How The '60s Transformed The Catholic Church Forever: An Interview With Rev. Mark Massa

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

(RNS) For generations, thousands of Catholics -- from archbishops to people in the pews -- saw the Catholic Church as eternal, timeless, and unmoved by the tides of history.

But the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s unleashed a sea of changes -- none more significant than the recognition that Catholicism has, and continues to be, shaped by historical events, argues the Rev. Mark Massa in a new book.

Massa's intellectual history, "The American Catholic Revolution: How the '60s Changed the Church Forever," describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities -- and controversies -- in the church.

Massa, dean of Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry, spoke about his book; some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why should American Catholics care what happened in the 1960s?

A: Starting with Vatican II, Catholics became aware that the church, its worship, and its beliefs change -- that the church develops over history. The current battles between the left and the right are really between those who want to press a historical awareness of change and those who want to view the church as timeless.

Q: Why did the "Catholic Revolution," as you call it, begin in 1964?

A: The new Mass (which was introduced in America that year) made real, or concrete, the changes that Vatican II made in ways that theology, or other declarations from the council could not.

Q: Why is change -- not sex -- the church's dirty little secret?

A: A great majority of Catholics (once) thought of the church as outside of time altogether -- that what they did on Sunday is what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and early Christians did in the catacombs. Vatican II attacked this notion of the church as providing a timeless set of answers to life's questions about meaning.

Q: And that became a personal crisis for Catholics in the 1960s?

A: Catholics, like all believers, want security. The world seems, and can be, a very scary place; and they want their religion to provide them with some form of certainty, security, and peace of mind. But faith is a stance in history; it doesn't preserve us from messiness, or from change, including to religious institutions.

Q: How much was the "Catholic Revolution" affected by the cultural tumult of the'60s?

A: There was always an international dimension that made the Catholic '60s different from the general culture, because of this long devotion to Rome and the primacy of the pope. My sense is that most of the important stuff wasn't a reaction to events and ideas outside the church but to things happening inside the church itself.

Q: Pope Benedict XVI has been among those arguing that Vatican II was not a disruption in the church's usual course of business, right?

A: I think, basically, Benedict is a classicist and he thinks that human essence and things like that stay the same.

Q: So, is he trying to put the "change" genie back in the bottle, or does he deny there is any genie to bottle up?

A: I think he knows the genie exists. He's very smart, a world-class theologian -- he knows the stakes. I think he see that the changes made by Vatican II led to fewer priests and fewer (members of religious orders) and so something went really wrong.

Q: As a Jesuit, are you worried about publicly disagreeing with the pope?

A: No. I'm a historian. I'm only laying out the past. The argument stands or falls according to whether it makes the most sense of the most data from the past. I'm not making moral judgments.

Q: How does Benedict's recent reform of the Mass in English and support for the Latin Mass fit into your theory?

A: It's partly personal preference. He's Austrian [sic, recte German], and likes looking back to the past. He likes the smells and bells. I do, too. I suspect there's more to it than that, but I don't know.

Comments

[MARYHOBE]

02:46 PM on 09/24/2010

Born into the Roman Catholic Church I saw my church change, and change again. I had been an alter boy and fully loved and appreciated the Latin Mass, but I believed that rendering the Mass in the Lay languages of the faithful was a positive step towards letting them understand it as I had. I never felt insecure about all the changes, and saw Pope John 23rd to be a benevolent and inclusive leader of the church and I still view him as a holy man, but I do not view myself as a Roman Catholic and though I feel that I have a very spiritual life, I have walked away from the organized religions. I hope no one thinks I am alone, though, because millions have turned toward the same path, and I think that maybe that was just in the nature of moving forward. Not necessarily a move away from anything. Finally, the Church of Rome has given me a foundation that will forever be apart of me and I appreciate that.

[FlGlades]

07:09 AM on 09/24/2010

PRAYER
-----------------------------------------------------

Loving heavenly Father, help us to see the worth of
all human beings by the way in which you provide for
us. We would ask that you provide also the faith,
grace and courage to enable us to protect that which
is so precious to you. Through Christ our Lord, Amen

[FlGlades]

07:08 AM on 09/24/2010

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what
you will wear. Is not life more important than food,
and the body more important than clothes? Look at the
birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store
away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

-- Matthew 6:25-26
40 days for life

[A-Superstitionist]

05:24 PM on 09/24/2010

I'm sure you have a brain and can think for yourself but you are not proving that by quoting segments from books of superstition. If you want to add to this debate, please add some original thoughts, not broken records.

[charlesdickens]

12:26 AM on 09/24/2010

The Catholic Church that came out of the 60's was vibrant and caring, nothing like the stagnant, punishing feeling that is coming out of Rome today. For example, priests marched for Civil Rights and for the farmworkers and Cesar Chavez. Today, the clergy is against Gay Rights, and the main reason that they are for the Latino community seems to be because they need to fill the empty pews with Latino Catholics. We need another John of the 60's, not the Benedict of today.

[Lisa Shields]

07:34 PM on 09/23/2010

I left the Church when I was eight years old.
NO, no evil priest in the tale...at least not that kind of evil.
I wanted to be an altar boy. To be clear, this was 1968. UNHEARD of. Possibly even a mortal sin.
But I was eight. I decided that girls weren't doing it because no one ever asked. So I went to the rectory, and asked.

The Monsignor was not pleased.
He called my parents and demanded they BOTH come there, and explain their daughter's "lamentable rejection of her natural place in God's plan". He was old school. So were my parents. They beat the HELL out of me for the "stunt".

I decided that any God that would allow that to happen wasn't one I needed in my life. I have made peace with my spirituality. But I have never forgiven the Church.

Modern Clergy must understand that when the church aids or abets ANY sort of abuse, they lose the wounded soul forever. I have studied world religions, include the rifts between Jews and Islam, the Catholics, and Protestants, and some of the crusades. But I cannot bear to set foot in a catholic church without tears. They did their job well.

[PenelopeGlass]

10:18 PM on 09/23/2010

I tried the same thing in 1956. This was before Vatican 2, so I even bothered to learn all the Latin for the Mass ... and my Latin is still pretty good, but that's one organization that I have NO use for.

[bryanzth]

07:25 PM on 09/23/2010

In addition to reading this article, there was this news that some of the Vatican II wording for the Mass is going back to a literal (or so) translation from the Latin. Now, I am not a Tridentine holdout, addicted to the "smells and bells", nor do I yearn for the "Guitar Masses" of the 60s and 70s. For me, beer and pizza would do as well as bread an wine, if you are talking about "vernacular". But the Vatican II wording really brought out the fellowship or the community, whereas the new wording (trans. of Latin) seems to go back to a 1:1 relationship between worshipper and Theity (Priest, Congregation):

Latin:
P: Dominus vobiscum. C: Et cum spiri tu tuo.

Vatican II:
P: The Lord be with you. C: And also with you.

New wording:
P: The Lord be with you. C: And with your spirit.

And others. Me, give me back Jan Vermulst's "Mass for Christian Unity" rather than anything that tries to patch back in the "smells and bells".

BZ.

[riff4u]

06:44 PM on 09/23/2010

The Catholic Church will continue to lose followers as soon as they stop the Father O'Diddles from falling on their knees praying to St Peter.

[Mark Erickson]

06:13 PM on 09/23/2010

Why is change -- not sex -- the church's dirty little secret?
I couldn't help but laugh at this question. This church has so many secrets to ask about any one secret seems ridiculous. The big secret is how this church, that values wealth and power above all else, came to be the dominant church for over a thousand years. Read a novel called On This Rock by Dave Leonard, it's fiction but it uses a lot of historical facts to draw some very interesting theories about this church.

[Hysterian68]

04:53 PM on 09/23/2010

Benny 16 Austrian? I thought he was Bavarian.

If the pope wants to return to a Golden Age, why not try the First Century AD, instead of the 16th century? Benedict wants to confront "secularism" where he can wallow in pious judgments delivered against a "HUMANISTIC world". Which doesn't ring true since "Humanism" got much of it's start and encouragement from the Renaissance Church itself.

A return to first principles with a witnessing to core Christianity is where he has to take the Church in it's evangelism to the world and in it's liturgy. Selling the Vatican's own art treasures to feed the hungry, joining forces with all the world's religions to fight ignorance,barbarous political leaders, famine, and disease will give the Church a new lease on life.

He has to explode stupid mythologies based upon an unproven past, e.g. women can't be ordained to the priesthood because Jesus didn't select women, etc. Or another favorite of Benny's regime: STOP gays from qualifying to adopt, love, and care for children?
Benedict could accomplish much more if he set out to restore the Catholic Church as the provider of education to the neediest of world's poor. Or once again made it the art patron par excellence. Working to preserve and financing an artistic past while supporting creative feats in the fields of music, literature, architecture, city planning, and inspiring a renewed missionary activity to the poorest parts of the globe by laity and clergy alike.

[turfkiller]

04:18 PM on 09/23/2010

The author states that something in Vatican II caused the drop in vocations. This is more likely a coincidence and more related to the unwillingness of the Church to change. (where have we seen this behavior before?)

The world was rapidly changing and the Church did not heed the advice and warnings of some who contributed to tried to contribute to the Council.

There were many changes in various ‘vocations’ during that time that had nothing to do with Vatican II like stay at home moms. There were many others. Only those of the hard radical orthodox extremists like Phylis Schafley and Pat Buchanan proves the Church was and continues to be only interested in empire governance.

Fact is most Catholics and many local priests here and around the world don’t share the Vatican’s dogma. As such who would hear a call and if they did, how many did they expect to actually fit through the eye of their religious needle.

Who would hear a pull of vocation from a Church which speaks to it's followers as if they are stupid, infants or both?

[HopeisEternal]

11:48 AM on 09/23/2010

Did Jesus ever intended his church to be what we see today? His command was for us to first love God and then to love others as we would love ourselves:

Luke 10: 25-28
And one day an authority on the law stood up to put Jesus to the test. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?”
26What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you understand it?” 27He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind.’(Deuteronomy 6:5) And, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ” 28“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do that, and you will live.”.

Many today profess the first part of the command- to love God- but ignore the second part. Jesus seemed to reinforce the 2-part aspect of the law, making it indivisible. How can we love God if we don't love our neighbor as ourselves?

The church reinforces separation experiences instead of finding ways to foster unity. And unity only comes when we recognize our common ground as well as our uniqueness. If we truly loved our neighbor as ourselves there wouldn't be a heirarchy except for logistical purposes. Until the institutional church understands and embraces the other as it embraces itself it will become a relic in the future- no longer relevent to a world which is constantly evolving.

[Stokes]

09:20 AM on 09/23/2010

"Spread forth are the wishes of the captive. Stream of living water flows freely. Will the need be for establishing the church in the urgency of the manifestations. Crest has the benign favored to exalt as they persist in the belief which has endured for centuries. Prestige has been for all manner of ecclesiastical memories. Trade not your faith in Christ for prestige. Persevere in the realm of love. To love , one must feel fully of the Comforter. Truth makes the ones who have never been engulfed in the stream to rely on the Lord God Almighty."

[turfkiller]

04:23 PM on 09/23/2010

Replacing one tyrant with another is hardly progress. You no more get to define or control God or any spirtuality than anyone else. Maybe you are wrong and the muslims are right? Or the Astecs? or Deepak? Heck even you Christians can't get along with each other!

[Stokes]

08:21 AM on 09/23/2010

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy is merely a continuation of the Roman Empire with it's influx of paganism. The Hierarchy will never allow the true teachings of Christ to have precedence over their cultish beliefs.

[turfkiller]

09:21 AM on 09/23/2010

Vatican II was actually meant to change that. However all the Popes after John Paul I have fought the reforms.

[HopeisEternal]

11:22 AM on 09/23/2010

Which makes you wonder if they are anti-Christs.

[Hysterian68]

05:01 PM on 09/23/2010

It's all been about preserving infrastructure and control. It makes Benny 16 look antedeluvian and a crackpot. Which he isn't. He's simply a crafty old European romantic elected to the papacy at the worst possible time and much too late in life.

He will have to be dead many years before his writings are fully appreciated inside and outside Catholicism. These will be his true lasting legacy and not trips to the UK, Jordan, Cyprus, etc. to provide PR opportunities in order to shore up a dwindling popularity in the face of one scandal after another.

[olmossy]

12:36 PM on 09/23/2010

Wait, you're blaming the Pagans for all this.

[turfkiller]

01:34 PM on 09/23/2010

Stokes is and I should have clearer, when Augustine legalized (modern term for imposition) the Church became more like Roman governance.

[FlGlades]

07:26 AM on 09/23/2010

"That evening, the episode was the main topic of conversation. Everyone was wondering who was this specter which the airplanes mysteriously obeyed. Someone said to the Commanding general that at San Giovanni there lived a Priest with the stigmata whom everyone considered a saint, and that perhaps he was the very one responsible for diverting the planes. The general found this hard to believe, but as soon as it was possible, he wished to go there to find out.
"After the war, the general, accompanied by a few pilots, arrived at the Capuchin Convent. As soon as he crossed the threshold of the sacristy, he found himself facing a number of Friars, among whom he recognized immediately the one who had stopped his airplanes. Padre Pio went up to meet him, and putting a hand on his shoulders, said to him: "So it is you, the one who wished to do away with all of us".
"Astonished at seeing and hearing the Friar, the general kneeled before him. Padre Pio had spoken in his usual Benevento dialect, but the general was convinced that the Priest has spoken in English. The two became friends. The general, who was a Protestant, converted to Catholicism.

[FlGlades]

07:25 AM on 09/23/2010

Everyone laughed at these incredulous stories. But since the episodes kept recurring, the Commanding General decided to intervene personally. He took command of a squadron of bombers to destroy a cache of German war materials that was said to be right in San Giovanni Rotondo. Up until that time, no one had ever succeeded in going in that direction because of the presence in the air of that mysterious phantasm which forced the airplanes back.
"Since this had been happening for some time, at the base there was much apprehension. We were all curious to see the results of this operation. When the squadron returned, we went over to ask what had occurred. The American general was quite upset. He recounted that as soon as they arrived near the target, he and his pilots had seen rising up into the sky the figure of a monk with his hands held high. The bombs dropped all by themselves, falling in the woods, and the planes turned in retreat, without any intervention on the part of the pilots.