People today often ask questions like: “What in the world happened at the time of Vatican II, that the Church seemed in such an unholy hurry to change? Why were the changes so drastic and so sudden? What were the causes, the motives, the expectations, the assumptions about reform and its expected fruits? Who were the main actors? Was it planned out or random? Who benefited (cui bono)? How responsible were the bishops for it, versus the middle managers, versus the laity?” and so forth. It can be very hard to disentangle so many threads.
This is why professional historians exist. Professor Hanael Bianchi has spent 10 years researching, at the nitty-gritty level, how Vatican II was received and implemented in a particular (and very important) diocese, using archival materials, period documents, and firsthand accounts. The resulting book, A Liberal Revolution: The Implementation of Vatican II in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, will leave a permanent mark henceforth on all studies of the period.
Bianchi answers the above questions, one after the next – and brings the receipts. In an era of endless podcasting and spitballing, the disciplined work of research is more necessary than ever if we wish to gain a well-documented and well-organized account of complex events, while overturning faulty theories and clumsy generalizations from (…yes…) every part of the ecclesiastical spectrum.
While the Second Vatican Council has generated a large scholarly corpus, A Liberal Revolution is the first close-up history to be written of a single diocese in the years immediately following it. Using the see of Baltimore as a case study and drawing exclusively on primary sources, Bianchi reconstructs how the decrees of the Council in faraway Rome – and, more tellingly, the new ideas and attitudes prompted by it – were implemented and experienced on the local level, in parishes, seminaries, religious communities, retreat centers, and chancery offices.
The claim that the Church “embraced the modern world” after Vatican II is well known; this book sharpens it by focusing specifically on liberalism as the framework through which implementation took place. The study begins by tracing the dismantling of inherited traditions, then turns to the rise of individualism within Catholic life and governance, before arriving at its most original contribution: an analysis of the emergence of a dense church bureaucracy that embodied and enforced a liberal worldview.
Although the story told in these pages is a tragedy, A Liberal Revolution is no polemic; rather, it is a work of careful historical analysis grounded in years of research. It will not only contribute to the scholarly understanding of Vatican II and its aftermath but also offer guidance to Catholics seeking a path toward genuine renewal, grounded in a thorough and accurate assessment of what actually happened. Understanding the whats, hows, and whys of postconciliar disruption – a topic that, so far from fading into the past, has grown to be a most urgent task for the present – finds in Bianchi a uniquely capable guide.
NLM readers will find especially valuable Part 1, “Attack on Tradition and the Rise of the New,” divided into “The Priesthood Revolts,” “Novelty in Music and Architecture,” and “Liturgical Confusion.” Among other topics, Bianchi's presentation of the data concerning how the different age groups reacted to new policies shows that radical change was in fact extremely popular with the younger set of seminarians and priests (at least, until they left the seminary or the priesthood, as many of them did), and, at the same time, that diocesan policies repeatedly found ways to empower these reformatory forces while marginalizing older priests who were skeptical of the changes or even wished to continue with the traditional Mass in Latin. There is also liturgically relevant material in Parts 2 and 3.
Famed sociologist Dr. Stephen Bullivant, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion and Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St. Mary’s University in London, calls A Liberal Revolution “a richly detailed account... an impressive piece of scholarship, beautifully written, very compelling, and highly recommended.”
Dr. Anne Hendershott, Professor of Sociology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, concurs: “With historical precision and narrative force, this book shows how reforms reshaped Catholic life in unexpectedly negative ways, with consequences that still reverberate through the Church today.”
Veteran journalist and founder of the Catholic Culture site, Philip Lawler, finds in the book a crucial tool for understanding the bureaucratic mentality that has morphed into synodality: “[Bianchi documents how] the post-conciliar era saw a spectacular proliferation of offices, boards, and commissions at the diocesan level. This new bureaucracy developed its own interests in spurring change, regardless of either the formal directives of the Council or the wishes and needs of the faithful.”
Finally, poet and liturgist Barry Spurr sums up the effusive reactions of the book’s initial readers: “The importance and necessity of this book cannot be overstated. Bianchi reveals the destructive effects of the late 1960s mindset at the parochial level.”
A Liberal Revolution is available in paperback, hardcover with dust jacket (both pictured here), or ebook, either directly from the publisher Os Justi Press or from any Amazon site around the world. At both places, you can “look inside” to read the Introduction.
This is why professional historians exist. Professor Hanael Bianchi has spent 10 years researching, at the nitty-gritty level, how Vatican II was received and implemented in a particular (and very important) diocese, using archival materials, period documents, and firsthand accounts. The resulting book, A Liberal Revolution: The Implementation of Vatican II in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, will leave a permanent mark henceforth on all studies of the period.
Bianchi answers the above questions, one after the next – and brings the receipts. In an era of endless podcasting and spitballing, the disciplined work of research is more necessary than ever if we wish to gain a well-documented and well-organized account of complex events, while overturning faulty theories and clumsy generalizations from (…yes…) every part of the ecclesiastical spectrum.
While the Second Vatican Council has generated a large scholarly corpus, A Liberal Revolution is the first close-up history to be written of a single diocese in the years immediately following it. Using the see of Baltimore as a case study and drawing exclusively on primary sources, Bianchi reconstructs how the decrees of the Council in faraway Rome – and, more tellingly, the new ideas and attitudes prompted by it – were implemented and experienced on the local level, in parishes, seminaries, religious communities, retreat centers, and chancery offices.
The claim that the Church “embraced the modern world” after Vatican II is well known; this book sharpens it by focusing specifically on liberalism as the framework through which implementation took place. The study begins by tracing the dismantling of inherited traditions, then turns to the rise of individualism within Catholic life and governance, before arriving at its most original contribution: an analysis of the emergence of a dense church bureaucracy that embodied and enforced a liberal worldview.
Although the story told in these pages is a tragedy, A Liberal Revolution is no polemic; rather, it is a work of careful historical analysis grounded in years of research. It will not only contribute to the scholarly understanding of Vatican II and its aftermath but also offer guidance to Catholics seeking a path toward genuine renewal, grounded in a thorough and accurate assessment of what actually happened. Understanding the whats, hows, and whys of postconciliar disruption – a topic that, so far from fading into the past, has grown to be a most urgent task for the present – finds in Bianchi a uniquely capable guide.
NLM readers will find especially valuable Part 1, “Attack on Tradition and the Rise of the New,” divided into “The Priesthood Revolts,” “Novelty in Music and Architecture,” and “Liturgical Confusion.” Among other topics, Bianchi's presentation of the data concerning how the different age groups reacted to new policies shows that radical change was in fact extremely popular with the younger set of seminarians and priests (at least, until they left the seminary or the priesthood, as many of them did), and, at the same time, that diocesan policies repeatedly found ways to empower these reformatory forces while marginalizing older priests who were skeptical of the changes or even wished to continue with the traditional Mass in Latin. There is also liturgically relevant material in Parts 2 and 3.
Famed sociologist Dr. Stephen Bullivant, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion and Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St. Mary’s University in London, calls A Liberal Revolution “a richly detailed account... an impressive piece of scholarship, beautifully written, very compelling, and highly recommended.”
Dr. Anne Hendershott, Professor of Sociology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, concurs: “With historical precision and narrative force, this book shows how reforms reshaped Catholic life in unexpectedly negative ways, with consequences that still reverberate through the Church today.”
Veteran journalist and founder of the Catholic Culture site, Philip Lawler, finds in the book a crucial tool for understanding the bureaucratic mentality that has morphed into synodality: “[Bianchi documents how] the post-conciliar era saw a spectacular proliferation of offices, boards, and commissions at the diocesan level. This new bureaucracy developed its own interests in spurring change, regardless of either the formal directives of the Council or the wishes and needs of the faithful.”
Finally, poet and liturgist Barry Spurr sums up the effusive reactions of the book’s initial readers: “The importance and necessity of this book cannot be overstated. Bianchi reveals the destructive effects of the late 1960s mindset at the parochial level.”
A Liberal Revolution is available in paperback, hardcover with dust jacket (both pictured here), or ebook, either directly from the publisher Os Justi Press or from any Amazon site around the world. At both places, you can “look inside” to read the Introduction.
