The Council as Shibboleth: The Rhetoric of Authenticity and Liturgical Space after Vatican II

For anyone passingly familiar with the Second Vatican Council, impressions of the council and its implementation in the United States can conjure up distinct notions of a changed Catholicism beginning in the 1960s: priests celebrating Mass facing the congregation, the vernacular liturgy, increased roles for the laity through parish councils and committees, and the building and renovation of liturgical space. Invoking the post-conciliar Catholic Church calls to mind these and other elements that serve as markers of what changed after the council. Despite the council’s relative silence on liturgical space, church renovations served as a highly visible marker of either acceptance or rejection of the council. Using Sacred Heart Church (now a basilica) on the campus of the University of Notre Dame as a case study, this article argues that, after the council ended in 1965, the legacy and memory of Vatican II became a shibboleth in a hotly contested wave of church construction and renovation. In Vatican II’s role as this narrowly-defined rhetorical device, the council’s legacy was invoked by partisans embracing a view of conciliar and postconciliar directives emanating from the highest levels of ecclesiastical authority as either prescriptive or permissive. Both of these perspectives carry deep implications for the authority of the council itself and the factors motivating significant modifications to the space of Catholic liturgical worship.