Leader, Volume 14 #1

Multi-Ring 60s Brought Lasting Change

The 1960s were an important time for me. And to judge from the rare passion at Compass's editorial board meeting about this issue, I am not alone. Everybody had opinions--and all but the youngest member had stories--about that watershed decade. As we were looking for ways to approach this theme, aspects of the decade poked, slid and jostled their way into my conscious memory.

Early on, the 1960s generated an enormous and pervasive optimism. Pope John XXIII was so attractive a religious leader that even skeptics wondered if there might not be some mysterious good in the church after all. Ecumenism flourished: Christians of all denominations and people of other faiths felt encouraged by this chubby peasant pope. Janet Somerville captures the excitement that surrounded John XXIII's inspired summoning of the Second Vatican Council. This risky, tradition-defying and brave papal action was of a pattern with the resistance to blindly held traditions that marked the decade.

Political events are as vivid a memory as the religious ones. Quebec's Révolution Tranquille, evoked here by Robert Chodos, began in 1960 with the election of Jean Lesage as premier; as historian René Durocher put it, "Everything came under scrutiny, everything was discussed." In the eyes of many, politics became for a time an attractive and honourable profession when the youthful John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president of the United States in 1961. The tragedy of his murder in 1963 underlined the pain of the struggle for justice and, until cynicism reasserted itself, inspired some to risk heroism.

For some others, political and religious motivations were combined. Hunted and frequently jailed, American Jesuit Dan Berrigan and his brother were among the ultimately successful leaders in the nonviolent struggle to end their country's tragic involvement in the Vietnam War. In this issue we get a glimpse of Canada's role in that conflict, as well as a picture of the tumultuous Africa of the 1960s through the eyes of a remarkable Polish journalist.

An important part of my own experience had to do with that combination of politics and education dubbed "student unrest." At universities from Montreal to Berkeley to Paris and Tokyo, and notably at Columbia University in New York, where I was studying art history, students started revolutions--or rioted, depending on who is writing the history.

Even more pervasive was the "sexual revolution," helped along by the emergence of "the pill." The diminishing of family structures and values and the emergence of gay activism were among the decade's other challenges to the procreative model of human sexuality.

The youngest member of the editorial board had an acute distrust of comfortable baby-boom consumers continuing to recall their supposed heroic social justice struggles during this decade. In this skeptical view, many of the 1960s changes have not survived the conversion of baby boomers away from social idealism towards security and affluence.

But in politics, efforts to reverse gains in civil rights have not been completely successful. And in the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council still troubles conservatives. They now have to cope with energetic factions that are no longer inhibited from pressing for reform on issues like the requirement for clerical celibacy or silent about the second-class status of women in the church. At least some of the events and values in the multi-ring 1960s arena have had lasting effects.

Peter Larisey SJ is an art historian and an associate editor of Compass. He teaches about art and religion at Regis College in Toronto.