposedly) distractions from the Mass, but which in truth help the “source and summit” to stand out even more clearly. All these are things that, I think, could be easily rediscovered. In fact, I think that’s what a lot of younger Catholics are doing by themselves anyway. I believe it’s what the Fathers of Vatican II would have called a ressourcement.