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In the middle of my junior year (1970-71) at Loyola University of Los Angeles (now Loyola Marymount University), we had two distinguished guest lecturers: Rev. Hans Kung and Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand. The contrasting manner of their reception at Loyola, as well as their personal effect on me, makes for an interesting story.
First, some background -- though I do not mean to single out the Jesuits for criticism here; I believe the situation at their colleges was not significantly different from other Catholic colleges of the day. The whole atmosphere of Loyola at the time was one of progressive optimism, the throwing off of the shackles of outdated authority, and freedom-combined-with-sincerity -- this was all man needed. Talk of truth and error (except in math and science), good and evil, much less of personal obedience and self-sacrifice, was rarely heard.
My first theology class at Loyola was a combination of leftist revolutionary propaganda and pick-and-choose existentialism. The lecturer eventually outlined seven options for human life, including nihilism and absurdism as courageous possibilities (with no mention of saintliness as the Catholic ideal), and told the students to just choose a perspective and be sincere and steadfast. My first philosophy class was a special topics course in the evolutionary "optimism" of Rev. Teilhard de Chardin, overlooking both original sin and redemption on the way to the omega point. I was a bit shocked, but I interpreted it all positively, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. I thought perhaps they were trying to strengthen my faith by presenting challenges to it -- though I wondered why there was no effort expended to defend the Faith or answer the objections presented by modern thinkers.
Humanae Vitae was never really discussed, just ridiculed. A common line repeated to students at the time was, "Why would you want a 70-year-old celibate in your bedroom with you?" (Of course, Paul VI had no desire to be in anyone's bedroom; but he did feel bound to remind us that God -- the God of life and love -- is there.) Once when I went to the head of the theology department to discuss Humanae Vitae, he opened by noting, "Well, of course, we can throw out the idea that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth."
At one point, a friend and I approached this same chairman to arrange a special topics readings course he had encouraged us to take on "the Humanity of Christ." We met with him to choose the books and, similarly, he opened with, "What we want to get into here is heresy." My friend and I chuckled, thinking he was joking. Very soon we realized that he was quite serious. We were somewhat shocked at first, but also, I'm afraid, impressed with both the chairman and ourselves. We felt the thrill of being on the cutting edge, of daring great and forbidden things; we were to be courageous pioneers, ready to defy even the authority of the Church. (That our "daring" might be more akin to that of Judas was at least still a dim worry in the back of our minds -- though not a worry encouraged by our environment.)
Another theology professor, who advised my small-group Honors seminar (and who further advised us that he had lost his faith while studying in Rome, and encouraged us to "grow up" and be "realistic and skeptical," as well) insisted that we read Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange as one of our Honors "classics" and see the newly released movie, condemned by the Church at the time for nudity and violence. (The original Honors Great Books reading list had been thrown out by the Jesuits, by the way; they didn’t want to impose on the poor students. Each seminar group of eight students chose its own "classics" by democratic vote. We read every camp classic of the 1960s, mostly instead of the Great Books.) Our adviser drove us to the theater and promptly produced a bottle of bourbon, passing it around to the students (some underage), saying "This is the kind of movie you have to see drunk."
Later that year, the Jesuit scholastics put on a musical skit about the changes in the Church titled, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff!" It was rather well done, very funny and enjoyable, but it was also one of the last years they had enough Jesuit scholastics to put on a skit. In 1970 it was not yet evident to many people that the results of many of the changes would be so bad -- optimism and forward-thinking ruled, and I was swept along with it. I had declared a psychology major, and therein was also treated to an extremely relativistic view of the human person -- a mixture of Freudianism, behaviorism, and humanism -- with little to be said for ethics or for God.
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