I loved Leave it to Beaver, growing up!

Ah, the good old days:

Polite language, modest dress, traditional family, moral lessons, and an all-around healthier society.

What’s not to love?

Just one big problem: No God.  He never was discussed in a single episode; the family never went to Church; they were in the public schools; no crucifixes or religious decor in the home; the children never prayed.

It was a Masonic paradise: Morality and idealism without God.

That was the same superficiality afflicting the Church in the 50’s:  A veneer of correctness, but the foundation was crumbling; rosaries and saints took precedence over encyclicals and doctrine.  And after two world wars, combat (spiritual or material) was a fatiguing concept, and Catholics were losing the taste for battle.

Can’t we all just get along?

Compared to today, 50’s Catholicism (and Leave it to Beaver) appear positively idyllic.  But the main problems with both passed largely unnoticed by most, and the consequences were not slow in following:

Wally Cleaver, in a reunion special, was a divorcée, and the Church fled its own past and heritage in pursuit of a nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr, which, like Leave it to Beaver, had not God for its foundation and raison d’etre.