The History of Catholic America
The Seventies and Eighties
In the years after the Second Vatican Council, the Synod of Bishops was convened as a new advisory board to the pope. During this period, efforts were made by the pope to expand the College of Cardinals to include more members from the United States and other countries. To reflect the ethnic diversity of the American church, two Polish -American Archbishops, John Cardinal Krol and Edmund Cardinal Szoka, were elevated to the College of Cardinals along with Joseph Cardinal Bernadin and Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, both Italian-Americans. At this time, the bishop of Pittsburgh, John J. Wright, became cardinal along with John J. Carberry and Terence J. Cooke of New York. Shortly thereafter, in 1969, Cardinal Wright and the American Church were honored by his appointment to the pope's curia as Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy. Cardinal Wright relocated to Rome to assume his new position at the Vatican. He achieved the highest rank attained by any American in the Church.
As the 1970s began, Catholic parishes of America were still in the process of embracing the many changes now brought to their religious life. Parish councils, English (rather than Latin) masses, jazz and folk masses, and in many cases Spanish masses, congregational singing, lay commentators, repositioning of the altar, participation (rather than spectatorship) in the Mass, were some of those changes. Priests and Protestant ministers visited each other's pulpits.
Though parish men seldom dug church foundations anymore, they did form work crews for painting, decorating, repairing, refurbishing, just as the women have always attended to the scrubbing, polishing, beautifying, and fund-raising. Masses held in private homes - now by choice rather than necessity - brought a special closeness to many.
A movement called Marriage Encounter taught husbands and wives new ways to reach out to each other.
A phenomenon of the seventies was the emergence of the "new ethnicity," a resurgence of interest and pride in the diverse nationalities that form American Catholicism. A new emphasis on neighborhood, parish and family by Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Croatians, and others served as an antidote for the ruthlessness of the day.
Social concerns continued to occupy the Church and her people. In 1970, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops helped negotiate a settlement between striking farm workers and owners. Pro-lifers of all religions joined the Catholic people in the Right To Life battle against abortion and "right to die" laws.
The seventies brought such seemingly innovative concepts as the "team ministry" pastorate in which clergy and laity worked together on certain projects. In actuality, this is an extension of the work done by Christ and His apostles as they labored together among the people, serving individual needs. The priests within the group set an example for the greater team ministry of the faithful in their responsibility to share in the mission of Jesus.
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Emphasis here is on the signing of The Declaration of Independence by Charles Carroll, a Catholic signer, who as one of the richest men in the colonies would have lost the most by signing. The clock indicates the time of Washington's death. At top, the Colonists, Negroes, and Indians, who profited by the Declaration. |
"The weekend was an experience of the unity and universality of the Church. Besides those from every state in the Union, there were charismatic Catholics from Australia, Israel, France, Mexico, India, Colombia, Korea, Haiti, Holland, and Germany. Even more striking than this geographical universality was the religious unity of liberal and conservative, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, the sophisticated and the simple."
Leo Cardinal Suenens, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, Belgium, who was a speaker at the Notre Dame Conference, said later:
"We are in a springtime of the church and we must be open to what is going on. Something is happening and we must approach it in a spirit of wisdom... The charismatic renewal today is for each of us a grace coming to our souls. It is a grace which vitalizes everything which in ages past became too formalistic, too ritualistic. We are coming out of that formalism more and more."
On Christmas Eve, 1974, men and women of good faith throughout the world heard Pope Paul VI's designation of 1975 as a Roman Catholic Holy Year, a new year of grace, of spiritual renewal and reconciliation, prayer, penance and devotion.
That tradition had roots in God's command to Moses: "And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee for you. . ." (Leviticus 25:10). First at fifty-year intervals, then at quarter-centuries, a Holy Year has taken place with some regularity since inaugurated by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300.
What characterized the modern Holy Year was the theme of reconciliation proclaimed by Pope Paul. The reflection of changes in the contemporary world inspired the Church to more progressive social and political reform during the past twenty-five years than at any other time in its long existence.
In keeping with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul aimed the Holy Year of 1975 toward spiritual renewal for each individual and the reconciliation - of man with God, race with race, young with old, nation with nation, East with West. In his own words:
"We have... been convinced that the celebration of the Holy Year not only can be consistently fitted in with the spiritual line adopted by the council itself - which it is our responsibility to develop faithfully - but also can very well be harmonized with, and contribute to, the tireless and loving effort being made by the church to meet the moral needs of our time, to interpret its deepest aspirations and to accept honestly certain forms of its preferred external manifestations."
On Sunday, September 14, 1975, in one of the more important events of the Holy Year, and in the presence of tens of thousands of reverent spectators gathered in St. Peter's Square, Pope Paul VI celebrated the canonization of Blessed Mother Seton. An estimated 16,000 pilgrims from parishes throughout America were present at this momentous twentieth-century event.
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821) was the first native American elevated to sainthood. An Episcopal socialite who converted to Roman Catholicism, her loving endeavors concentrated on the poor and the sick and led to the founding of the Sisters of Charity. She has also been immortalized throughout the world by the many schools and libraries named in her memory, including Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey; Seton Hill College, Greensburg, Pennsylvania; and Elizabeth Seton College in Yonkers, New York.
Her challenges were far from purely spiritual. She dealt effectively with the problems of a neglectful father, a despondent husband, ne'er-do-well sons, high-handed clerics, feuding religious orders, and constant creditors. Her lot was never easy and seldom pleasant. Her salvation, in fact her sanctity, was worked out in the endless toil of an American wife and mother, widow and nun.
More than a century and a half ago, Mother Seton called her daughters together to bid them farewell. And she left her loved ones a final phrase that remains as part of her legacy to all: "Be children of the Church."
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