Saturday, May 07, 2005
A view from the past
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 15:37:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: rlee
Subject: Re: Society of St. Pius X
It is probably very difficult for people who were not
alive or were not Catholic during the period 1965-85
to understand how bad it really was. I suspect that in
time "I survived Vatican II" will become an important
subgenre for Catholic writers. Future generations will
gape in amazement.
I became a Catholic in 1983 after falling in love with
Newman and Chesterton and a number of other Catholic
writers. I was a convert from mainline Protestantism,
Lutheranism to be exact. RCIA was a shock. The two
liberated Dominican nuns and the Dominican priest
(since died of AIDS after suffering a nervous
breakdown) who were supposed to be introducing me to
the faith in effect told me that the religion to which
I had believed I was converting no longer existed.
Vatican II had abolished it. I am not exaggerating. I
was taught in RCIA that Vatican II had abolished
Catholicism. The "catechism" we were using even made
that argument, remorselessly contrasting the "old"
church (which in my naivete I had thought was simply
THE Church), and the "new" church, which bore a
remarkable resemblance to the church I thought I was
leaving. I often wondered why I was bothering to
convert at all, since it looked like all I was doing
was moving from one form of liberal Protestantism to
another. And nothing brought down the wrath of the
post-conciliar church leadership faster than an
affection for pre-conciliar devotions or liturgical
practices. It took an act of sheer (and at times it
seem like blind) faith to believe that the Church of
1970 was the same church that had existed a decade
earlier.
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 15:37:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: rlee
Subject: Re: Society of St. Pius X
It is probably very difficult for people who were not
alive or were not Catholic during the period 1965-85
to understand how bad it really was. I suspect that in
time "I survived Vatican II" will become an important
subgenre for Catholic writers. Future generations will
gape in amazement.
I became a Catholic in 1983 after falling in love with
Newman and Chesterton and a number of other Catholic
writers. I was a convert from mainline Protestantism,
Lutheranism to be exact. RCIA was a shock. The two
liberated Dominican nuns and the Dominican priest
(since died of AIDS after suffering a nervous
breakdown) who were supposed to be introducing me to
the faith in effect told me that the religion to which
I had believed I was converting no longer existed.
Vatican II had abolished it. I am not exaggerating. I
was taught in RCIA that Vatican II had abolished
Catholicism. The "catechism" we were using even made
that argument, remorselessly contrasting the "old"
church (which in my naivete I had thought was simply
THE Church), and the "new" church, which bore a
remarkable resemblance to the church I thought I was
leaving. I often wondered why I was bothering to
convert at all, since it looked like all I was doing
was moving from one form of liberal Protestantism to
another. And nothing brought down the wrath of the
post-conciliar church leadership faster than an
affection for pre-conciliar devotions or liturgical
practices. It took an act of sheer (and at times it
seem like blind) faith to believe that the Church of
1970 was the same church that had existed a decade
earlier.
