It is frequently said that Vatican II started and ended at the worst possible time. The whole intent of the Council was devoured by the ethos of the 1960s. Cultural upheaval is what caused its meaning to be wildly distorted. An attempt to bring the Church to the world ended up bringing the world into the Church, devouring its substance and causing a major rupture between the past at the present. An agenda designed to update became one that ended up overthrowing. The reasons are complicated but somehow, in all discussions of this topic, the idea that the 60s culture had much to do with it always figures into the equation.
Now, to young people today, to speak of the 1960s conjures up no lived context. One might as well be talking about the War of the Roses. So in an effort to figure out the meaning here, I pulled up an issue of Time Magazine from 1966, the year following the close of the Council. The Person of the Year: Young Generation. Let’s see what it says.
The magazine speaks of people under the age of 25. This was a gargantuan group, and this was wholly unusual. There was birth dearth during World War II, but the dam broke immediately following the war in 1946 and ending in 1957, causing what is called the “baby boom.” Pastors looked out over the flocks of faithful and saw, for the first time, far more kids than adults. To a great extent, this was a numbers game. The kids had the disproportionate influence.
Read this and ask yourself what might happen if you attempted liturgical reform in the midst of this.
This generation, writes Times,
looms larger than all the exponential promises of science or technology: it will soon be the majority in charge. In the U.S., citizens of 25 and under in 1966 nearly outnumbered their elders; by 1970, there will be 100 million Americans in that age bracket. In other big, highly industrialized nations, notably Russia and Canada, the young also constitute half the population. If the statistics imply change, the credentials of the younger generation guarantee it. Never have the young been so assertive or so articulate, so well educated or so worldly. Predictably, they are a highly independent breed, and—to adult eyes—their independence has made them highly unpredictable. This is not just a new generation, but a new kind of generation….
Reared in a prolonged period of world peace, he has a unique sense of control over his own destiny—barring the prospect of a year’s combat in a brush-fire war. Science and the knowledge explosion have armed him with more tools to choose his life pattern than he can always use: physical and intellectual mobility, personal and financial opportunity, a vista of change accelerating in every direction.
Untold adventures await him. He is the man who will land on the moon, cure cancer and the common cold, lay out blight- proof, smog-free cities, enrich the underdeveloped world, and, no doubt, write finis to poverty and war.
For all his endowments and prospects, he remains a vociferous skeptic. Never have the young been left more completely to their own devices. No adult can or will tell them what earlier generations were told: this is God, that is Good, this is Art, that is Not Done. Today’s young man accepts none of the old start-on-the-bottom-rung formulas that directed his father’s career, and is not even sure he wants to be A Success. He is one already….
This is a generation of dazzling diversity, encompassing an intellectual elite sans pareil and a firmament of showbiz stars, ski whizzes and sopranos, chemists and sky watchers. Its attitudes embrace every philosophy from Anarchy to Zen; …”Don’t trust anyone over 30,” is one of their rallying cries. Another, “Tell it like it is,” conveys as abiding mistrust of what they consider adult deviousness. Sociologists and psephologists call them “alienated” or “uncommitted”; editorial writers decry their “non-involvement.” …
In nearly all their variants, the young possess points of poignant common interest. From activists to acidheads, they like to deride their elders as “stick-walkers” and “sellouts.” Fond of such terms as “fragmentation” and “anomie” in sketching their melodramatic self-portraits, many of them assume an attitude that borders on nihilism….
Theirs is an immediate philosophy, tailored to the immediacy of their lives. The young no longer feel that they are merely preparing for life; they are living it. “Black power now!” cries Stokely Carmichael. “Action now!” demands Mario Savio. “Drop out now!” urges Timothy Leary. As Buell Gallagher, president of the City College of New York, sees it: “This generation has no utopia. Its idea is the Happening. Let it be concrete, let it be vivid, let it be personal, let it be now!”
With its sense of immediacy, the Now Generation couples a sense of values that is curiously compelling. It esteems inventiveness, eloquence, honesty, elegance and good looks—all qualities personified in the Now Generation’s closest approximations of a hero, John F. Kennedy. “Heroism and villainy begin with fantasy,” says Stephen Kates, 23, a brilliant concert cellist. “This generation has no fantasies.”…
For better or for worse, the world today is committed to accelerating change: radical, wrenching, erosive of both traditions and old values. Its inheritors have grown up with rapid change, are better prepared to accommodate it than any in history, indeed embrace change as a virtue in itself. With his skeptical yet humanistic outlook, his disdain for fanaticism and his scorn for the spurious, the Man of the Year suggests that he will infuse the future with a new sense of morality, a transcendent and contemporary ethic that could infinitely enrich the “empty society.” If he succeeds (and he is prepared to) the Man of the Year will be a man indeed—and have a great deal of fun in the process.
Well, the birth boom started before 1946 – and TIME's reference back to 1941 is probably more apt in hindsight than we realize.
But, more to the point, it's important to remember that the folks doing the reforming of the liturgy were not members of the Boom generation. They were generally not even members of the preceding Silent Generation (though that generation had a good deal more influence over the consolidation of the reforming impulse), but rather the generations born before the second quarter of the century. These were generations that had lived through at least one and, in many cases, two world wars (though, in the US, the effect of WW1 was negligible compared to Europeans and their empires).
To which I add, the whole article had a sort of Madison Avenue, MadMen "Let's run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it." So, I wonder if its authors were also Madmen of the Greatest Generation selling that nihilism?
We should have listened closer to Eisenhower's last speech as POTUS.
Look, the 1960s was an extremely turbulent period, and no institution: Church, Government or Education was spared from the zeitgeist of the times. If Vatican II had occurred in the mid-1950s the liturgical reforms would have been much more controlled, faithful to the texts of the Council, and in a spirit of continuity with the past. I also believe that if the Council had occurred in the mid-1970s, the implementation would have been much different, because by then, after a decade of revolution, people were wary and worn out. I could pick a decade out of a hat and get a better one than the 1960s.
It also depends on the continent. The 20's and late 40's/50's were turbulent for post-war Europe. I don't think Africa and Latin America have escaped the problems of corruption, the remnants of colonialism, military intrusion into the government and culture since the 60's.
Imagine it taking place today with the blogosphere, instant communications, and post-modernism. Would a pope even have a choice not to be online?
He is the man who will land on the moon, cure cancer and the common cold, lay out blight- proof, smog-free cities, enrich the underdeveloped world, and, no doubt, write finis to poverty and war.
OK…other than landing on the moon (and it wasn't even their generation that landed on the moon)… it's a complete description of the kind of Utopian Vision that persists among members of this group to this day.
For better or for worse, the world today is committed to accelerating change: radical, wrenching, erosive of both traditions and old values. Its inheritors have grown up with rapid change, are better prepared to accommodate it than any in history, indeed embrace change as a virtue in itself.
As concerns the Church, I think we can confidently say it was for the worse.
Sadly, this same "sixties generation" is in many instances, when it comes to church, still stuck in the "sixties and seventies" and has passed this "ecclesiastical culture" along to subsequent generations. However, there is hope in the current younger generation, it seems, for a return to the solidity that existed prior to Vatican II and the "cultural revolution" of the sixties and seventies. In fact, this need for solid focus has been with us throughout all of this liturgical/musical journey. In Seattle every Sunday evening at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, Compline is sung by a choir of men. Most of the music is chant, some of it is Anglican Chant and the motets are either newly composed or from the great tradition of Renaissance polyphony. The cathedral is packed with young people, standing room only! Clearly, this kind of music and liturgy within the context of a sacred space, sparingly lit, creating a sense of numinous (how often is that word used these days?)is speaking volumes to the young. [As and aside, this
Compline service is broadcast live on Sunday evenings via KING radio on the web].
So what does this have to do with the present? It seems that with the new Missal/Sacramentary there is an open door to move beyond the mundane musical and liturgical trivia that we have endured for so long in far too many parishes. It also is clear that this doorway is widening: look at the age of the people attending the chant intensives, the number of younger clergy and seminarians attending these and other events. Even some of the higher profile purveyors of Catholic church music, you know who they are and what they sell, are taking a slight swing from the trite to the more erudite. This all takes time to change; but, I hope and pray that we are well on the pathway to the open door through which we need to pass for a far better liturgical and musical future.
Charles says…
We should have listened closer to Eisenhower's last speech as POTUS
I once wrote a parody of it called "The Liturgical Industrial Complex". Amazingly, with just a few simple word substitutions, Eisenhower manages to describe the situation of Post Vatican II liturgy…particularly music…perfectly.
Presumably there is no preaching at that Compline service in Seattle, for it there was ever a Church stuck in the "sixties and seventies" and buying into every sort of modern-day equivocation as regards faith and morals, surely it is the Episcopal Church, and no amount of chant, Anglican or Gregorian, or of motets Renaissance or modern, can possibly sugar-coat that reality . . . or can it?
A lovely liturgy packed to the walls . . . in the cathedral of a denomination that, quite apart from women's ordination, champions unfettered access to abortion and the universal recognition of gay marriage . . . the moral of the story is . . . ?
Did that Baby Boomer generation have a disproportionate influence on the Church during the Sixties? Not really. Later on, yes.
Did certain elements of the older generation use them as an excuse to make changes, and did they use some of them as useful idiots? Did those changes rebound upon the Baby Boomers disproportionately, and did they continue to act accordingly? Yes.
There's a lot of reflexive "I am skeptical and highly educated" among Baby Boomers. But at least early on, large numbers of them were hugely credulous of any shady proposition or advertising that was put to them; many still are at the mercy of any wind that comes blowing. It's very sad.
The article left out two other mantras from that era: "All you need is love" and "I'm OK, you're OK" – though they may have come after the article was printed. But they express much of what we have seen in the Church and the Liturgy since that time…
Anonymous seems offended by my post. That was not my intent. Compline in Seattle does not have a sermon/homily spoken. The music and liturgy are the homily/sermon. Let's not forget St. Augustine's words about singing. The points you make about faith, morals, abortion are other matters that I was not in any way referencing since this is a blog about chant. It is true that the Episcopal church has "strayed like lost sheep". That is why many Episcopal congregations/parishes/individuals are crossing and have crossed the Tiber. I know, I'm one of them. My point was merely how chant and good liturgy and good, even conservative, music is attracting young people in great numbers.
Again, if I offended, my apologies.
GOR…
"All You Need is Love" was from 1967 (The "Our World" broadcast)…just a couple of years later.
"I'm OK, You're OK" was indeed a mantra of the decade… but it was the decade of the 70's, not the 60's. Had Harris penned it 10 years earlier, it might have ended up as "I'm Not OK, and You Don't Matter". It was a reaction to (and against) the very attitudes that the TIME article lauds. How times change…
Unfortunately Time Magazine morphed from a fairly mainstream publication to a left-wing rag. It's going out of business, it just doesn't acknowledge it yet!
Suburbanshee's observation's are spot on about the juvenile delinquents (in their 40s and 50s) in the 1960s. I was a teen and recall a woman in my parish of that vintage who insisted I wanted a "guitar Mass." I told her absolutely not. I had learned to sing chant and I had no interest in such puerile activities, but if she did, that was her business. Ironically, she called me an "old fogie" and I told her "no, I was a convinced and practicing Catholic."
Interesting discussion. Let me pose a bit of a contrarian question. Can we all agree with Church teaching that Vatican Councils are guided by the indefectible spirit of the Third Person of the Trinity? That said, is it possible there's a GOOD REASON the second Vatican Council was held during the turbulent '60's, & not some later, saner era?