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Regarding Cardinal Tagle, all I can say is that failure to generate a thriving local church doesn't mean a lack of Cardinal allies. @hydroacetylene knows more about the politics side of the equation.
The Spirit of Vatican II is characterized by the time immediately preceding and immediately following the Second Vatican Council. I'm not sure what would have gone differently if this "Spirit" wasn't a real spirit, and a demon to boot. Watch the Puppet Mass or the Clown Mass and tell me there's no demonic involvement. (I'm not sure how serious I am being here. There are many who would take this allegation more seriously.)
Rewind a bit. Why did people feel like they could have a mass with clowns and puppets? Before Vatican II, there was a very specific rubric they were supposed to follow. After Vatican II, there was a very specific rubric they were supposed to follow, one that did not recommend clowns or puppets. The rubric changed, but the adherence to it stopped. Priests either started doing their own inventions, or stepped back from their leadership role in the liturgy and allowed lay people (predominantly women who were teenagers in the 1960s) to add things to the liturgy.
The Spirit of Vatican II, most plainly put, is the attitude many took when things that seemed unchangable began to change. Many Catholics didn't (and still don't) understand the difference between small "t" traditional practices, like liturgical rites, and big "T" Traditional Doctrine, like teachings on Christology, Sacraments, and Morality. If you were alive then, and thought the mass is something the Church taught could never change, and then the Church changed it...
The conclusion a lot of people made was that anything could be changed. And if anything could be changed, it might as well be changed by themselves, in their own image and likeness.
Let's rewind a bit further. Why were people dissatisfied with the Mass of Pius V? The laity felt disconnected from the mass. There were lots of abuses. The most common mass was a low mass, without music and most of the fanfare that fans of the Mass of Pius V like today.
It was common for priests to try to rush through the mass - I have heard people say that most masses they went to were 20 minutes long. In order to get through the whole liturgy in 20 minutes, the Priest would have to be mumbling quickly in Latin. There wasn't as much call-and-response like there is in the new mass. The experience of many Catholics was: go to Church, pray quietly while listening to a priest mutter to himself for 20 minutes, sometimes receive communion, and walk out.
High masses were glorious time commitments, low masses were checking off a cosmic checklist. Good and holy priests would have good and holy low masses. But there were many priests who did not fill this category, and many priests who felt like there was no point in enunciating a mass spoken in Latin to God instead of in the vernacular to the Congregation.
What was the new mass, the Mass of Paul VI, supposed to look like? Done according to the rubrics, it looks like this. According to the Vatican II document discussing the Liturgy, Sacrosantum Concilium, Latin was still supposed to be given "Pride of Place." Here is how the actual council of Vatican II wanted things to develop:
At no point do I see anything recommending deploying clowns.
And so it goes for the other Vatican II documents. Individual Catholics took minor developments in a certain direction (often a return to traditions and increased emphasis on teachings from earlier in Church History) and decided to make a complete rupture.
I focused a lot on the Liturgical side to this, but I could make similar write ups on what Vatican II teaches on interpretation of scripture, No Salvation Outside the Church, etc.
I have never had any trouble finding good parishes that mostly abide by the rubrics. Even so, I have noticed an increase in chant and Latin. Parishes have started doing the entrance antiphon - I never heard this as a kid. Our parish has two first-year priests, they seem a lot less gay and more knowledgeable than the older priests. There is a major vibe shift going on.
Ah, but like most Vatican II documents, Sacrosantum Concilium contains a poison pill clause.
And thus we end up with a double digit percentage of Catholic masses in South Louisiana on amy given Autumn Sunday morning involving prayers for the literal New Orleans Saints football team. After all, NFL football is indeed important to the peoples of South Louisiana. And how can one object that the “New Orleans Saints” do not harmonize with the true and authentic spirit of the liturgy? They are named for saints after all.
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Tagle not just presides over a local church that’s not doing too great(TBH, Francis’s record as bishop of Buenos Aires wasn’t much to write home about either), he’s also too far to the left for most cardinals(Francis was definitely a liberal candidate at the time, but he was seen as distinctly centrist by the standards of the liberal wing) with a set of financial scandals and some political baggage. Add to that the Philippines’ existing reputation for poor church governance and the simple fact that after pope Francis church governance is a much more salient issue than it was in 2013(which centered around recovering from the sex abuse crisis) or 2005(which centered around how to continue JPII’s mission of regrowth).
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This is a great post and very informative. I'll add a bit of my own experience.
You do a great job pointing out some of the absurdities of some masses, but that's certainly not the norm. I say this because i find the normie suburban XP mass to be even more oppressive. I reckon that most Catholics go to a normal diocesan church, they sing awful liturgical music from the OCP Gather book, they have a lay deacon give a homily that was emailed to them from the archdiocese. There is absolutely no energy.
To your point on lay people changing the mass. I find the music to be just the worst aspect of this. And i dont think any of this was done with ill intent. Its just a bunch of ex-hippie boomers singing modern catholic music in a folk rock style. I'll never forget the women who lead our music ministry when i was a kid. She sung kyrie elaison with hippie guitar riff every week. There's another problem - this style has been the normie suburban mass standard for a LONG time. At least 40 years as far as I can tell. These awful songs are now "classics" to the current crop of old people who are involved in the church. As i said, I dont want to be too hard on these folks because they are giving their time and energy to the church, but they are so misguided its a sin.
A few years ago I found a new parish that was run by a religious order in a major metropolitan city. I actually got coffee with the pastor before joining just to see who he was. He was a brand new pastor, so young. He had one other priest under him, also young, and a number of brothers to help out.
My church is the opposite of whatever the normie catholic mass is, but still fits within the vatican II / novus ordo framework. The priests have wide latitude to have a much more traditional mass if they choose. We dont use the OCP mafia hymm books. We have young cantors rather than some old lady choir.
Easter mass this year was the possibly the best easter sunday mass I've ever seen, surpassed only by Easter Vigial mass at this same church. Full on 1hr 45 min Solemn Mass (I remember as a kid at my normie suburban church that easter mass was pretty much just a normal sunday mass. the extra long mass was for palm sunday only). The church was more packed than usual as well, even for easter. Its a big church that probably fits close to 800 people comfortably, we rarely get 150 on a normal sunday and id reckon 400-500. I think the word is getting out. Attendance is surely rising at my parish.
All of this is to say that I believe @OracleOutlook when he says that the new generation of priests will demolish the spirit of Vatican II. I see it every week. I just hope that its crushed in time for me to enjoy it when im older. Its pretty much impossible to have something like this local to you right now except if your lucky or moving somewhere specifically because of a church.
Its also good to remind people that while Vatican II may have been a mistake, it does allow for a really beautiful and traditional mass. If only the normie parishes would learn this. I suspect it will be a while before that happens.
The normie parishes don't use gregorian chant for the same reason they don't use the roman canon- they're well aware they're allowed to, but Eucharistic prayer II is shorter and easier, and letting a deacon make up his own tone for part of the mass and saying the rest of it is easier than getting a properly trained choir(not that gregorian chant is hard, as music goes, but it's more difficult than a four hymn sandwich and some bad 'singing' with mostly talking).
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Tagging @OracleOutlook as well
The Wikipedia entry on Contemporary Catholic Liturgical Music lists "Popular composers." It's a hit list of boomers born in mostly the 1950s. Yes, the overwhelming feeling is that these people dabbled with hippie shit in the 60s but then decided they actually weren't down with the pagan beliefs and wanted to have a 401k and live in the suburbs.
If you look at the linked videos for the clown mass and, especially, the puppet mass, look at the preponderance of greyhairs. The boomers really did enjoy fucking up everything good and True.
I didn't go to my first Latin mass until my late 20s. It was a sung high mass on a Sunday. 90 minutes long. One of the first feelings I remember having after leaving was one of anger. I was so upset that my entire childhood and adolescence was spent at suburban novus ordo masses with pudgy retired hippies singing horrible contemporary hymns, Father Friendly sermons about "making sure Jesus is your best friend!", and an utter lack of energy, reverence, and glory. When you leave a latin mass now - especially a high mass - you feel like something meaningful happened. All of the motifs around spiritual nourishment and renewal that rung totally empty after a Novus Ordo actually come into tangible fruition.
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