How Vatican II Crept Into My Seminary

Last Monday I described the content of Bernard Haring’s 1954 The Law of Christ, the “before and after” moment of moral theology. What happened next was the not-so-gradual impact of European thinking upon Catholicism in the United States. I entered the seminary in 1962, and I was living away from home for the first time, so I was somewhat preoccupied with being a homesick high school freshman. In our dormitory building was a bulletin board controlled by one person, the “prefect of discipline,” a very stern priest whose assignment, to put it mildly, was to “keep the herd obedient with a cattle prod.” I don’t think he was aware of The Law of Christ. One day a typed message went up on the board that a solemn Mass of the Holy Ghost would be offered for the success of the Ecumenical Council. I had very little idea of what this was all about.
 
Occasionally I regret that I lived the Council years isolated from parish life, because now I would have liked to observe how local parishes learned about the Council. My window was a conservative boarding school seminary, and the faculty was, of course, trained in old school spirituality and religious outlook. In my junior year (1964-65) a young priest was assigned to the faculty, a friar who was then in his doctoral studies, I believe. (The rector of the seminary, I found out later, resented the fact that this priest had permission from the order to attend class in New York City on Wednesdays.) His name was Regis Duffy, O.F.M., and he taught music, which on my report cards was listed as a grade in “chant,” and he directed the choir. I liked him, as he was friendly to the students, a rare commodity then. However, he kindly told me I wasn’t cut out for the choir. Years later in Washington, when I cantored and played my twelve-string guitar at his Masses, I never let him forget that.
 
Regis, by his choice of musical selections, introduced us to the first wave of liturgical changes, such as “antiphonal” singing of the Psalms in the vernacular for popular participation, and to such new Church composers as Joseph Gelineau.  His preaching opened us to the changes in approach to moral thinking. Regis was the Sunday homilist on the day of the Selma civil rights march led by Martin Luther King (recaptured in the recent film “Selma”) and he talked about our need to stand in solidarity with Negroes in their struggle for justice. Regis would go on to become one of the most celebrated liturgists of the later twentieth century.
 
In my senior high school year, our religion course was based upon the advances in Scripture study, essentially the same methodology I use today in the Tuesday blog entry on the Sunday Gospels. At the time, though, the shift from a purely historical to a theological understanding of the Gospel was somewhat over my head and my grade in religion suffered. (How does someone get 68 in religion—in a seminary, no less?) But discussion about other changes in the church was filtering into our seminary. Although Vatican II was just ending, there was anticipation that there would be changes in religious habits, and our school paper ran a question and answer post about our reactions to that. I was a strong advocate for changes to the religious habits of sisters, long before the Council. I felt it was unfair that sisters should be so encumbered with cloth and starch from head to foot, when by contrast priests and friars could change out of their habits into comfortable clothes for sports and off hours. My aunts at home, however, scoffed at sisters who experimented with new habits. “They just want to show off their legs!”
 
Seminaries, and certainly ours, were notable for strictness and austerity. Somewhere around the end of the Council, the rector allowed an afternoon snack of bread and jelly. Not the Second Coming of Christ, to be sure, but a major change in a highly structured world that signaled to us that whatever Vatican II meant, it was introducing a more relaxed church experience. A greater change was introduced in my junior year (1965) when we were permitted to go home on Easter Sunday for a week, and in 1967 we could go home for Thanksgiving weekend as well.
 
The academic year 1967-68, my college sophomore year at the same seminary, saw a turnover in our faculty with the infusion of a half-dozen newly ordained friars who were deeply immersed in the post-Vatican II era of theology. I certainly enjoyed the change of atmosphere, but I found myself worried about moral theology. My seminary professors had adopted the Haring outlook, and several of my cousins were getting married and wrestling with the birth control controversy. Birth control—use of the pill—was hotly debated in 1967 (Humanae Vitae was not issued till 1968) and truth be told, on matters of morals I tended to be a “manualist.” My reasoning was the domino theory: if one moral law can change, then the whole teaching system of the Church would collapse. Some Cardinals feel this way today about Pope Francis’ suggestion of new pastoral options for the divorced and remarried.
 
Just before I went home for Thanksgiving in 1967, I sat down with my theology teacher and laid out my fears. He had discussed Haring and the new moral methodologies in class. He gave me two hours of his time to explain from Biblical, historical, and pastoral sources how some teachings were being approached in a new light, and he explained the principal of “fundamental option.” I trusted him and I never worried about it again. In fact, when our science fair came around in the spring of 1968, with the help of the town pharmacist, I created an exhibit of the chemical process of the pill then in use. As our science fair was open to the public, more than a few couples stopped by to talk, and I put them in touch with the young friar faculty members. Not everyone was happy with my exhibit, but I didn’t get tossed from the seminary. And I had a close-up view of the revolution started by The Love of Christ.