Posted on 05/29/2013 11:28:22 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
With his new book, “American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America” (Ignatius Press), mild-mannered Russell Shaw has become the bull in the china shop of U.S. Catholic history, knocking heroes off pedestals and overturning conventional story-lines—all in aid of trying to understand why the Church in America is in precarious position today vis-à-vis the ambient public culture and the government.
Shaw’s answer: we’re in deep trouble because of a longstanding U.S. Catholic determination to be more-American-than-thou—to disprove ancient charges of Catholicism’s incompatibility with American democracy by assimilating so dramatically that there’s no discernible difference between Catholics (and their attitudes toward public policy) and an increasingly secularized, mainstream public opinion. Shaw mounts an impressive case that Catholic Lite in these United States has indeed taken its cues from the wider culture, and as that culture has become ever more individualistic and hedonistic, the historic U.S. Catholic passion for assimilation and acceptance has backfired. Moreover, Shaw’s call to build a culture-reforming Catholic counterculture is not dissimilar to the argument I make about the Church and public life in “Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church.”
But on a second reading of Shaw’s book, I began to wonder whether he’s gotten the question of the moment quite right.
To read the history of the Catholic Church in the United States as a centuries-long struggle for assimilation and acceptance certainly sheds light on one dynamic in the development of the Church in America. Yet too close a focus on the question, “Is it possible to be a good Catholic and a good American?” is to argue the question of Catholicism-and-America on the other guy’s turf. Once, the “other guy” challenging Catholics’ patriotic credentials was militant Protestantism; now, the other guy is militant secularism. To play on the other guy’s turf, however, is to concede at the outset that the other guy sets the terms of debate: “We (militant Protestants/militant secularists) know what it means to be a good American; you (Catholics) have to prove yourselves to us.”
That’s not the game, however. It wasn’t really the game from 1776 through the 1960 presidential campaign — when militant Protestantism was the aggressor — and it isn’t the game today. The real game involves different, deeper questions: “Who best understands the nature of the American experiment in ordered liberty, and who can best give a persuasive defense of the first liberty, which is religious freedom?”
The 19th-century U.S. bishops and intellectuals whose enthusiasm for American democracy Russ Shaw now views skeptically (and, yes, they did go over the top on occasion) did get one crucial point right: the American Founders “built better than they knew,” i.e., the Founders designed a democratic republic for which they couldn’t provide a durable moral and philosophical defense. But the long-despised (and now despised-again) Catholics could: Catholics could (and can) give a robust, compelling account of American democracy and its commitments to ordered liberty.
Mid-20th-century Catholic scholars like historian Theodore Maynard and theologian John Courtney Murray picked up this theme and made it central to their reading of U.S. Catholic history. Murray presciently warned that, if Catholicism didn’t fill the cultural vacuum being created by a dying mainline Protestantism, the “noble, many-storied mansion mansion of democracy [may] be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged.”
That is the argument the U.S. bishops have mounted in their challenge to the Obama administration’s demolition of civil society through the HHS mandate on contraceptives and abortifacients: What is the nature of American democracy and the fundamental freedoms government is created to protect? Who are the true patriots: the men and women who can give an account of freedom’s moral character, an account capable of sustaining a genuine democracy against a rising dictatorship of relativism, “in which the tools of tyranny may be forged”?
The argument today isn’t about assimilation. The argument today is about who “gets” America.
....To read the history of the Catholic Church in the United States as a centuries-long struggle for assimilation and acceptance certainly sheds light on one dynamic in the development of the Church in America. Yet too close a focus on the question, “Is it possible to be a good Catholic and a good American?” is to argue the question of Catholicism-and-America on the other guy’s turf. Once, the “other guy” challenging Catholics’ patriotic credentials was militant Protestantism; now, the other guy is militant secularism. To play on the other guy’s turf, however, is to concede at the outset that the other guy sets the terms of debate: “We (militant Protestants/militant secularists) know what it means to be a good American; you (Catholics) have to prove yourselves to us.” That’s not the game, however. It wasn’t really the game from 1776 through the 1960 presidential campaign — when militant Protestantism was the aggressor — and it isn’t the game today. The real game involves different, deeper questions: “Who best understands the nature of the American experiment in ordered liberty, and who can best give a persuasive defense of the first liberty, which is religious freedom?”....
....Mid-20th-century Catholic scholars like historian Theodore Maynard and theologian John Courtney Murray picked up this theme and made it central to their reading of U.S. Catholic history. Murray presciently warned that, if Catholicism didn’t fill the cultural vacuum being created by a dying mainline Protestantism, the “noble, many-storied mansion mansion of democracy [may] be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged.” That is the argument the U.S. bishops have mounted in their challenge to the Obama administration’s demolition of civil society through the HHS mandate on contraceptives and abortifacients: What is the nature of American democracy and the fundamental freedoms government is created to protect? Who are the true patriots: the men and women who can give an account of freedom’s moral character, an account capable of sustaining a genuine democracy against a rising dictatorship of relativism, “in which the tools of tyranny may be forged”?
Lutherans:-)
Weren’t most of the Founders, at least those who professed Christianity, Protestant?
Anyone who wants to know what a Catholic country looks like should take a good look at Venezuela whose population is almost entirely Catholic.
American Catholics who are conservative are not conservative because they are Catholics , they are conservative despite the fact that are Catholics because the country has rubbed off on them . It’s not the other way around .
Now Protestants , that is really where the shame lies because they ONCE knew the truth YET many have turned from the truth and EMBRACED sin .(I’m speaking of mainline churches who once knew the killing of children and homosexuality was sin and now condone it)
Actually, the big divide is between Caucasian and Hispanics. Caucasian Catholics tend to be conservative, Hispanic Catholics tend to be liberal. You cite an example of an uniformly Hispanic nation. Try comparing those politics to the politics of Poland (whose population is also almost entirely Catholic).
I’m Catholic but thankful this country was founded by Anglo-Protestants. The only decently run place with a large Catholic population was/is Northern Italy and Bavaria.
My understanding so far is, Jesus gets America.
My guess is, He doesn't get why His Church is divided.
Divided as it is, it is so weak and diluted it can't fight the evil Satan is free to commit.
The better question is not who "gets" America, but who can unite the three divided branches of His Church?
Does your Catholic Poland support it's SOCIALIZED MEDICINE ? WHY YES IT DOES along with all the other socialized "goodies" . Does Italy (again Catholic ) support all it's socialized "goodies"? WHY YES IT DOES and Italians just like Poles are NOT Hispanics so that doesn't make a Hispanic thing .
All were Christian, four were Catholic and the rest were Protestant.
However, all of them shared the very same moral philosophy which descended from Aquinas and the School of Salamanca.
All of Europe has socialized medicine. The heavily Catholic European counties as a whole tend to be much more conservative than the heavily protestant European countries (especially the Scandinavian countries like Norway/Finland/Sweden/Iceland, etc., all of which are around 90-95% protestant and have leftists in America gush over them because of their "progressive" policies). What's more, even within European countries, the Catholic populations tend to be much more conservative than their protestant counterparts (the UK being a clear example) I suppose an exception might be France, but only 5% of the "Catholics" in that country are practicing, and even there you see huge protests against gay marriage, unlike in the "progressive" protestant countries where gay marriage passes and everyone everyone celebrates.
Sorry the facts don't match your talking points. Feel free to visit Catholic Poland and compare it to Protestant Norway sometime if you don't believe me.
The following European countries are over 80% Catholic:
Malta
Poland
Portugal
Spain
Slovenia
Lithuania
The following European countries are over 80% Protestant:
Iceland
Denmark
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Funny, seems to me all the far left-wing countries there are run by protestants.
Did you miss the searing I gave the Protestants in post number 6 about once knowing the truth but embracing sin?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3025072/posts?page=6#6
I would respond that the countries you identify as protestant are solvent. The countries you identify as Catholic are insolvent.
You don’t consider Spain or Portugal far-left countries? How socialist does a country have to be before you put it in your personal “far-left” category?
Dude, I was considering your point until you discredited yourself.
If Spain is "far-left", so the United States. The country veers directions all the time. It's had periods of strong leftist rule and periods of strong right-wing rule. For years it was under the iron fist rule of General Franco, who leftists tried unsucessfully to oust. During the early 2000's, Prime Minister José María Aznar López was a staunch Bush ally. He lost to a socialist after a terrorist attack in the country, but the conservatives have since returned to power and the current prime minister (since 2011) is Mariano Rajoy Brey, a Roman Catholic from the People's Party (Ideology: Conservatism, Christian democracy,Spanish nationalism; Economic free-markets, Spanish unionism, Political position: Centre-right to Right-wing) If that's your idea of "far-left" you have a very different idea of far-left than anyone else.
Not sure about Portugal but a quick google search shows the "center-right" party is in power there too, NOT the far-left wing. I'm guessing what passes for "center-right" there is probably more liberal than our "center-right", but hopefully not as bad as "conservatives" like David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy.
In any case, certainly it can't be compared to a genuinely far-left wing like the Scandinavian countries that liberal always gush over as sooooo "progressive" because they have the first gay head of state, legalized euthanasia, legalized drugs, have extreme envirowacko policies, taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgery, etc., etc. THOSE countries are so left they make Obama look moderate and the political parities in Iceland and Norway are unabashed socialist internationalists, ideologically where Bernie Sanders is.
Finally, perhaps you missed my point about Hispanic Catholics behind much more left-wing than their non-hispanic counterparts. I didn't argue any spanish-speaking Catholic country was solidly conservative.
Couldn’t disagree more. The Church, practically by definition, has been Conservative. It’s never called for government to legislate on behalf of the poor or to care for the poor. The Church champions voluntary charities because Catholicism like Christianity in general calls for individual accountability, not shared responsibility. What organization in the country has fought harder against abortion, gay marriage, divorce, promiscuity, Hollywood, academia than the Catholic Church. But of course I’m speaking of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, not the various pretenders to membership in it. The church in early America had very little influence other than its efforts to relieve the poor Catholic immigrants’ lives; even so, it never sought government solution; it sought management recognition of its laborers’ needs which, admittedly led, wrongly perhaps, to the growth of unions which then led to a Catholic/Democrat alliance. Unfortunately, most of the Catholics raised in the solemnity of that alliance became more Democrat than Catholic.
I do agree that American Catholics are not Conservatives because of their Catholicism. To me it’s more a matter of consistency of belief. Individual accountability covers most of the spectrum in American (and other) politics. And while it’s absolutely true that that idea arose in America via the Puritan ethic, it had been true in Catholicism for centuries.
Lastly, though, it may be important to keep in mind that there’s no hierarchy in protestantism, no higher court, so to speak, so we don’t know what the official line or the valid teaching is. There is a hierarchy in Catholicism and that higher court almost always favors the American Conservative view.
Thanks for answering, but I don’t buy your point for a minute. Not in the broad terms you are brushing people with. There simply isn’t the consistiency in your examples to sustain your theory. Sometimes true, sometimes not.
BTW, I am a “Hispanic Catholic” and I can attest to the opposite of your broad brush assertion about us.
I thank you for your post but must say that if this is the direction the author has taken, I’d have to suggest he’s come up for a great way to sell a book and that’s about all. Its an interesting topic, and he’s correct in his observation that Catholicism’s greater enemy today, (other than itself), is radical, militant secular humanism. The reason I dismiss the rest of the book and in particular, the idea that Catholicism in the US can save “America”, is that there are at least 3 versions of Catholicism active in the US today; the “liberal”, (pointless) version; the “Muddlers” who are sleep walking through their faith but pay their dues such that the Church can maintain its physical footprint, and the “Orthodox”.
And frankly, practically no one in the US really “gets” the Orthodox Roman Catholic, not that it really matters. The “Orthodox” make up somewhere between 10% to 25% of the membership. I wouldn’t look to them to save anything, much less “America” simply because they’ve pretty much “checked out”. Most don’t even watch TV and many have dropped their cable subscriptions. Don’t get me wrong, they’re wonderful people, but it would be kind of like looking for help from the Amish. And, they are patriotic, in their own way but....their numbers are too small to be of incidence.
All in all, it’s a great platform and premise for a profitable book sale, other than that, its an exercise in futility.
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