American Church [Who best understands the American experiment

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.

The Pope, unlike other heads of state, refuses NO ONE an audience. (He’s a priest, for goodness sake!) He also met with complaining reps of Islam despite the fact that he’d debated, corrected, and excoriated them in public writings. Both John Paul and Benedict (as JP’s then-chief advisor) supported W’s plan for private religious and other charities’ roles in welfare and healthcare. (I forget the name of W’s initiative.)

The church isn’t churning out these folks. The dems are!

The United States isn't catholic or protestant. It is Judeo-Christian.

No you are wrong . The United States was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and law . We are no longer a Christian nation , we have tossed God of Abraham Issac and Jacob out of courts , our schools and our lives . We are now a post Christian nation full of degenerates that sacrifice our children to the "idol" of convenience and uphold all sorts of degenerate lifestyles as normal .

It has become fashionable in our society to mock God and his ways . We are now a full blown PAGAN nation with a very small minority of people who are actually Christians (Christians FOLLOW Christ and that means they are OBEDIENT to HIM )

We are a nation full of DEAD churches who preach social justice instead of the Gospel that was given to us and because of that we have lost our way .Our pulpits are full of clergy that do not know right from wrong and are unbelievers .

The nation did not repent and we got 0 sitting in the white house . With as much damage as he did to this country in the his first four years the people still not repent and put their faith in politicians to save them . Well those politicians are not doing anything but being politicians and we are going to be sliding deeper and deeper into the pit .

Americans have refused to repent and turn back to God . Now they are going to get what fills that void .

You’re absolutely right. But I’m not sure he’s talking about cradle-to-grave coverage or unlimited access to various technologies. Ironically, the US had been providing emergency healthcare long before any call for “universal” access to less (and more!) expensive care arose.

However, I’m not sure that healthcare-as-inalienable-right falls within the purview of popes’ calls. It has absolutely nothing to do with faith and morals. The “dignity” of life, as usually described by the the church hierarchy, involves (again) personal, private charity. I hate to twist this further, but my guess is that Benedict (a life-long Conservative) was talking about government’s ability to facilitate those various charities’ efforts—not taxing in order to provide it on its own. Nevertheless, you totally win on this argument. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see some later document clarifying Benedict’s published position.

Comments like these were made to the press after meeting with both Pelosi and Obama and they were comments about our healthcare.

I live in Florida and I have had to sit and wait hours in the emergency room with my 94 year old WWII veteran grandfather behind lines of illegals who are to cheap to run to CVS and buy cough medicine since they can get it free in the emergency room where no one will turn them down.

No one goes without healthcare in this country except the poor suckers who actually work a real job and can’t afford to take the time off to wait in the horrendous lines.

True again. Shameful. Especially where veterans are concerned. That was one of my first clues about how bad Obamacare would be. It added millions of indigents (and illegals!) to the lines normally reserved for the military. Healthcare was one of the few perks the military had, and in one swell foop, BAM, everybody in the country had that perk! That is, if you waited long enough in line. Sick.

“Thank goodness financial solvency has nothing to do with salvation, then, huh?”

I think the whole differentiation of countries I responded to is silly. Many Catholics will be in heaven because they trusted Christ alone for salvation. Many Protestants will be in heaven for the identical reason.

The country thing is silly, which was my point.

There's a good reason why the American Revolution was dubbed the "Presbyterian Rebellion", and it wasn't because this country was founded upon Catholic ideas:

....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it.
The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.
History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....
....In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”
-- from the thread John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty

I agree with your excellent post. I will however take issue with your assessment on the Catholic/Democrat alliance from the 20’s to the 60’s. My grandfather once told me, that the only difference between a Democrat and a Republican in that time period, is that the Democrat tended to be labor and the Republican tended to be management. On most issues, including the many hot button issues of today, there was very little difference between D's and R's, until the tragedy of the 1960’s. My family left the party to vote for Nixon, because of his law and order stance and have remained staunchly Republican ever since.

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