This article, in Crisis Magazine by George Sim Johnston, discusses the issues around trying to bring to fruition that vision the Council intended.
Not personally remembering any of the pre-Vatican II era, I cannot comment on what it was like. However, after reading the Crisis this article, I do get a better sense of the merits of the kind of progressive approach to living the Catholic life that some have been promoting.
I can certainly see the problems that result from a widespread mentality that such an orthodoxy consisted mainly in following the prescriptions of what it meant to be Catholic. Not that everyone necessarily believed and lived this way, but I can see how the great majority of average people would have. Plus, for priests, such an approach would have been only one or two steps removed from the problems inherent in clericalism; the mentality that at least partly contributed to the scandals with which we are now dealing.
However, on a point to which the article alludes, the Council never advocated a "dumbing down" of Catholic faith and morals as a solution to the problem. Yes, forced belief is a problem, but the alternative to that is not that any belief is a good belief. We currently live in a phase of Church history, where the dominant mentality of the laity, as a consequence of the mistakenly understood freedoms of Vatican II, seem to think that believing in Church teaching no longer matters.
My take on the Council documents, and the teaching of this Pope in particular, is that the freedom from restraint granted by the Council should result in a freedom to search to understand and accept those teachings willingly; not a freedom to believe whatever one wishes.
Sort of like the story of the Prodigal Son, where the son realizes after an abuse of freedom that he was better off at home. This realization made him truly free, whereas his brother, at the end of the parable, still feels enslaved as he lives according to his father's rules.
Those who have gone through a conversion or reversion experience understand what I am talking about, and can relate to the Prodigal Son. Thus, the great joy that comes when Church teaching, that was previously rejected, can finally be understood and embraced.
I'm not talking down to those to have trouble with Church teaching; rather, I'm saying we ought share in the joy of renewal and revival when freedom leads one back to the arms of the Church. Because that was one purpose that the aggiornamento of the Council was supposed to bring about. So that's a good thing.
[Via Catholic Sensibility]
