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Preface Vatican II was not simply part of the ebb and flow of the church’s tide as one age follows another. It was more like the sea rising to a new level and breaking through the rocks and cliffs of the shoreline, forming a larger sea with a new configuration, changing the topography. We have not yet been able to chart this sea or fully understand it. —    .  ()            Catholic bishops from all over the world gathered in Rome for the Second Vatican Council. The decisions they made during those sessions proved so powerful that Catholics continue to see it as the primary historical divide of the past century. Yet we do not fully comprehend its impact, especially as it relates to the laymen and laywomen who constitute the vast majority of the Catholic Church. This book seeks to address that shortcoming at least in part by exploring the dramatic way in which the Catholic laity transformed their religious beliefs and practices in the decades leading to and following the Second Vatican Council. It focuses on Catholics in one diocese, Pittsburgh, in order to facilitate the depth of study necessary to understand such a thoroughgoing transformation . This diocese is a particularly advantageous subject. Its leaders in the s and s played significant roles in the national ecclesiastical and cultural scene, and attempted to manifest in Pittsburgh their powerful visions of how the Church ought to be.As a result, Pittsburgh maintained a national stature in these decades that it did not enjoy in the years before or since. At the same time, Pittsburgh was not so aberrant in those years as to make its story unique. One can read the Pittsburgh story without worrying that other American dioceses had completely different experiences. vii I began this study more than a decade ago as an attempt to understand the impact that the Second Vatican Council had on American lay Catholics. I knew from my own experiences that a great divide existed within the laity between those who grew up before Vatican II and those, like myself, who came of age in the post-Conciliar Church. Older Catholics shared a set of references and behaviors that were alien to me. I could observe the gap readily and knew that those who discussed the divide, as many often did, attributed them to the Second Vatican Council. They relayed stories of liturgical and social change that emanated down the Catholic hierarchy from the bishops to ordinary lay Catholics . But no historian had yet produced a study of the social experience of the Second Vatican Council. It seemed to be an important and approachable topic for a dissertation. Though I was a young graduate student of social history immersed in the study of grassroots American social movements, I did not see the great change in lay Catholic experiences as the product of popular action so much as a response to reforms imposed from above. I knew that these hierarchically instituted changes had many implications for ordinary Catholics, and that they spurred lay men and women to set out in directions that Church officials did not anticipate, but throughout my research I continued to see the transformation as starting with the hierarchy and moving to the laity. The American laity in particular seemed quite content with the existing Church, which flourished among the increasingly affluent American Catholic community.Lay Catholics filled the churches in record numbers for Sunday Masses, sent their sons and daughters to seminaries and convents, and crowded Catholic schools beyond their capacities. The great questions about Vatican II, it seemed, revolved around the various ways in which Church officials and the laity interpreted and implemented the changes that emanated from the Council. My dissertation reflected this perspective. There were many reasons to adopt this interpretation, as so many people identified the Council as a critical turning point in Catholic history. Everyone in the s seemed to note the Council’s significance. The American mass media especially trumpeted its importance for society. Newsweek magazine quoted German theologian Hans Küng as stating that the Church had“initiated a new epoch in Christianity.” Life magazine told readers that the just concluded Council was “the most impressive religious event this century has yet seen.” The New York Times editorialized that the Council was “beyond question the most important held by the Roman Catholic Church since the Council of Trent four centuries ago,” and predicted that the Vatican II...

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