http://www.stmarysgvl.org/

of St. Mary’s in Greenville (SC). In 2003 George Weigel attended the Solemn Mass of Corpus Christi there and soon thereafter wrote in his ‘Letters to a Young Catholic’ that

“St. Mary’s Church in Greenville, South Carolina ….. is as good a place as there is in North America to experience what Catholic worship is and ought to be ….. In 1963 the bishops of the Second Vatican Council taught that the liturgy we celebrate here and now is a participation in “the heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle.” The people of St. Mary’s, Greenville, might not be able to tell you exactly what that high theological language means. But in a sense they don’t have to; they know what it means, in their hearts and minds and souls, from their experience ….. in the liturgy restored and renewed as Vatican II intended.”

You said: “Whatever its attractions, there must have been some grave defects in the American Church immediately prior to Vatican II, or it could not have decayed so grossly in such a short period of time.”

From what I’ve read it seems that long before the Council, the Faithful, by and large, and especially the clergy stopped believing in the essential importance of the Church. They didn’t believe or at least they didn’t want to claim that the Catholic Church is the one and only true church. And for those who still believed It to be so, in effect it didn’t make any difference because salvation was available in other religions—not because of those religions but through Christ, as the clarification goes. Orthodoxy, good will, sincerity, and ignorance all lead to the same place. Where does that leave our identity? What makes Catholics any better off? In the analogy given by Arturo, what makes our product better than any other. We are told that we have the “fullness” of Faith, and the “fullness” of truth, and others are in communion with us but not quite “full communion.” Are there any distinct lines here? If all planes are going to Rome, I’m going to find the airlines that provides the most comfort.

In order for Catholics to get out of the Ghettos and into the great American melting pot, they had to renounce their birthright and become ordinary citizens. We have no more claim on the truth than anyone else. Our religion and our sacraments don’t make us better than the average Joe and we’ll prove it.

On the college scene, when correctness of faith and its practice ceased to be important, the void was filled by competition in the fields of atheistic sciences and the rush to be as open minded and as free-living as any secular institute. The Catholic college has lost it’s identity.

Then came the Council and our liturgy lost it’s distinct Apostolic form and now more resembles the Protestant sing along. Devotion to Mary and the Rosary was offensive to the rest of the world. Etc. etc.

I think that our approach to the Mass has to be more than, “We have two forms the OR and the ER; take your pick.” Can we put on the same par the Immemorial Mass of all times, the one handed down to us by Saint Peter and embellished by the early Popes with one that was made up by a commission that had six Protestant Ministers? Indeed, we have to know what it is we have and not be afraid to say it’s better.

I remember being part of a Legion of Mary praesidium here in Berkeley and we went door-to-door inviting people to come to the local Catholic church. I had to quit that praesidium since I realized that, if I couldn’t stomach the liberal service there myself, why should I invite others to do it? It would have been hypocritical to say the least. If I have a problem with the apologetics industry in this country, it is that it reduces the Catholic Faith to a set of propositions to be adhered to (the Catechism) and political allegiance (the Pope) and empties Catholicism of everything else.

Catholicism has an ethos. It is not an ideology but rather a way of life. If you want to become a Muslim or a Buddhist, this usually entails reverencing a foreign culture or learning to do things that are counter-intuitive (like learning to read Koranic Arabic or sitting in a lotus position). Any human thought system must have an unspoken language by which it transfers truths that cannot be grasped in spoken and written discourse. If I were sure what Catholicism looked and felt like as a whole in this country, I would be far more enthusiastic about “evangelizing”. But if I tell a non-Catholic to stop by his local neighborhood Catholic church on a Sunday morning, I have no idea for the most part what I am sending him into. And if I tell him to go to the local traditional Mass or the Novus Ordo in Latin, all I am doing there is sending him smack in the middle of a sub-culture that is waging a civil war on the rest of the Church. At worst, it will feel cultish.

So the Catholic Church has to resolve this identity problem before it can effectively evangelize the society in general. That might mean a reduction of numbers in the short run, but as I stated at the beginning, you can’t really sell something unless you know what it is you’re selling.