Here was the ethos of 1957

A brief follow-up on Shawn's outstanding and challenging post here, my eye fell on the following sentence from the December 1957 issue of Caecilia, stated as a given, not argued for, just presented as a summary of the prevailing view - a view which today is held by a dying-out minority, in light of new scholarship and a changed culture. I'm particularly struck by the idea that a Church council was be called amidst this ethos:

It is no longer the fashion to trumpet the astounding spectacle of the high middle ages. Indeed we have been enveloped by an opinion that almost everything since the seventh century has been a kind of devolution.