In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

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...

Share