Fr. Richard Cipolla
The New York Times had a lengthy article recently on the “People of Praise”, that immediate post-Vatican II phenomenon that involved mainly lay Catholics, like the parents of Amy Coney Barrett, the nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States, and her family, but which also included priests who became the clerical leaders of this movement (Mrs. Barrett's father was eventually ordained a deacon). This movement was part of what became known as the “charismatic renewal” of the Catholic Church. It was a reaction to both the “pay, pray and obey” mentality of the 1950s, a time when the Mass had become so objectified that it was difficult for the laity to understand the mysterium tremendum that Catholic Tradition insisted was at the heart of the worship of the Catholic Church in the Mass.
In the terrible confusion and void that marked the immediate post-Vatican II period in the Church, it is understandable that families who not only still believed in Christ and the Catholic faith sought out kindred spirits and formed deep bonds of faith within families and small groups. The excesses of these groups, which sometimes contravened the very Catholicity of the Church, should not make us forget their goal of preserving at a familial level a faith that was at once objective and yet subjective, open to personal manifestations of the Spirit to lead them into goodness and truth. And theirs was not only a reaction to the confusion after the Second Vatican Council but also a recognition that the Catholic faith in the United States was being crushed under the American steamroller of individualism and conformism.
