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12. “A Saga of Sacrilege” - Evangelicals Respond to the Second Vatican Council
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255 12 “A Saga of Sac ri lege” Ev an gel i cals Re spond to the Sec ond Vat i can Coun cil neil j. young On the morn ing of Oc to ber 11, 1962, mil lions of view ers around the world turned their tele vi sions to the live cover age of the Sec ond Vat i can Council’s open ing as sem bly. An hour-long pro ces sion of twenty-five hun dred coun cil fathers, draped in all-white vest ments with match ing white mit ers on their heads, snaked across the grand square of the Vat i can and into the soar ing ma jesty of St. Peter’s Ba sil ica. At the end of the pa rade, car ried aloft in an or nate port able throne by a dozen sturdy at ten dants dressed in red, came Pope John XXIII, the vi sion ary of this great meet ing. While the spec ta cle and pa geantry rep re sented to many Cath o lics both the se ri ous ness and gran deur of such an oc ca sion, for the church’s crit ics it ev i denced again Roman Catholicism’s most out ra geous ex cesses and ex trav a gant tra di tions. Just a few weeks be fore Vat i can II com menced, the ev an gel i cal mag a zine Chris ti an ity Today had pre dicted the first day of the coun cil “will doubt less be marked by pomp and cer e mony such as only the Roman pen chant for spec ta cle can pro duce.” “To the 550,000,000 on Roman Cath o lic rolls,” Chris ti an ity Today con tin ued, “the de lib er a tions will be sa cred ses sions. To other mil lions they will be a saga of sac ri lege.”1 256 E part iii: taking it to the streets? Ev an gel i cals had long cri tiqued what they saw as the os ten ta tious rit u al ism of the Cath o lic Church, of course, but their pointed at tacks on Vat i can II had been shaped by the spe cific events of the re cent pres i den tial elec tion as much as they had by the longer gen eral his tory of ev an gel i cal anti-Catholicism. Two years be fore Vat i can II opened, John F. Ken nedy had be come the nation’s first Cath o lic pres i dent de spite con certed op po si tion from many Prot es tant lead ers. Joined by lead ers from across Protestantism’s theo log i cal spec trum, con ser va tive ev an gel i cals argued that a Cath o lic pres i dent would take or ders from the pope and allow the Cath o lic Church to cor rupt the pur ity of American de moc racy with its foreign rit u al ism and its anti-individualistic loy alty to hier archi cal au thor ity. A Cath o lic pres i dent, C. Stan ley Low ell of the anti-Catholic or ga n iza tion Prot es tants and Other Americans United for Sep ar a tion of Church and State (POAU) con tended, would show case his church’s ex ces sive rit u als and sym bols with lit tle re gard for Prot es tant aver sions to such things. Low ell im a gined a “daily cir cus of priests and nuns pa rad ing in full re galia in and out of the White House,” should Ken nedy take of fice.2 The Cath o lic pa geantry that a Ken nedy ad min is tra tion would pro mote, ev an gel i cal lead ers argued, would pro vide a dis trac tion from the true sin is ter po lit i cal am bi tions of the church to over take the na tion. “Now the Cath o lic gen ius for pol i tics is tak ing a new di rec tion,” Low ell con tin ued in his ar ti cle that soon be came a pop u lar pamph let cir cu lated through out the coun try, “It turns from king-maker to king. It would like, per haps, to...