Stuck in the Sixties

...Some people and some parishes immediately following Vatican Council II seemed way out ahead of the pack in the implementation of that council. They may even have wanted to give the impression that they were the true implementers of the council and that the others would eventually catch up with them.

But now they seem fossilized, frozen in the '60s. The church has simply not moved in the direction they thought it would: it took a different turn. Now instead of being avant-garde, these parishes of the '60s appear just out of step and idiosyncratic. ...

...Many then saw the priest as purely functional, the hired help at their beck and call, not really needed, since the laity were soon to take over the church from the clergy.

Often we noticed that that group, when they had control, turned out to me more "clerical" than the clergy. ...

--Archbishop Rembert Weakland in the "Herald of Hope" column, Catholic Herald, October 24, 1996