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R e v i e w
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This Rock
Volume 15, Number 10
 December 2004 
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Sour Wine in New Wineskins
In the years surrounding and following the Second Vatican Council, a strange phenomenon occurred among many Catholics: They perceived, with the ready help of the secular media, that the Church’s unchanging doctrines had become changeable—and even optional. This shift became most evident in the confusion and dissent following Paul VI’s prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae, which banned all forms of artificial contraception and predicted the results of the "contraceptive mentality."
Due to rumors and misinformation, American Catholics thought the Church had changed its stance and permitted the use of artificial contraception. In addition to this, churches were renovated with no regard for the real meaning of the liturgy. Statues were swept away and the stations of the cross were tossed into dumpsters to make way for "what Robert Barron calls ‘beige Catholicism,’ the colorless, odorless, tasteless, unimaginative, unpoetic variety of Catholicism in which he was raised" (84).
Fr. Andrew Greeley’s book The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council attempts to analyze and discuss these vast changes—what Greeley calls the Catholic "revolution" that took place in the wake of the Council. He calls upon sociological data from studies he performed before and after the Council and compares the "effervescence" resulting from the perception of change at the Council to the sweeping rebellion following the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution.
The book is divided into two parts: "Old Wineskins" and "The Search for New Wineskins." Throughout the book, the author employs Christ’s metaphor of wine and bursting wineskins to convey his view that the old, decrepit wineskins of the Church’s hierarchical structure and doctrinal authority couldn’t possibly hold the new wine of change brought on by the laity and "lower clergy" of the Church after the Council.
Greeley asserts that the very possibility of change gave rise to a sweeping expectation for change among priests and the laity. He later conveys the idea that dissent on the part of many priests and laity on many basic Church teachings actually changed the Church’s structures. For instance, he writes that "by 1970, the laity and the lower clergy had changed most of the structures of the Church they found objectionable—those regarding birth control, divorce, masturbation, authority, Sunday Mass and premarital sex (and later, homosexuality and in vitro fertilization). . . . In a period as short as perhaps five years, there had been a Catholic revolution the likes of which the Church had never seen before. Attempts to undo it have had no success" (66).
One might wonder exactly how these "structures" changed. One thing is for sure: There are dissenters in the Church, and for some reason they stay in the Church . The question of whether or not this rampant dissent represents a "revolution" is debatable. Even if it could be considered a revolution, against what or whom is the revolt? How have the laity changed the teachings of Christ?
Throughout the book, Greeley criticizes the Church’s hierarchy. There is an obvious disdain for the Curia and for the "higher clergy." When writing on the reaction of the laity to Humanae Vitae, he writes, "Blind obedience may have worked with peasants; it didn’t work with educated laity" (67).
There is also a latent disrespect for the Church’s authority and an overt tendency to speak of dissent as legitimate change. Much ink is spent on discussing the sexual morality of today’s Catholics, and in the conclusion of the book, Greeley calls for a reexamination of the Church’s sexual ethic. He writes: "There is much in the traditional Catholic sexual ethic that deserves careful consideration in the environment of the so-called sexual revolution. I suspect that the sexual ethic will be reconsidered when emphasis shifts from blind obedience to an emphasis on Catholic identity. This kind of shift, however, will only occur when Church leadership abandons its frantic, if bootless, efforts to restore the status quo ante and begins to listen to what the laity and the lower clergy are trying to say" (194).
Overall, this book examines the rampant dissent and sweeping changes that took place following the Second Vatican Council and calls them a "Catholic revolution." The book is flawed in that it mixes legitimate changes (those taking place with blessing of the Holy See), and those brought on by the "laity and lower clergy" in spite of the Church’s teachings. To discuss these issues as though they are on par with each other works to undermine the Church’s authority and gives the impression that decisions made by the laity are of equal value to Church teaching.
If we as Catholics were to truly embrace the Gospel as we’re called to, there would be a genuine Catholic revolution, one in which vital orthodoxy would take the place of dissent. Let’s pray that such an event takes place.
—Mike Sullivan
The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council
By Fr. Andrew Greeley
Berkeley
237 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0520238176
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