SELECTIONS BY PAULY FONGEMIE
[NOTE: THE STATISTICS PROVIDED HERE WERE MORE ROSY THAN TODAY SINCE THE SITUATION HAS DETERIORATED EXCEPT AMONG TRADITIONALISTS SINCE THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN 1977.]
APPENDIX VIII
The Fruits of Vatican II
The first paragraph of my book Cranmer's Godly Order reads as follows:
The Church is at present undergoing what is certainly the greatest crisis since the Protestant Reformation, quite possibly the greatest since the Arian heresy. Pope Paul himself speaks of the self-destruction of the Church and of the smoke of Satan having entered the Church. Priests and nuns are abandoning their vocations by the thousand; the number of vocations continues to decline; Mass attendance is plunging throughout the Western world; the most outlandish beliefs are put forward as Catholic teaching; the Church no longer makes any appreciable impact on society, as the dwindling conversion figures make clear.
One English Bishop wrote to me, with reference to this paragraph, that: "Fortunately all this is rabid exaggeration." As I would never knowingly mislead anyone I decided to make a careful check of the file upon which I had based this claim and discovered that what I had written was very misleading indeed - misleading in the sense that I had seriously under stated the extent of the decline. I should, for example, have begun by stating that: "Priests and nuns are abandoning their vocations by the tens of thousands." Here, then, is a brief selection of the statistics available, statistics which indicate the true nature of the so-called renewal which Archbishop Lefebvre is accused of opposing.
...
MASS ATTENDANCE
ENGLAND AND WALES
There has been a decline of about 16 per cent from 2,092,66 in 1962 to 1,752,730 in 1974. This decline must be considered in relation to the fact that there had been an annual increase before and for the first few years after the Council. Mass attendance figures are provided by the Catholic Education Council.
FRANCE
According to figures published by La Croix, the official daily of the French Church, on 30 June 1975, there had been decline of 66 per cent in Mass attendance among French Catholics. 41 per cent were attending in 1964, only 14 per cent were attending in 1975.
HOLLAND
Official figures issued by K.A.S.K.I. (the Catholic Social Institute), and published in Dagblad on 26 March 1971, reveal that 64.4 per cent of Dutch Catholics attended weekly Mass in 1966. This had declined to 47.2 per cent by 1970. According to the Catholic Herald of 18 May 1975, the figure had declined to 30 per cent by 1975. This represents a decline in Mass attendance of about 54 per cent.
ITALY
The Catholic Herald of 18 October 1974 cites a figure of 53 per cent in 1956 according to the Italian journal Epoca. In The Universe of 14 September 1973, Fr. S. Burgalassi, Sociology professor at the Lateran University, gave a figure of 27 per cent for regular Mass attendees. Given the accuracy of these, figures, they would represent a decline of 50 per cent.
The Tablet of 4 September 1976 quotes a figure of only 10 per cent of Mass attendees among Rome's working class which according to The Tablet: "seems to indicate that religious practice has notably declined during the past five years."
U.S.A.
In a survey based on statistics published in the official Catholic Directory, Time magazine, in its issue of 24 May 1976, revealed a decline from 71 per cent in 1963 to 50 per cent in 1974, a decline of 30 per cent.
VOCATIONS TO THE PRIESTHOOD
ENGLAND AND WALES
According to figures cited in The Times of 15 July 1974, there has been a 25 per cent decline in seminary enrollment since 1964.
FRANCE
Seminary enrollment declined by 83 per cent from 1963 to 1973 (Irish Catholic of 20 March 1975, citing the official French National Centre for Vocations). In 1973 151 new seminarians were enrolled and 422 left. In 1974 194 entered and 205 left. This represents a figure of 45 per cent more leaving than entering over the two years in addition to the 83 per cent decline in enrollment.
Figures published in The Tablet on 1 June 1974 reveal that as a result of deaths, defections, and the decline in ordination it was expected that the overall figure of 40,994 priests in France in 1967 would have declined to 21,820 by the end of 1575, a decline of 47 per cent.
HOLLAND
Figures taken from the same sources as those cited for Mass attendance reveal a 97 per cent decline in ordinations and a 97 per cent decline in the enrollment of students for the priesthood - but even these figures do not reveal the gravity of the situation. Every seminary in Holland had been closed by 1970 and the 108 students studying theology in that year were in university faculties, and the possibility of more than a very small proportion ever being ordained is minimal. Ordinations now number about a dozen in a really good year, with deaths and defections up to about 250 each.
ITALY
There had been a 35 per cent decline in ordinations and a 45 per cent decline in the number of seminarians between 1967 and 1973 (Irish Catholic, 7 August 1975).
U.S.A.
There had been a decline of 64 per cent in seminary enrollment between 1967 and 1974 and 25 per cent of American seminaries had closed, according to figures published in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review in October 1975. Over 10,000 priests have abandoned the priesthood since the Council (Time, 24 May 1976).
FEMALE RELIGIOUS
The world total of nuns had declined by 24.6 per cent in the four years 1970-1974. During this period the decline in the U.S.A. was 38.5 per cent (Catholic Herald, 9 May 1975). Since the Council 35,000 nuns have abandoned their convents in the U.S.A. (Time, 24 May 1976). The total number of nuns declined by 50,000 from 1966 to 1976 (figures from the official U.S. Catholic Directory - published in The Wanderer of 27 May
1976).
CONVERSIONS
ENGLAND AND WALES
Catholic Directory gives figures of 15,794 for 1959 and 5,253 for 1974, a 67 per cent decline.
U.S.A.
Twin Circle of 9 October 1977 gives 123,986 for 1964, and 80,035 for 1976.
BAPTISMS
ENGLAND AND WALES
1963 - 136,350
1974 - 80,587. A 59 per cent decline. (Catholic Directory figures.)
U.S.A.
The National Catholic Register, in its 12 September 1976 issue, reported a "downward skid" of a 49 per cent drop in Baptisms from the pre-conciliar figure.
Conclusion
The figures provided in this appendix denote the general pattern of Catholic life in the West since the Council, a pattern of stagnation and decline. Figures from such countries as Germany and Belgium which have not been cited also conform to the prevailing trend. No attempt has been made to assess the trends in Africa or Asia. It will also be noted that some countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain exhibit a much healthier pattern. In such countries as Croatia, Poland, and Slovenia the Church appears to be flourishing and vocations are plentiful. An important contributory factor is that in these countries the Church is under pressure from the government and that Catholicism is a means of manifesting both nationalism and anti-communism. There is also evidence in these countries of a considerable discrepancy between the external profession of Catholicism and the private observance of its teaching in such spheres as marriage. It is also a fact that the "orientations" of Vatican II have been implemented to a much lesser extent in countries behind the Iron Curtain - not least because of the restrictions imposed on the printing of Catholic books. [Web Master's note: Perhaps persecution will be of benefit to the Church in America when it arrives full-blown rather than the periodic sortie from the power elite, but given the American penchant for rationalization, I have serious doubts.]
It needs to be pointed out that this appendix has been limited to an examination of just a few statistically verifiable trends such as Baptisms. Equally detailed figures could have been given concerning, for example, the decline of the Catholic educational system in the U.S.A., where Catholic schools and colleges are closing at the rate of one a day; or the decline of the establishment Catholic press throughout the West, the figures for the London Universe quoted on p. 13 are by no means untypical. There are also unmistakable trends for which precise figures are not available such as the catastrophic rate of lapsation among the young -an optimistic figure for British teenagers would be about 65 per cent, well under the rate in most European countries. It must also be borne in mind that a very high proportion of those still claiming to be Catholics have become de facto Protestants by making themselves the sole arbiters of which aspects of the faith they feel inclined to accept. In the U .SA., for example, 83 percent of Catholics have rejected the teaching of Humanae Vitae. (Time, 24 May 1976.)
Some liberals would claim that there is no justification for placing responsibility for the decline documented here at the door of the Council. Post hoc does not equal propter hoc they would argue. It is interesting to speculate upon what their reaction would have been if all the figures cited here had been reversed, so that where a decline is recorded an increase had been registered, and traditionalists had then argued that these increases could not be attributed to the reforms specifically intended to initiate a renewal. Had this happened there would have been very little mention made of post hoc does not equal propter hoc within the liberal camp.
And what of the excesses, the veritable madness that has swept through the Church since the Council? Is it fair to describe them as the fruits of Vatican II? Mgr. Lefebvre is condemned for claiming that they are - but those who perpetrate these excesses also claim that they are acting in the "Spirit of Vatican II" and no action is taken against them! To bring this appendix and my book to a close I cannot do better than quote from p. ix of the preface to Malachi Martin's Three Popes and the Cardinal.
"Except in the opinion of the very ultra - and dyed-in-the-wool conservative mind, this Vatican Council is considered to have been a boon to Christianity, a vast advance for Roman Catholicism, and an unmitigated success as an expression of the popular will. It, together with Roncalli's name [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli - Pope John XXIII] and memory, is invoked as justification for the most extraordinary and diverse actions: a guerrilla massacre in Columbia, homosexual marriages in Manhattan, denials of the Virgin Birth, of the Resurrection, of the pope's infallibility, the exit of whole groups from religious communities, tactile prayer, Satan - Jesus cults, masses celebrated by women in drawing rooms, rock masses, confetti resurrections, groupie encounters, nude altar boys, polygamous unions, communal yoga, Communist governments, black revolutionary Jesuses, female Holy Spirits, full-blooded revolt by Northern European theologians, and a whole litany of clerical posturings and theological asininities which an earlier narrow-minded age would have consigned to the flames of a faggot fire, but which today are considered to be legitimate exercises of human rights."
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