1964, in terms of the length of world history, was a mere 19 years after the end of WWII. Anyone born at the start of the war in 1939 was now a young 25 year old adult, those born in 1944, the year of D Day, now some 75 years on, were only 20 years old, so part of understanding the growing upheavals in society as the sixties continued, with the unraveling of so-called traditional values regarding faith-family-country, is to be mindful that these young men and women in the rice-paddies of Vietnam, on the streets of the cities, deeply impacted by family and societal history, were experiencing, to a large extent more than just the normal youthful/young adult growing up struggles: they were pressured and confused by the rapid changes in attitude and actions regarding basic life choices: career, family, identity, culture, race, religion, and the ever present question for human beings: who am I, why am I?
It should be noted, given the growing movement towards legitimizing the ‘love that dare not speak its name’ [1] was no longer willing to stay silent or hidden, there is a particular action of Pope Paul VI in 1964, not just for those struggling with remaining chaste when tempted to the disorder of same-sex activity, but for those also tempted by any of the surrounding culture’s view of the human body as a mere gratification tool: Pope Paul canonized a group of Uganda men and boys, St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, martyred under the pretense of religious persecution, when it point of fact it was because they refused the sexual advances and pressure from the King.
The continued upheaval in family life, the impact of birth control, the growing move to legalize abortion, the ‘free love’ mindset of the sixties, evil seeds have sprouted in our utter confused chaos about the truth and person of the human body, including the gift given to offer ourselves, bodily, to our spouse, open to, with the Holy Trinity, bring new life into His Kingdom. The relativist, materialist, gratification centered modern misunderstanding/ refusal to accept the objective truth about the human person, male and female has trapped and confused so many souls that recently the Vatican Congregation For Catholic Education has had to release a document on the whole issue of gender theory: The transformation of social and interpersonal relationships “has often waved ‘the flag of freedom’, but it has, in reality, brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. It is ever more evident that the decline of the culture of marriage is associated with increased poverty and a host of other social ills that disproportionately affect women, children and the elderly. It is always they who suffer the most in this crisis”. [2]
The war in Vietnam was spinning out of American control. Starting in the US and throughout the decade spreading globally, anti-war protests, in the US including draft card burning as the children of the WWII warriors were drafted, began tearing at societal cohesiveness along with race riots in the US, religious riots in some countries, revolutions and civil wars in others, and over it all loomed still the danger of nuclear war.
The United Nations would hold a conference and establish a permanent office regarding the
world economy which office and subsequent ‘official’ global outfits, like the World Bank, would become increasingly powerful and leave the people of the world under the thumb of the so-called one percenters.
From the post-war conference at Bretton Woods to the beginnings in 1958 of the European Common Market, morphing over the decades into the behemoth European Union of today with the open borders, the euro, the European parliament issuing both petty and draconian polices and laws impacting all member countries, to the secretive Club of Rome, [3] another child of the sixties founded in 1968, the year of major global upheavals, is it any wonder the world’s population is angry, angst filled, wanting to throw off the shackles of the elites whose policies and philosophies crush the weak, increase the numbers of homeless and poor, disdain and marginalize descent, envelop the human family in the darkness of the culture of death.
The philosopher Herbert Marcuse in his book ONE-DIMESNIONAL MAN: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, published in 1964, suggested that consumerism exists as a means of controlling people and as a result an elite few in society, currently referred to in our day as the 1% - or political/business/media elites – have succeeded in convincing people to buy ‘stuff’ wanted, rather than prioritize the goods needed to sustain family life. The result of these elitist obsessions: stakeholder profits, off-shore bank accounts, government policies that enshrine their views into law, because these same elites, using dark money, choose which parties to favour with massive amounts of campaign funding. As a result ordinary people are governed not through the democratic processes of the famous Lincoln dictum of government by and for the people, but by political ideologs who, under the guise of caring for the environment or civil rights, impose ill-conceived, mind, soul, tax burdens on people which do nothing for their daily family life, make them feel disdained as enemies of progress, cause anger and divisions. Since this is done mostly by left leaning, but sometimes by right leaning governments, these days the people of every country on earth are restless, angry, near the explosion point – all traceable to axial shifts of the 1960’s.
Ordinary people labour, serve in the military, police, fire and ambulance services, work the land, the forests, the mines, clean the offices, keep clean water flowing, etc., etc., but they have become, in the eyes of the elites, left leaning media included, as the less than properly progressive and are a drag on the efforts of the leftist elites to impose an all-inclusive-politically correct language-protect the planet-Christianity bad – all other religions or none good – etc. etc., ideology, leaving ordinary people crushed under the dark weight of the culture of death, relativism, frustration which has turned human life, family life from the joyous experience of being human into an existence where the very straw to build the bricks of a truly human society has been taken away and the bricks themselves are taken not to build a home for humanity but more towers for the babblers who consider themselves not only smarter than the rest of us, but smarter than God Himself.
THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family…..[4] Another important aspect, which has many applications to our own day, is the concept of the relationship between the State and its citizens. Rerum Novarum criticizes two social and economic systems: socialism and liberalism. The opening section, in which the right to private property is reaffirmed, is devoted to socialism. Liberalism is not the subject of a special section, but it is worth noting that criticisms of it are raised in the treatment of the duties of the State. The State cannot limit itself to "favouring one portion of the citizens", namely the rich and prosperous, nor can it "neglect the other", which clearly represents the majority of society….[5]
Even Albert Camus, no Christian apologist, asserted that: Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.
In Mao’s China of 1964 everything was controlled by the State, so labour camps were filled with anyone who dissented while in the Soviet Union 1964 was the beginning of what historians refer to as the ‘era of stagnation.’ Yet the Gulag remained full, and, as with China, secret state police oppressed the people with terror. The so-called multi-year economic plans rolled out in both communist economies were consistent failures, the people suffered immensely, yet in both countries if you were in the upper ranks of the regime you were also a one percenter. Both regimes hated and persecuted the Roman Catholic Church, though the Soviets had a modus vivendi with the Russian Orthodox Church, so well tuned it enabled the KGB to place their own men in seminaries, who, once ordained priests, reached the highest ranks including, it has long been believed, at least one of the Patriarchs of Moscow.
On the 11th of June a horrific event occurred in Cologne Germany which at the time was an evil virtually unheard of. Yet since then, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century and into our own day, has become dishearteningly familiar: the massacre of school children and their teachers. A man, who will not be named here, entered a Catholic elementary school and murdered 8 children and 2 teachers.
Globally the first recorded such massacre occurred in the United States in 1764, some two hundred years before the massacre in Cologne. Records show since 1900, but mostly since the latter half of the 20th century to date: 48 such mass killings in the US, 39 in various other countries, of which 6 occurred in Canada.
The motivations which enable the killers to such heinous acts are varied, even complex. The foundational source is neither complex nor varied: hatred. Hatred of self to the point of the inability to see other, such as the vulnerable child, as one like myself. This was Cain’s original thought, hatred born of jealousy born of self-disdain, exploding with murderous rage. We do ourselves and each other no favour if our understanding of war is reduced to some inter-nation conflict. Warfare, spiritual warfare, the struggle against hatred, discrimination, untruth, this is the daily life of the Christian and why it is imperative we defend life from the womb to the tomb.
The culture of death, sprouting especially in the contraceptive, abortion and relativist mentality
of the sixties, enables massacres of all kinds. We would do well to heed the words of Jean Vanier, who found l’Arche [6], in 1964: “The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable everyone to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.” ― Jean Vanier, Community and Growth
The first ‘super computer’, the CDC 6600 and the original BASIC high level programing language, both from 1964, were portals to modern personal, laptop and other computers, to things like the internet and while telegrams were still common, likewise so-called ‘snail mail’, and the option to speak with someone outside of an in-house or office ‘landline’, was to find a pay-phone: those mentioned portals have given us cell phones, various forms of chat-sites and texting – like the development of photography and film, radio and television, other portals and technological advances, predominantly intended for good purposes. However, aided and abetted by satan, the suggestor of disorder, and because criminals smell opportunities for profits, those same portals have led to sexting, the development of the dark and deep dark web, and sites that spew fake news, bullying, pornography, hatred, terrorism.
In 1962, with Pope John XXIII calling for dialogue with artists who were not Catholic, part of his outreach to other faiths and those of no faith, an Italian filmmaker, Pier Pasolini, accepted an invitation to discussions on the arts that was to take place at a monastery in Assisi. With the Pope himself in Assisi, Pier was waiting in his hotel room for the seminar to begin and finding a copy of the Gospels read through them and as a result conceived the idea of a film based on St. Matthew’s Gospel. He filmed it in black and white, using only Matthew’s words for dialogue, filming in a poor region of Italy releasing it in 1964. Some forty years later, another filmmaker would focus on Jesus’ Passion and film in the same area. [7]
In August Pope Paul VI released his encyclical on the Church, in which he noted: One part of this world, as everyone knows, has in recent years detached itself and broken away from the Christian foundations of its culture, although formerly it had been so imbued with Christianity and had drawn from it such strength and vigor that the people of these nations in many cases owe to Christianity all that is best in their own tradition-a fact that is not always fully appreciated. Another and larger part of the world covers the vast territories of the so-called emerging nations. Taken as a whole, it is a world which offers to the Church not one but a hundred forms of possible contacts, some of which are open and easy, others difficult and problematic, and many, unfortunately, wholly unfavorable to friendly dialogue. [8]
That detachment from Christianity, rejection even, intensifying throughout the sixties, continuing in our own day, can only be countered not by argument but by the Christian witness of the Gospel lived with our lives without compromise.
With the close of the third session of Vatican II, at the end of 1964, Pope Paul promulgated the Council’s document on the Church, Lumen Gentium: Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so, this Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires, by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, to bring the light of Christ to all men, a light brightly visible on the countenance of the Church. [9]
1] from the last line of: "Two Loves" by Lord Alfred Douglas, written in September 1892
[2] para. 43: https://www.lifesitenews.com/images/local/CONGREGATION_FOR_CATHOLIC_EDUCATION_EN.pdf
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
[4] http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html
[5] http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Arche
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_According_to_St._Matthew_(film) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Christ
[8] para. 13, http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_06081964_ecclesiam.html
[9] http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html
© 2019 Fr. Arthur Joseph
