The Order of Christian Initiation of Adults is in full swing at parishes across the world. The restoration of the adult catechumenate is a fruit of the Second Vatican Council and one priest friend asked if I could recommend a short article that he could share with his OCIA class about what led up to the calling of Vatican II. I couldn’t think of one, so I wrote it, and share it today in case other pastors and OCIA leaders find it helpful.
Vatican II did not drop out of the sky. There were three essential precursors to St. John XXIII’s decision in 1959 to announce he was calling an ecumenical council: The first was spiritual and theological; the second was pastoral and existential and the third was personal and historical.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquests were a disaster for the church. Thousands of priests were killed. Pope Pius VI died in custody and his successor spent several years under house arrest outside Paris. The religious orders were disbanded through much of Europe and its empires beyond. The intellectual currents of the Enlightenment were anticlerical and often anti-religious: Écrasez l’infâme — crush the infamy — was Voltaire’s approach to religion and it was widely shared by the leading thinkers of the time. When Pope Pius VII returned to the Vatican in 1814 after the fall of Napoleon, the church was a wreck.
As is often the case in the life of the church, this season of persecution led to a flowering of spirituality, especially in France, that was as comprehensive as it was surprising. New religious orders were founded and old ones restored. The apparitions at LaSalette and Lourdes and Knock focused an increasingly widespread devotion to the Blessed Mother. Major shrines, such as the Basilicas of Sacre-Coeur in Paris and Brussels, were built and became objects of pilgrimage.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Michael Sean Winters, where this article originally appeared.
