Monsignor Charles Pope remembered:
When I was a teenager in the 1970s Jesus was presented in less than flattering terms, at least from my standpoint as a young man at that time. The paintings and statues of that day presented Jesus as a rather thin, willow-wisp of a man, a sort of friendly but effeminate hippie, a kind of girlyman, who went about blessing poor people and healing the sick. It is true he did that but usually left out of the portraits was the Jesus who summoned people to obedience and an uncompromising discipleship, the Jesus who powerfully rebuked his foes…The basic message of Jesus 1970 was “be nice” but 1970s Catholicism (which Fr. Robert Barron calls “beige Catholicism”) stripped away the clarion call of repentance and trumpet-like command that we take up our cross, that we lose our life in order to save it.
According to then Father (now Bishop) Robert Barron: In the late 1960s and early 1970s Jesus was familiarized…“To ‘get’ Jesus we have to de-familiarize Jesus…Jesus is more than a spiritual teacher.” He also went on to say that: The catechetical “dumbing down of the Catholic faith” in the 1960s and 1970s “was a pastoral disaster of the first order…”
What these two men, who rightfully lived through those troubled years, are expressing - is probably most fully symbolized in a sad line from the 1977 film “Saturday Night Fever:” the protagonist of the movie, disco lothario Tony Manero (played by John Travolta) asks his older brother why he is leaving the priesthood, his brother says: “One day you look at a crucifix, and all you see is a man dying on a cross.” During the Pontificate of Pope Paul VI, some 32,000 priests worldwide were laicized; today, Paul VI is “…more often presented as a ‘tragic figure’ who couldn't quite cope.” Yet, the scale of the “disaster,” using Fr. Barron’s description, went far beyond Rome or even the local parish – but into the realm of the deeply personal. When I entered the gay lifestyle in 1988, after spending most of my life (12 years) in Catholic schools, not on purpose – the majority of my friends were Italian and Irish Catholic boys. Despite what many would assume, that we probably left the Church because we felt rejected by an overly-conservative hierarchy that was obsessed with sex, contraceptives, and abortion, most of us just unconsciously drifted away from something that seemed wholly ineffectual, bland, and useless. It wasn’t a rejection of Christ or Catholicism, but a turning towards something that we perceived as entirely more coherent and substantial: the gay community. The hippy buddy Jesus of our youth – felt as outdated as the Simon & Garfunkel songs we were forced to sing by the folk-rock loving teacher. And, as Fr. Barron also remarked, Jesus become too familiar; we got to know Christ through a Jesus comic-book; but, pop-Catholicism failed when the Savior of the World appeared to have lesser powers than Superman. But, in the end, this went part and parcel with the larger focus in post-conciliar American Catholic Church - to humanize Jesus Christ resulting in the perception of Him as just another “spiritual teacher.” In the 80s, this careless smiling Jesus got absorbed into the burgeoning “New Age” movement; in a remarkable, but little read study of all modern occultist fads, the Vatican itself found that one of the most dangerous aspects of the whole experiment was “…the total recasting of the life and significance of Jesus Christ.”* Within this larger social and cultural context, in the minds of many – this new Cosmic Christ marked a radical shift in Christianity, and Catholicism: “For a growing number of people, absolute beliefs or norms indicate nothing but an inability to tolerate other people’s views and convictions. In this atmosphere alternative life-styles and theories have really taken off: it is not only acceptable but positively good to be diverse.”
Hence, today, we are all living with the results; those kids of the 70s and 80s have their own children; in a hugely similar way, as Jesus became buddy not God, they have turned out to be a generation of friends to their kids, not parents. In my era, few of my closest companions, including myself, could tout an accepting parent; most were displeased or somewhat tolerant; but, our parents came from a different time: my father, seemingly far less educated than myself, still had a firmer grasp on Catholicism, primarily due to having been raised in the Orthodox Byzantine rite branch of the Faith, with the beauty and substance of the liturgy supplementing a lack in catechesis; my mother, a convert, who came into the Church during the early 60s: really the last flowering of Catholic tradition when the Mass was still heard in Latin and the Legion of Mary was a powerful force to be reckoned with in the parish, she got a short, but packed crash course in Catholic dogma and moral theology that was so complete, decades later, she was able to give basic instruction to her son who had just barely crawled from the gay hell-hole. Tragically, things changed quickly – and everything, again – as Fr. Barron said, got “dumbed down.” What the Church is currently dealing with are entire generations who perceive Jesus as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – a kindly traveler that drifted down to earth and did some good things, but who is now gone back to the stars. Consequently, Jesus is remote, disinterested, and completely non-judgmental. Christ becomes your “Personal Jesus:” an elastic deity who shapes to our will: and, in terms of relating with our “gay” children – he becomes wispy, effeminate …a “girlyman.”
The consequences:
Overall, Catholics are split on whether homosexual behavior is a sin. More than four-in-ten (44%, including 59% of weekly Mass attenders) say it is, but nearly as many (39%) say it is not. And fully two-thirds of American Catholics think it is acceptable for same-sex couples to raise children, including 43% who say a gay or lesbian couple with children is just as good as any other kind of family….In a separate survey, nearly half of Catholics (47%) said they have a close friend or family member who is gay.