The Post-Vatican II Catholic Culture

For more than two generations now, we have been robbed of the fullness of Catholicism, which is our birthright. With a few thankful exceptions, our collective acquaintance with Scripture is piecemeal, our knowledge of tradition is pathetic, our hymns are embarrassing, our religious art is ugly, our churches look like U.N. meditation chapels, our ethics are slipshod, and our aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities are so far from being sublime that they almost look ridiculous...For over two generations our faith formation has been shaped by a media culture that has portrayed our Church as a dinosaur that is either an impediment to social progress or simply irrelevant.

Philip Blosser, 'The Kasper-Ratzinger Debate and the State of the Church', New Oxford Review (April, 2002) 18-25 at p. 25, quoted in Tracey Rowland's Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, New York: T & T Clark, 2010, 152.