SELECTIONS BY PAULY FONGEMIE
Counting the Cost
Despite the efforts of the press, at no time did the Second Vatican Council capture the imagination of the ordinary Catholic. [Emphasis in bold added here and infra.] For the man in the pew, "the Council" is little more than a word which is used by the man in the pulpit to justify liturgical change. If he wonders why his children no longer learn anything about their faith at school this is also the result of "the Council"; if he asks why nuns keep changing their habits, or have abandoned their habit altogether, the answer is "the Council." But it would be very hard to find a man in the pew who could name, let alone had read, a single Council document. The alleged enthusiasm which the Council has evoked among ordinary Catholics is simply an instance of liberal Catholics, clerical and lay, projecting their own preoccupations upon the laity at large and presuming that whatever they happen to want at a given moment must naturally be the ardent desire of the whole Church.
The apathy of the ordinary laymen to "the Council," in England at least, was illustrated dramatically at a "Welcome Home" rally organized for the English and Welsh Bishops in January 1966. The liberals who had organized the rally somewhat rashly presumed that only the vast expanses of London's Albert Hall would suffice to cope with the multitudes who would come flocking not simply to welcome home their bishops but give public witness to their enthusiasm for "the Council." Even the Albert Hall, they presumed, could not possibly accommodate the anticipated throng and so (in those pre-Women's Lib. days) admittance was restricted to men only. To the embarrassment of the organizers, so few men turned up that those who were up in the balcony were requested to come down and sit in the stalls. [The Tablet, January 22, 1976, p. 110]
This is a graphic illustration of the apathy which has since marked the attitude of ordinary Catholics towards "the Council." Even those who number themselves among the intelligentsia and profess familiarity with and support for the teaching of the Council would often find themselves hard put to demonstrate any first-hand knowledge of the official documents. To give just a single example, one Terence Wynn, a Catholic journalist who is now editor of The Universe, had no hesitation in stating in the Catholic press that Mass should be celebrated facing the people "because the bishops of the world meeting at the Vatican Council considered it a necessary liturgical change so that the laity could become more involved in the offering." [Catholic Herald, February 26, 1971] This makes it clear that the man who is now editor of Britain's largest Catholic paper has not even glanced through the Liturgy Constitution; had he done so he would be well aware that it does not even mention Mass facing the people, let alone insist upon it as a necessary change. Nonetheless, Terence Wynn, like so many others of his ilk, has no hesitation in delivering pompous admonitions to Catholics who, unlike him, actually have read the Council documents and are able to offer informed criticisms of reforms purporting to be enacted in their name. Similarly, in his editorial of 21 May 1976, Wynn informs any of his readers who might criticize the introduction of Communion in the hand by the English and Welsh hierarchy that this "is still an accepted way of receiving the Sacrament in Eastern Catholic and Orthodox rites." This, of course, is the most utter nonsense imaginable and a typical illustration of the intellectual standards to be expected from liberal propagandists.
The cost of the Council in material terms has been calculated and put on record. The Holy See alone spent about £3,430,000 which does not, of course, include the huge sums dispensed by national hierarchies. The two coffee-bars alone cost several hundred million Lire and it is estimated that half-a-million cups of coffee were drunk. During the course of the Council 234 Council Fathers died - twelve cardinals, 68 archbishops, 148 bishops, three prefects apostolic, and three superiors of religious orders. [The Tablet, December 18, 1963, pp. 1428/1429] On a more positive note, some very attractive commemorative stamps were issued by the Vatican Post Office. But where the life of the Church is concerned it will never be possible to estimate the cost of the Council. It has probably made itself most manifest where the most precious and most essential characteristic of the Church is concerned - her unity. During his General Audience of 31 March 1976, Pope Paul himself lamented the
infractions, the temptations, the paralyses, which have been manifested within the Church, with regard to the principle of unity, even after the Council ... The fine flourishing associations that used to group organically the ranks of the People of God (even in a form which always left room for improvement), have broken up to a large extent ... The ecclesial community par excellence, the parish, has also been subject in many places to a slackening of its usual ties, often so beautiful and in conformity with the Catholic spirit. The people of God no longer feels itself "one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:52) as were the believers of the first generation ... an excessive and often incorrect application of "pluralism" has shattered, in various fields of ecclesial life and Catholic activity, that exemplarity, that harmony, that collaboration, and therefore that efficiency, which the presence of the Church in the world is justified in expecting from her children.
Catholic organizations have broken up, parish life has slackened, Catholics are no longer of "one heart and one soul," harmony and collaboration within the Church have been shattered - and it is the Pope himself who tells us this! Not least among the factors which have contributed to the disintegration of unity within the Latin rite has been the application of the principle of "pluralism" in the liturgy to the extent that the Mass, which enshrines the Sacrament of Unity, differs in its form of celebration not simply from country to country but from parish to parish - and each stage of this process has received the formal approval of the Pope.
If any attempt is to be made to assess the cost of the Council in spiritual terms then all that can be done is to adapt the words of Tacitus and state: "When they create a wilderness they call it a renewal." "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." Tacitus, Agricola, 30
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