Charles Coulombe on 'Pre-VII' and 'Post-VII' Catholics

An interesting look at an odd phenomenon. The boomers tend to be  post-VII Catholics and the young pre-VII. (I say 'tend' because Charles and I are both boomers!)

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A very dear friend of mine (who is a very good man in himself) recently declared to me that he is a "Vatican II Catholic," while I am a "pre-Vatican II Catholic." Now, apart from the fact that I am much younger then he is, having been born the day Kennedy was elected, it did cause me to think a great deal about the current "generation Gap" in the Church. To a great degree it is invisible to older Catholics of my friend's stripe - partly because in most Church organisations and dioceses, the offices are filled with like-minded peers of the same age, and partly because the Church is an hierachical organisation that does not really encourage any dissent (God help the Seminarian in many diocesan seminaries who would like to wear the cassock, let alone learn the Traditional Mass). Most young people such folk know either keep their views to themselves or (far more numerous) simply "graduate from Church" at Confirmation, rarely to go to Mass again. Most young men to-day who gravitate toward a religious vocation are inspired to do so by a Traditional concept of the Salvation of souls, and often by the teaching and examples of St John Paul II and/or Benedict XVI. For such, the elderly "Vatican II Catholics" whom they encounter in Seminary and in Vocational discernment programmes are often abusive in the extreme. It will be different in two decades.