This post is a retrospective, a look forward, and an invitation.
First, a reminder of what this Substack is about:
As I’ve read fiction and history about 20th and 21st century Catholic life, I’ve noticed a gap. We have loads of stories about pre-Vatican II Catholic life in all forms. We have plenty of narratives about, say, the 90’s on.
But what about the mess in between? What about those years from right after to the Council to the first few years of John Paul II’s pontificate? Those years in which, as someone who graduate from a Catholic high school in 1968 recently told me, “One day the nuns were in full habit teaching us Aquinas, and the next they were in regular clothes playing us the Vatican Rag.”
Then it struck me: there are a lot of these stories. I don’t just want to tell mine. I want to hear yours.
So let’s tell them. Let’s listen to them.
I’m just concerned that in the smoke bellowing from current intra-Church battles, this slice of the past isn’t appreciated for the impact it’s had on the present.
Doing so might help various generations and ideological partisans understand each other a bit more beyond labels and judgment, beyond mythologies of either smoldering ruins or the New Jerusalem.
So first - if you’ve not shared any stories yet, if the topics of posts haven’t yet touched on your most vivid takeaways - please feel free to share below. About any aspect of this time. No preaching or arguing. Just stories, memories and reflections. You must be a subscriber to comment, though.
Secondly, a reminder of where we’ve been so far:
Coming attractions:
Lay ministry, especially at Mass
Face-to-face confession and the reform of the rite
Youth retreats (finally getting to the title of this blog)
Church design
The Charismatic movement - and others
No, this is not a blog with a wide reach, but it’s here. It exists for one reason: to witness to the fact that history is never, ever simple - no matter how badly we want it to be.
I have posted before, but this story never fit anywhere here, and I haven't seen it discussed anywhere out there either. When I was a kid in Ontario, at some point - probably around 1983 or 84 - our parish (and for all I know our whole region) switched to square hosts for a while. It was odd, because our teachers were usually pretty apathetic about religious instruction, but they "catechized" us endlessly about this change, presumably under orders from above. I remember being shown films explaining that the poor sisters were going broke because of all the waste from cutting out circles, and we had to do this to save them from bankruptcy, and also all those reasons given in the old days for round hosts were dumb and outdated. For months, we heard homilies touting the change as well.
The new hosts weren't just square, but almost as thick as a graham cracker and just as crumbly as you'd expect given that. After a short time, round hosts came back (a cease-and-desist order from above perhaps?) but continued equally thick and crumbly for several years, before eventually the traditional thin round hosts returned.
The odd thing about the whole episode is just, why? It's hard to imagine any reasons anybody was so set on imposing such a change, other than quite malicious ones.
I thought I'd share something on the place where I worship. The parish church where I attend Mass when I’m in South Africa (my home is in Zimbabwe, a challenging place to live and work) is one of nine churches in this province served by a single priest, who drives long distances over mountain passes to say Mass after Mass each Sunday. Like many rural churches, the shortage of priests has affected us badly. It’s a small church and usually crowded despite the poor acoustics and draughtiness. It stands on the outskirts of the agricultural town and faces into gale-force winds. The architectural shortcomings of the church came about because it was built in the 1970s during the era of what was called 'Roomsegevaar' (the Roman peril, or threat posed by Rome to the Protestant state) and many country towns refused permission for any Catholic churches or institutions to be erected in their municipalities. To get building permission, the parish council had to comply with local prejudices: no church hall or manse allowed; no spires or steeples or signage; the church itself could not be built on the main road, had to face away from the town (hence the draughty entrance), and could only be built in the Black location, away from then-white suburbs.
Anti-Catholic prejudice in South Africa increased after 1948 with the implementation of apartheid and threat to Catholic mission schools as racially segregated education became law. In 1953, under the leadership of Archbishop Denis Hurley, the Catholic Bishops Conference declared apartheid a heresy and government opposition hardened. This earlier history of hostility and even persecution is very different from anything I had encountered in Zimbabwe: in the Western Cape, security police surveillance and harassment of Mass-goers was intense in early years and attendance fluctuated. That history is still part of the community’s determination to keep the church going in the absence of priests and with dwindling youth attendance.
I’ve always found it an endearingly ugly church, more of a chapel, badly lit with too-narrow clerestory windows (based on 1950s’), too many pews and folding chairs too close together, shabby furnishings, terrible acoustics. Pigeons get into the angled roof trusses and the ceiling leaks in winter. The materials haven’t aged well: clinker brick, unpainted concrete, quarry tiles and varnished pine. Parish churches built around South Africa in the late 1940s and early ‘50s were modern, 'cheap and cheerful' for a minority church in an austere post-war economy. Ecclesial design out here gestured towards Modernism, an enduring fondness for the International Style of the 1930s. Less stained glass, more swoopy roofing, reinforced concrete, slasto paving and cast-iron railings. I’ve always loved the unassuming interiors of many churches built back then, but in the heat of summer most have ventilation problems due to hinged steel windows and the lack of through-breezes.
The missional outreach after World War II, especially from the affluent Catholic churches in Germany, influenced ecclesial architecture here as much as liturgical reform in Vatican II and that is seen in bigger urban centres with cathedrals and basilicas. We’re grateful for what we do have and hope to keep going.