The Year of Catholic Death: 1968, by Greg Cook

Although the Holy Catholic Church will persist until the end of time, there have been moments in time when it has seemed beyond hope of resuscitation. The year 1968 was one of those moments, so much so that we shouldn’t be afraid to call it “The Year of Catholic Death.”

1968 featured death in many guises: the death of sanity, as students and radicals rose up in bifurcated France, eldest daughter of the Church and bastion of the Revolution; the death of the old Mass, as many priests began celebrating facing the people and in the vernacular, coupled with the death of a proper understanding of the priesthood and consecrated religious life; the death of traditional morality, with the rejection of Paul VI’s greatest achievement, Humanae Vitae; the deaths of prominent Catholics Robert F. Kennedy, Thomas Merton, Romano Guardini, and Padre Pio; and, on a personal level, the death of my Uncle Dan, due, in large part, to trauma experienced in Vietnam. …

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