Cardinal Ratzinger Discovers America

Cardinal Ratzinger has discovered America. Troubled by the total secularization of European life—reflected, most recently, in the battles over European unification and the continental chorus of criticism accompanying Professor Rocco Buttiglione’s reiteration of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality—the cardinal now suggests that the United States may perhaps offer the better model of Church-State relations for a desacralized world. According to a November 25, 2004, report on Zenit.com, the Cardinal, responding to the secularization of Europe, made the following comments on Vatican Radio:

I think that from many points of view the American model is the better one. Europe has remained bogged down. People who did not want to belong to a state church, went to the United States and intentionally constituted a state that does not impose a church and which simply is not perceived as religiously neutral, but as a space within which religions can move and also enjoy organizational freedom without being simply relegated to the private sphere… One can undoubtedly learn from the United States [and this] process by which the state makes room for religion, which is not imposed, but which, thanks to the state, lives, exists and has a public creative force. It certainly is a positive way.

This, of course, was the position of the Americanists of the 1890’s, who argued that things spiritual thrived in the United States to a degree that Europeans, passive and obedient to their manipulative governments, could never match. Cardinal Ratzinger has apparently arrived at a similar judgment in typical contemporary Catholic fashion: much later than everybody else, and naively uncritical.

It seems to be the fate of the post-conciliar Church to take up the banner of erroneous causes just as their poisons are beginning to become somewhat clearer to the rest of the outside world. I hope that His Eminence has been misquoted. If not, I pray that a deeper study of the system in the United States will reveal to him just how much the so-called religious character of America is, at best, heretical, and, at worst, a “spiritualized” secularism emerging from errors inherent in Protestant thought.

One still hears the argument that the threat of Americanism was exaggerated at the time of Leo XIII’s encyclicals against it, and that, in any case, it disappeared shortly thereafter. Certainly many people in Rome as well as the United States wanted to make believe this was the case, using the Modernist crisis, and undoubted American loyalty to the Papacy throughout it, as proof positive of the country’s orthodoxy. But the crises warned against by St. Pius X’s pontificate precisely involve the sort of philosophical, theological, and exegetical issues that Americanism sweeps aside as a horrendous waste of time and energy. Modernism’s intellectual character stood in the way of the Yankee pragmatism that simply wanted “to get the job done” without worrying about anything as fruitlessly divisive as unpaid thought. It was part and parcel of all that pretentious European cultural hoo-ha responsible for the Old World’s ideologies, revolutions, wars, and bad plumbing. Americans could recite the Creed and memorize catechisms better and in larger numbers than anywhere else. Confident in their orthodoxy and the Catholic-friendly character of their political and social system, they could “move on” to devote themselves to the practical realities of daily life. Criticisms of what the “practical life” might actually mean in the long run could be disregarded as unpatriotic, communist, and useless for short or long-term fund raising.

America, with Catholic Americans in lock-step, thus marched forward to nurture what St. Cyril of Alexandria called “dypsychia”: a two-spirited existence. On the one hand, it loudly proclaimed outward commitment to many traditional doctrines and “moral values” making it look spiritually healthy. On the other, it allowed “the practical life”, to which it was really devoted, to be defined by whatever the strongest and most successful men considered to be most important, silencing discussion of the gross contradiction by laughing such fruitless intellectual quibbles out of the parlors of a polite, common-sense guided society. It marched this approach into Europe in 1945, ironically linking up with one strain of Modernism that itself encouraged Catholic abandonment to the direction of anti-intellectual “vital energies” and “mystique”. Vitalism and Americanism in tandem then gave us Vatican II which, concerned only with “getting the practical pastoral job done”, has destroyed Catholic doctrine infinitely more effectively than any mere straightforward heretic like Arius could have done. Under the less parochial sounding name of Pluralism, it is the very force which Cardinal Ratzinger is criticizing inside the European Union, and which is now spreading high-minded “moral values”, “freedom”, and “democracy” around the globe through the work of well-paid mercenaries and five hundred pound bombs.

If, heaven forbid, Cardinal Ratzinger honestly believes that true religion prospers under our system better than under any other, he is urging upon Catholics that spiritual and intellectual euthanasia which Americanism-Vitalism-Pluralism infallibly guarantees. The fate of many conservative Catholic enthusiasts for this false God, in their response to the war in Iraq, should be one among an endless number of warnings to him. No one is more publicly committed to orthodoxy than they are. No one praises the name and authority of the Pope more than they do. And yet never have I heard so many sophistic arguments reducing to total emptiness both profound Catholic teachings regarding the innocence of human life, as well as the value of the intellect in understanding how to apply those teachings to practical circumstances, as I have heard coming from their circles.

May God save His Eminence from adulation of a system that waves the flag of moral righteousness and then tells us that we are simply not permitted to use our faith and reason to recognize a wicked, fraudulent war for the anti-Catholic disaster that it is; an evil that a number of Catholics are some day legitimately going to have to apologize for having helped to justify. May God save His Eminence from a religiosity which will eventually line “fundamentalist” Catholic “terrorists” against the wall along with other “divisive” enemies of the system who cannot live or die under a regime of dypsychia.

I enjoyed reading the friendly banter you guys posted. I must say that I agree wiyh the quote:

"Forms of government will not substitute for the virtue of the people."

I submit that Christ's reply to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what is God's was clever in the extreme; the more one looks to God and Divine Providence, the less one looks to whatever form Caesar happens to take and vice versa. It is perfectly logical that communists and totalitarians of all stripes tend toward atheism. Utopia MUST be achieved on this earth no matter how many eggs need to be broken. Of corse eggs is the polite euphemism for human beings. The left loves euphemisms.

I have noticed that when it comes to the Constitution, the right views it as a restraint on the government to protect the citizens while the left sees it as a constraint on the majority to protect the minority. There may be other perspectives but these two are the most common ones that I've noticed.

Interesting. Let's consider the concept of constitutional protection in general, i.e., not considering the U.S. Constitution in specific. Now, a constitutional protection against, e.g., taxing a rich minority so the masses can have "welfare benefits" is definitely a protection of a minority against the majority. That's hardly leftist. Of course, if constitutional protection of minority rights works is another discussion.

Now, a constitutional protection against, e.g., taxing a rich minority so the masses can have "welfare benefits" is definitely a protection of a minority against the majority. That's hardly leftist.

Was that sarcasm? If that's not leftist, what is?

Was that sarcasm? If that's not leftist, what is?

No that was not sarcasm. Proposition A is to increase taxes on a rich minority in order to increase "welfare benefits" for the masses. Constitutional provision B prohibits proposition A from becoming law. Now, constitutional provision B is a protection of a minority against the majority. Constitutional provision B is hardly leftist. And that's not sarcasm!

Wonderfully concise, thanks. Given that particular example, it would not be leftist. Other examples may be given that are. The constitutional proposition in itself may be neutral. The execution of constitutional provisions becomes leftist or rightist depending on the power elite that enforces it.

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