3 Responses to “Prayers for Vatican II”

1. 1 Mark Jan 9th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

   I can’t help but share my sadness (and some background on my perspective) as I view all those “relics” being sold on eBay.

   I recently (last May) returned to the Church. To be fair, I was a C&E member at best - since my parents divorced when I was 10 years old. I never had any “faith” until now. I was a very proud and arrogant agnostic.

   When I was in College in the 80s, I lived down the street from the Cathedral de Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah and attended mass with my devout friend Dave fairly regularly because I loved the beauty of the Cathedral, the smell of incense, and the homilies given by the Irish Priest/Monsignor. Even though I was a self-professed agnostic, there was something about this place that I loved.

   When I returned to Utah in July to visit my ailing 92 year old grandmother, I attended mass at the Cathedral for the 1st time in 20 years or so. Physically, I didn’t notice any changes, per se. However, I did notice that there was no incensing or sprinkling of holy water.

   Being insulated, through distance and wondering about, as well as attending mass nearly exclusively at a Cathedral over the past 20 plus years of so, I am in shock at what I have been seeing when entering today’s parish churches. I wasn’t even a practicing Catholic – I can’t imagine how most of you feel. Your sense of loss must be profound.

   Since this time, I have attended Mass at 3 separate parishes in the Seattle area where I now live. Each of these parishes is hardly distinguishable from Protestant churches I attended on rare occasion with friends over the years.

   Forgive my ignorance, but what happened? I believe I understand the obvious root cause - Vatican II. But that doesn’t explain it fully to me… Why would parishes “junk” all the alters, lecterns, crucifixes, statues, monstrances, and stained glass windows, etc? How did the parishes go from point A to point Z? This didn’t happen over night, did it? What were all the little steps in between that led to this “Protestantization”?

   Were the parishioners/priests/bishops responsible for this embarrassed/ashamed with their “old” traditional Catholicism? Did this happen in other countries as well – specifically the ones not dominated by Protestantism? If this was the case, why didn’t they just join Protestant congregations?

   I feel that the Church of my Youth has been co-opted and taken away from me… All that was beautiful and holy has been “scrapped” both metaphorically and physically through Her visual symbolism – let along the obvious changes in the Mass itself. It appears that the spirituality of the Church has suffered greatly which these changes seem to reflect – a crisis in faith.

   Forgive me, I was away…

2. 2 Dust I Am Jan 12th, 2007 at 9:42 am

   Ambrosius, Even though it may look like I copied your idea on selling sacred artifacts, I did not see your post until today. See http://dustofthetime.blogspot.com/2007 /01/sacred-objects-on-ebay.html

3. 3 Gillibrand Jan 19th, 2007 at 4:19 am

   I have found quite a few prayers for the success of the Council on my way around Europe.

   I have so many cards now that I am going to put them together as a spectrum to show the year by year decay in the quality of holy cards since the Council.

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