I attended a parish function the other day on the subject of the legacy of the Second Vatican Council. At one point, we were invited to fill out a little blue paper with this question:
I am grateful for the work of Vatican II because ________________.
I thought for a while, without success. Then Joni Mitchell came to my rescue:
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
