Can People Really Be So Naive?-Follow Up to '50 Years After Vatican II, Are You Still Catholic? (Take the Quiz)'

Can people really be so naive!? Yesterday, I posted a quiz from the Remnant, 50 Years After Vatican II, Are You Still Catholic? (Take the Quiz). I shared it on Facebook in a predominantly Catholic group, and a fellow commented,

Vatican 2 and all it's innovations have been killing the Church. This was predicted at Fatima and was the reason Our Lady wanted the 3rd Secret of Fatima released by 1960. What we got from Rome instead was a false 3rd Secret released in 2000. The Secret was basically disclosed at Akita, Japan in 1973 by Our Lady to Sister Agnes. It speaks of apostasy coming from the top and great chastisement from God. The Liturgy and our theology have taken a hit from 1965 to 1975 especially. Find a latin mass. I am not going anywhere. I'm still Roman Catholic in spite of Rome.

Another fellow replied to his comment with this,

How is Vatican 2 destroying the church? And while the TLM is a beautiful Mass, it isn’t the only Mass that is a valid Mass. In fact it is an extremely good thing that we now have Masses in other languages besides Latin because now the Gospel can be spread more universally, and that is what the word Catholic means. Universal. And Vatican II helped make the Catholic Church more Universal.

Absolutely boggled that someone could be so naive, I did a bit of research. I found a fascinating table at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), at Georgetown University, titled  Frequently Requested Church Statistics. From that I culled these statistics and wrote the following reply,

Have you looked at the statistics on Mass Attendance, conversions, marriages in the Church, number of annulments, etc. since the Council?

I think if you check them out, your question will be answered. For instance in 1970, there were 160,931 nuns in the US. Last year there were 45,605. 1970, 59,192 priests. Last year, 37,181. In 1970, there were 18,224 parishes, 571 without a resident priest. Last year, 17,156 parishes, 3,552 without a priest.

In 1970, we had 9,366 Catholic elementary schools with 3.359m students. Last year, 5,178 schools with 1.306m students. In 1970 there were 1.089m infant and 84,534 adult baptisms. Last year, 660,367 and 38,374.

And in 1970 48% of Catholics attended Mass every week. Not good, but still far better than the 23% last year. In 1975, 7.5m Americans identified as 'former Catholics'. Last year it was 30m.

And all of these massive drops in vocations, baptisms, Mass attendance, parishes, schools, etc., have happened whilst the Catholic population of the US increased from 47.9m Catholics registered in parishes to 68.5m.

And I don't know what colour the sun is on your planet, but here on earth where it's yellow, the Church was universal long before Vatican II started its long decline!

I then added this,

Here are some figures from 1965, immediately after the Council compared to 2002 when the article from which they were taken was written.

Priests. While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000, between 1930 and 1965, since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half of these priests will be over 70.

Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes.

Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.

Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II.

Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight. In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389. With the Christian Brothers, the situation is even more dire. Their number has shrunk by two-thirds, with the number of seminarians falling 99 percent. In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only seven. The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.

Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million – from 4.5 million.

Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones’ statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.

Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.

Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend.

He replied to my comments,

Where is the proof that VATICAN TWO is the cause of all those things? It is one thing to spit out statistics, it is another to prove that something specific caused it.

To which I replied, 

Well, I lived through it, and I saw the mass exodus from the Church, I saw the parishes and schools being closed. At the same time I saw the statistics on an ever increasing population. To what would you attribute it? At the same time the evangelical protestant churches were growing by leaps and bounds, many of their new members being former Catholics.

When I was a young man, before the Council if the Jehovah's Witnesses came to your door, saying 'I'm a Catholic' was enough to make them leave. My uncle, who to the best of my knowledge never darkened the door of a church of any sort in his life, used to tell them he was a Catholic. It never failed. Now, with the total lack of decent catechesis, they search out Catholics, knowing that they're easy pickings for their cult.

Seriously, is it possible to be that naive? To be completely blind to the effects of Vatican II on the Church? What makes it even more obvious is the fact that many of the older Bishops and Priests, who have invested their lives in the 'Spirit of Vatican II' keep telling us that we're in a 'New Springtime of the Church'. If this is spring, God save us when winter rolls around!

Here's proof of what I mean.

It has taken the shortage of priestly and religious vocations to awaken in us an appreciation of a broadly based shared ministry and a realization that it is in the nature of the Church as the Body of Christ to be endowed with many gifts, ministries and offices. What some refer to as a "vocations crisis" is, rather, one of the many fruits of the Second Vatican Council, a sign of God’s deep love for the Church, (emphasis added) and an invitation to a more creative and effective ordering of gifts and energy in the Body of Christ. This is a time of great challenge and opportunity in the Church, not least of all because the gifts of the lay faithful have been flourishing in unprecedented numbers and in unforeseen ways."

From a Pastoral Letter from "Cardinal Roger Mahony and the Priests of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Holy Thursday, April 20, 2000"