The more things change, the more they stay the same...

What does this refer to and when did it occur?
Some exerpts as a clue:

The anti-intellectual, anti-rational tone of the proceedings was spiritually suffocating.

With a shock it dawned on me that I was witnessing a new, alarming, growing phenomenon in the Catholic Church. A movement of Catholic "Know-Nothings" was making a play for power in the Catholic Church.

And their first move was to discredit their Church before the world by mounting a witch hunt against her, supposedly to uncover her injustices, her subversive political activity and her disloyalty to the ideals of her Master.

In reality this witch hunt was meant to harass and weaken the entire ecclesiastical structure. These agitated Catholics revealed themselves fully at the conference.

They were ignorant of Catholic dogma, morals, canon law, philosophy, culture and history. But the most dismal aspect of their ignorance was that they did not give a tinker's damn about it. Indeed they gloried in their ignorance!

Their contempt for truth was demonstrated every time they tittered against papal teachings and the age-old doctrines of their Church.

Their contempt for justice and moral balance was demonstrated when they demanded that the Church change her doctrines on artificial contraception, abortion, the right to national defense, the right to private property, the right to reasonable profit.

Their contempt for authority — divine and human — was demonstrated when they shouted against laws reasonably restraining the use of liberty, when they rejected the divine plan for salvation, when they resented such metaphysical and physical differences as God established in the diverse vocations, sexes and services for the salvation of man.

Nor were these exalted souls really interested in "liberty and justice for all."

So what was it that these disgruntled, hysterical malcontents demand?

The following are some of the conference's mad demands which the Catholic Church simply cannot grant without ceasing immediately to be the true Church of Christ.

If she granted them, she would become a Church of the world, a snake pit of radicals.

She would become a center of doctrinal, moral, chaotic disorder and psychoneurotic distress.

The radicals demanded:

1) Divorced, remarried couples to receive Holy Communion while still living in adulterous unions.

2) Ordained women priests and bishops.

3) Women given the power to preach the Gospel with authority.

4) A reversal on the doctrine of artificial birth control.

5) A mitigation of the doctrine on abortion.

6) A teaching approving Marxism, Socialism and pacifism as doctrinally true and morally good practice.

7) A denial of the right to property and to reasonable profit.

8) The creation of a new Church, democratic, non-hierarchical in structure, a classless church.

Sadly, this sounds as if it could have been written today.

But this article is over 30 years olds - written a little over 10 years after Vatican Council II.

Here's the answer:

These are the observations of Reverend Vincent P. Miceli, who participated, as a delegate, in the 1976 "Call to Action" conference held in Detroit and sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as a culmination of the Church's Bicentennial celebration.

It was written for Homiletic & Pastoral Review, March 1977

I came across this doing additional research while re-reading Fr. Miceli's book "Women Priests & Other Fantasies".

For the article, click here.