Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

1968 – A Fateful and Terrible Year Where Many in the Church Drank the Poison of this World
Archdiocese of Washington ^ | March 11, 2012 | Msgr. Charles Pope

Posted on 03/12/2012 2:25:37 PM PDT by NYer

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-30 next last

1 posted on 03/12/2012 2:25:43 PM PDT by NYer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; SumProVita; ...
1968 was a cultural tsunami from which we have not yet recovered.

Bears repeating.

2 posted on 03/12/2012 2:26:49 PM PDT by NYer (He who hides in his heart the remembrance of wrongs is like a man who feeds a snake on his chest. St)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

It was revealed in August 1968 that many priests and religious, and not a few bishops, do not believe the ecclesiology of the Magisterium.

And the Magisterium has not acted against them, which raises the perfectly legitimate question, what exactly IS the ecclesiology in which the Magisterium believes?


3 posted on 03/12/2012 2:31:09 PM PDT by Jim Noble ("The Germans: At your feet, or at your throat" - Winston Churchill)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

That whole dreadful era was on the verge of being forgotten until that plague of ‘60s leftovers and their acolytes began protesting the Iraq War and gettin’ jiggy with their nostalgia. And this ridiculous attempt to recreate their youth just keeps going on ... and on ... and on ... It’s like these geezer hippies imagine that if they keep it 1968 all the time, they’ll never die.


4 posted on 03/12/2012 2:33:54 PM PDT by JennysCool (My hypocrisy goes only so far)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

How much of this do you attribute to the revocation of the Oath Against Modernism by Pope Paul VI in 1967?


5 posted on 03/12/2012 2:43:27 PM PDT by Natural Law (If you love the Catholic Church raise your hands, if not raise your standards.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I agree entirely.


6 posted on 03/12/2012 2:48:38 PM PDT by livius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Natural Law

I’m not sure the oath really worked, because people who were inclined to practice modernism weren’t concerned about lying in a sworn oath anyway. However, it did at least state that the Church was opposed to these ideas.

I am old enough to have known some members of the older generation (that is, priests who were already priests at the time of Vatican II), and I think dissent was unfortunately pretty widespread already, oath or no. Maybe they had to be quieter about it and a little more sneaky, but things wouldn’t have collapsed so fast after Vatican II if they hadn’t been weak before that.

I think people have never considered the effect that the American church had on Vatican II. Many of the supposed “problems” brought up at Vatican II were just an expression of the usual American Catholic desire to remove identifiably Catholic practices in order to fit in and prove that they were just as American as any good Protestant or non-believer. So modernization - and I’m not saying there weren’t certain things that did need a bit of an updating or refreshing - came to mean shedding anything that was identifiably Catholic.

This harmonized very well with the goals of leftists such as Bugnini, and I think gave them the power they needed to push their agenda through before the other bishops even fully processed what was happening. But that was, again, because the leftists were indeed Modernists, and their quiet, murmured heresy had actually been tolerated for a long time in the Church, oath or now.


7 posted on 03/12/2012 2:57:45 PM PDT by livius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Natural Law
How much of this do you attribute to the revocation of the Oath Against Modernism by Pope Paul VI in 1967?

I was not aware of this oath, so, I guess the proper response is nothing. On my own personal journey (which began pre VCII), I tried to absorb the changes. Most recently, while residing in one of the most progressive dioceses in the US, I battled liturgical abuse. After decades of this nonsense, I watched in abject horror as a EMHC dropped a consecrated host on the sanctuary floor. Unsure of what to do, she bent over, picked it up and redeposited it in her Pyrex glass communion cup. It was the final straw.

Literally eight years ago today, recalling the words of our Savior "ask and you will receive", I bowed my head in prayer and asked our Lord to guide me to a holy priest, a reverent liturgy and a community in need of whatever God-given abilities I might possess. He did not fail! After visiting other parishes within the diocese, I attended mass at one of the Eastern (Maronite) Catholic Churches. The response was quick and most welcome.

It has been exactly 8 years since that first visit and I have never looked back. In the Maronite Church, I have found a most welcoming community that functions like a family. The liturgy is replete with incense (even at the low mass), the spirituality is pervasive and everyone contributes towards the community as a whole. The liturgy was brought by St. Peter to Antioch where he served as bishop before proceeding to Rome. The consecration is chanted in Aramaic - the language of Christ, His Blessed Mother and the Apostles. Because of its small size, the community functions much like a family where people pull together and volunteer to ensure the health and longevity of the small parish. In the short span of 8 years, I have been asked to serve on the women's sodality, been elected to the Parish Council, successfully written two grants (with God's assistance) and served as Director for Religious Education. The years have flown by and I am still enamored by the beauty of the Maronite Church.

8 posted on 03/12/2012 3:06:27 PM PDT by NYer (He who hides in his heart the remembrance of wrongs is like a man who feeds a snake on his chest. St)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: livius

What this article omits is that the Cultural Revolution of 1968 was pretty much civilization wide, not just American.

There were riots in Paris, and Charles de Gaulle fled to his country estate until things calmed down.

There were riots and terrorism in Germany and Italy.

The anti-war protestors and hippies in America had their counterparts all over Europe and the West.

Riots, burnings, barricades, revolutionaries throwing cobblestones in the cities of Europe—it was widespread.

And the fallout in Europe after Vatican II was as bad as it was in America, if not worse. The bishops over there are still more dissident or weak than they are in this country, even after decades of failing to fix the problem.

Ireland stood fast for a while, but now they seem to be as troubled as anywhere else.

The Church has gone through major troubles in the past, but this certainly has been one of the worst and most widespread.


9 posted on 03/12/2012 3:13:13 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: NYer
Modernism was accommodated at Vatican II in an affirmation of an unspoken and never before endorsed doctrine in which the compassion of compromise superseded the dogma's of Catholicism. Appealing to relativism and rationalism they set faith and reason apart from and at odds with one another.

Modernism was described by Pope Pius X as the synthesis of all heresies. Pope Pius X stated Modernism is ‘born of the alliance between faith and false philosophy’. Modernists recognize, said the pope; "that the three chief difficulties for them are first, scholastic philosophy, secondly the authority of the Fathers and Tradition more generally, and thirdly the magisterium of the Church, and on these they ‘wage unrelenting war’."

It is no surprise, to me anyway, that the Modernist is comfortable with and in league with the Secular Humanists, Buddhists and mysticism, and the more liberal branches of the Reformation.

10 posted on 03/12/2012 3:25:11 PM PDT by Natural Law (If you love the Catholic Church raise your hands, if not raise your standards.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: NYer
Not everything that happened in 1968 was bad, and some events were good. The year began with the USC Trojans winning college football's national championship by beating Indiana in the Rose Bowl 14-3. In the fall, the Trojans would go undefeated and win yet another Rose Bowl berth.

Turning to politics, the article makes no mention of the fact that despite all of the riots and hullabaloo perpetrated by the Left, the Republicans, nonetheless, won the White House in the November election. The combined Nixon-Wallace vote was an overwhelming repudiation of the liberals, leftists, hippies, and such, and Kevin Phillips would soon be writing of an emerging Republican majority. Although Richard Nixon is hardly a conservative hero, the coalition that he put together later put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

11 posted on 03/12/2012 3:33:04 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

Same year: “Is God Dead?” on the cover of Time Magazine. As a 16 year old, I remember Thanksgiving of that year the commentator (CBS I think) saying that there was not much to be thankful for. I was shocked, thinking that Thansgiving was and always would be celebrated for our blessings. Within a few weeks the Apollo 8 lunar mission did provide us something to be proud and thankful.

As for this article, I was reading to see if it acknowledged this period as the beginning of changes that led to molestation scandals.


12 posted on 03/12/2012 3:34:22 PM PDT by cicero2k
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I could’ve wrote this except for it was my Uncle in Vietnam not my dad and we are in Ohio not Chicago but the rest is the same.I was 7 yo in 1968 ad turned 8 in Sept of that year.I remember it was the year that I first lean red what divorce was when my Uncle and his first family began to have trouble and separated the first time.It would take another 3 years and another child before they finally slit.I remember how bad that was for us, it was the first one in our Catholic family.I feel the same way about this time period kids my age got the short end of the stick by their more selfish older boomers who thought it was their duty to change things.May they rot in h*ll for what they did to us.


13 posted on 03/12/2012 3:36:11 PM PDT by chris_bdba
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I could’ve wrote this except for it was my Uncle in Vietnam not my dad and we are in Ohio not Chicago but the rest is the same.I was 7 yo in 1968 ad turned 8 in Sept of that year.I remember it was the year that I first learned what divorce was when my Uncle and his first family began to have trouble and separated the first time.It would take another 3 years and another child before they finally split.I remember how bad that was for us, it was the first one in our Catholic family.I feel the same way about this time period kids my age got the short end of the stick by their more selfish older boomers who thought it was their duty to change things.May they rot in h*ll for what they did to us.


14 posted on 03/12/2012 3:36:57 PM PDT by chris_bdba
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer
At least 1968 was a good year for music:
15 posted on 03/12/2012 3:53:19 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cicero
Cultural Revolution of 1968 was pretty much civilization wide,

It was indeed, and the participants even have names for themselves: sesentayochistas, in Spanish, and something similar in French.

I have always felt that if the Church had held strong, things might have turned out differently. But it collapsed too.

And while the French and Germans had been busy nourishing clerical heretics for decades, I think a lot of the liturgical and practical changes reflected the desire of American Catholics to stand out less. The intellectual underpinning, of course, was the German Higher Biblical Criticism with its faux archaeology of the "primitive" Church, a mythical time of purity that the Protestants believed preceded Romish corruption.

16 posted on 03/12/2012 3:57:47 PM PDT by livius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I wasn’t there but I don’t “hideous” is an apt description of Woodstock. Miraculously tame might be closer to the truth.


17 posted on 03/12/2012 4:00:16 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand (There is life after FR.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

Yes I recall 1968, thanks for the fresher. My wife and I were married March 1958, had adopted our first son (Born August 9, 1966, then our second son was born September 9,1967. [ We had hardly recoved from the assination of President JKF in Nov. 1963]

We lived in Memphis,TN during the curfews and turmoil of early 68, we were hit broadside in our little red 1966 Volkswagon (But blessed in that none were injured.)

Then it happened, Martin Luther was assinated, and all the rioting accross the U.S. broke loose. We were blessed that Memphis had been on curfew for several weeks, and little was damaged compared to many other cities.

Then in the summer of 1968, Robert Kennedy was assinated, and that was one of the hottest summers on record. We attended our summer church camp the first week of August, in Middle TN, which usually a lot cooler than the Memphis area.
My Father & Mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and a foster son came that year. Boy it was hot, we had no air in the VW nor the cabins.

Our sons were 2 and 11 months that month, but we were able to be thankful and survived the heat and the rest of 1968.


18 posted on 03/12/2012 4:04:43 PM PDT by LetMarch (If a man knows the right way to live, and does not live it, there is no greater coward. (Anonymous)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

In 1968, the public had been told for years that we were winning the war in Vietnam. Then much of the country, including the American Embassy, came under widespread attacks which were shown with raw film feeds on nightly television for a month. Is it surprising that a sudden cognitive dissonance resulted?

In 1968, MLK had not only been under FBI surveillance for years, but on camera he was seen prophesizing his death the night before it happened. Is it surprising that when he was shot, that his followers suspected the government had something to do with it?

In 1968, RFK stood to challenge the ruling Democratic party establishment when he was struck with a fatal shot which originated at point blank range from his rear. In spite of witnesses and a coroner’s report that placed Sirhan Sirhan to the front of him at all times, the LAPD harassed witnesses and withheld contrary evidence of a likely multiple-shooter scenario in order to arrange a quick one-person conviction in court. Is it surprising that outraged RFK supporters would gather to protest outside the convention hall in Chicago?

The events of 1968 referred to in the editorial, ignore the understandable anger that lay behind them.

In 2012, conservatives are united in their desire to oppose lies which originated from a federal government run by Democrats. Could not the same thing be said of the public in 1968?


19 posted on 03/12/2012 4:12:30 PM PDT by research99
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cicero2k

Actually, the “God is dead” Time Magazine cover came out in 1966.

I’m pretty sure I missed that Thanksgiving broadcast. When we watched the evening news, we usually tuned in to George Putnam, who, I believe, was on KTTV at the time. His broadcast always included an editorial, entitled “One Reporter’s Opinion” in which he would express support for the Vietnam War, denounce government boondoggles, attack the Left, etc. On one broadcast in December, 1968, Putnam showed photographs of leftist demonstrations and point to a member of the crowd saying, “this is so-and-so, and he is a Communist!” Putnam would always conclude his broadcast with a picture of a US flag flying over some Southland community and say, “here is the American flag flying proudly over Whittier”—or Wilmington, Watts, Westchester, Walnut Park, etc.


20 posted on 03/12/2012 4:12:55 PM PDT by Fiji Hill (Io Triumphe!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-30 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson