expanding American circles to make use
of drugs, just as the sexual revolution emanates outward from the
college campuses into the ranks of the middle class. The new left, as a
distinct movement, ended. But as some commentators have pointed out,
the reason why it ended as a distinct movement is because it entered
the mainstream of American culture. This is the environment in which
the attempt is made to apply the Second Vatican Council. It would have
taken enormous effort, enormous resolve, enormous planning, enormous
discipline under those conditions to have conveyed to Catholics what
the meaning of the Council genuinely was.

But, as we have said, there was a general lack of educational
program, of forethought, and there was, in my opinion, an amazing lack
of concern about how the authentic Council could be presented to
people. There wasThere is much
speculation among more conservative Catholics as to what exactly went
wrong. How did the high promise, the high optimism of Pope John XXIII
seem to get subverted? And I think that the one most fundamental
explanation above all others is that as soon as the Council was over it
became entangled in the great cultural revolution that was called the
sixties. It got assimilated into cultural revolution so that a lot of
people saw the renewal of the Church as merely being an aspect of the
larger cultural revolution of the sixties.

It will take decades to assess accurately, justly, correctly,
objectively, the outcome of the Council. It has often been pointed out
that historically Councils do not fully realize what they intend to do
for some decades afterwards. That was certainly true of Trent, and the
same