“A radical change like Vatican II should have been accompanied by strict quality control measures and significant instruction to parishioners.”
ROFLOL and crying at the same time over your words. Man made Quality Assurance measures are left best in the work place. Let the Holy Trinity be Our Assurance. The Mystical Body of Christ has no need for quality control and you can’t apply TQM or JIT to real faith as you must approach it as a child.
Significant instruction and inculcation already was given to the parishioners back in 1960 as they understood their “ordo” better than most Catholics today. This was an age when all Catholics understood latin and were quite literate compared to today’s college graduates. Part of the reason the changes survived was the dumbing down of the culture and the concurrent social revolution of the 60s.
Some would say the poor implementation of the radical changes was part and parcel of the goal of Vatican II if it was intended to undermine the real faith of Catholicism.
ok poor choice of words.
By “quality assurance” I was being somewhat flip. My choice of terminology was not chosen to diminish the glory of the Trinity. I purposely employed a business term to the discussion as if it were a new plan. Literary technique. To be a little more precise, I think the implementation of Vatican II needed lots more oversight. Most others on this thread understood this approach and did not see a need to belittle me.
My main point was that without significant oversight, radicals within the church were allowed to implement it as they saw fit, which lead to abuses.
I think you misunderstood what I meant about “instruction”. I wasn’t discussing instruction in the Bible...I was discussing instruction on what Vatican II was all about. Vatican II instruction was NOT provided to parishoners. A change was made, and few knew why. The Baltimore Catechism was dropped entirely and was not replaced by anything for about 20 years. Even the present Catechism (which is really quite excellent) is not taught to students...so instruction is still quite poor.
And no, an understanding of church doctrine, the Bible and tradition was quite poor amongst the general Catholic population prior to Vatican II. It might be worse now, but it was what I would call good. For cyin’ out loud...people were saying the Rosary during Mass because they didn’t understand what was going on!
However I will admit that the love and knowledge of the Church was stronger amongst the few truly devout Catholics of the time. Perhaps you and those close to you took the effort to understand the Mass. I admire that. But the general population was disconnected.