Posted on 09/18/2010 8:26:32 PM PDT by markomalley
One of the key myths of the American Catholic imagination is this: After 200 years of fighting against public prejudice, Catholics finally broke through into America’s mainstream with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy as president. It’s a happy thought, and not without grounding. Next to America’s broad collection of evangelical churches, baptized Catholics now make up the biggest religious community in the United States. They serve in large numbers in Congress. They have a majority on the Supreme Court. They play commanding roles in the professions and in business leadership. They’ve climbed, at long last, the Mt. Zion of social acceptance.
So goes the tale. What this has actually meant for the direction of American life, however, is another matter. Catholic statistics once seemed impressive. They filled many of us with tribal pride. But they didn’t stop a new and quite alien national landscape, a “next America,” from emerging right under our noses.
While both Barna Group and Pew Research Center data show that Americans remain a broadly Christian people, old religious loyalties are steadily softening. Overall, the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, about 16 percent, has doubled since 1990. One quarter of Americans aged 18-29 have no affiliation with any particular religion, and as the Barna Group noted in 2007, they “exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade . . . the Christian image [has] shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people.”
Catholic losses have been masked by Latino immigration. But while 31 percent of Americans say they were raised in the Catholic faith, fewer than 24 percent of Americans now describe themselves as Catholic.
These facts have weight because, traditionally, religious faith has provided the basis for Americans’ moral consensus. And that moral consensus has informed American social policy and law. What people believe—or don’t believe—about God, helps to shape what they believe about men and women. And what they believe about men and women creates the framework for a nation’s public life.
Or to put it more plainly: In the coming decades Catholics will likely find it harder, not easier, to influence the course of American culture, or even to live their faith authentically. And the big difference between the “next America” and the old one will be that plenty of other committed religious believers may find themselves in the same unpleasant jam as their Catholic cousins.
At first hearing, this scenario might sound implausible; and for good reason. The roots of the American experience are deeply Protestant. They go back a very long way, to well before the nation’s founding. Whatever one thinks of the early Puritan colonists—and Catholics have few reasons to remember them fondly—no reader can study Gov. John Winthrop’s great 1630 homily before embarking for New England without being moved by the zeal and candor of the faith that produced it. In “A model of Christian charity,” he told his fellow colonists:
We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ . . . That which the most in their churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice; as in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burdens. We must look not only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren . . . We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So we will keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
Not a bad summary of Christian discipleship, made urgent for Winthrop by the prospect of leading 700 souls on a hard, two-month voyage across the North Atlantic to an equally hard New World. What happened when they got there is a matter of historical record. And different agendas interpret the record differently.
The Puritan habits of hard work, industry and faith branded themselves on the American personality. While Puritan influence later diluted in waves of immigrants from other Protestant traditions, it clearly helped shape the political beliefs of John Adams and many of the other American Founders. Adams and his colleagues were men who, as Daniel Boorstin once suggested, had minds that were a “miscellany and a museum;” men who could blend the old and the new, an earnest Christian faith and Enlightenment ideas, without destroying either.
But beginning in the nineteenth century, riding a crest of scientific and industrial change, a different view of the Puritans began to emerge. In the language of their critics, the Puritans were seen as intolerant, sexually repressed, narrow-minded witch-hunters who masked material greed with a veneer of Calvinist virtue. Cast as religious fanatics, the Puritans stood accused of planting the seed of nationalist messianism by portraying America as a New Jerusalem, a “city upon a hill” (from Winthrop’s homily), with a globally redemptive mission. H.L. Mencken—equally skilled as a writer, humorist and anti-religious bigot—famously described the Puritan as a man “with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
In recent years, scholars like Christian Smith have shown how the intellectual weakness and fierce internal divisions of America’s Protestant establishment allowed “the secularization of modern public life as a kind of political revolution.” Carried out mainly between 1870 and 1930, this “rebel insurgency consisted of waves of networks of activists who were largely skeptical, freethinking, agnostic, atheist or theologically liberal; who were well educated and socially located mainly in the knowledge-production occupations, and who generally espoused materialism, naturalism, positivism and the privatization or extinction of religion.”
This insurgency could be ignored, or at least contained, for a long time. Why? Because America’s social consensus supported the country’s unofficial Christian assumptions, traditions and religion-friendly habits of thought and behavior. But law—even a constitutional guarantee—is only as strong as the popular belief that sustains it. That traditional consensus is now much weakened. Seventy years of soft atheism trickling down in a steady catechesis from our universities, social-science “helping professions,” and entertainment and news media, have eroded it.
Obviously many faith-friendly exceptions exist in each of these professional fields. And other culprits, not listed above, may also be responsible for our predicament. The late Christopher Lasch argued that modern consumer capitalism breeds and needs a “culture of narcissism”—i.e., a citizenry of weak, self-absorbed, needy personalities—in order to sustain itself. Christian Smith put it somewhat differently when he wrote that, in modern capitalism, labor “is mobile as needed, consumers purchase what is promoted, workers perform as demanded, managers execute as expected—and profits flow. And what the Torah, or the Pope, or Jesus may say in opposition is not relevant, because those are private matters” [emphasis in original].
My point here is neither to defend nor criticize our economic system. Others are much better equipped to do that than I am. My point is that “I shop, therefore I am” is not a good premise for life in a democratic society like the United States. Our country depends for its survival on an engaged, literate electorate gathered around commonly held ideals. But the practical, pastoral reality facing the Gospel in America today is a human landscape shaped by advertising, an industry Pascal Bruckner described so well as a “smiling form of sorcery”:
The buyer’s fantastic freedom of choice supposedly encourages each of us to take ourselves in hand, to be responsible, to diversify our conduct and our tastes; and most important, supposedly protects us forever from fanaticism and from being taken in. In other words, four centuries of emancipation from dogmas, gods and tyrants has led to nothing more nor less than to the marvelous possibility of choosing between several brands of dish detergent, TV channels or styles of jeans. Pushing our cart down the aisle in a supermarket or frantically wielding our remote control, these are supposed to be ways of consciously working for harmony and democracy. One could hardly come up with a more masterful misinterpretation: for we consume in order to stop being individuals and citizens; rather, to escape for a moment from the heavy burden of having to make fundamental choices.
Now, where do Catholics fit into this story?
The same Puritan worldview that informed John Winthrop’s homily so movingly, also reviled “Popery,” Catholic ritual and lingering “Romish” influences in England’s established Anglican Church. The Catholic Church was widely seen as Revelation’s Whore of Babylon. Time passed, and the American religious landscape became more diverse. But the nation’s many different Protestant sects shared a common, foreign ogre in their perceptions of the Holy See—perceptions made worse by Rome’s distrust of democracy and religious liberty. As a result, Catholics in America faced harsh Protestant discrimination throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This included occasional riots and even physical attacks on convents, churches and seminaries. Such is the history that made John F. Kennedy’s success seem so liberating.
The irony is that mainline American Protestantism had used up much of its moral and intellectual power by 1960. Secularizers had already crushed it in the war for the cultural high ground. In effect, after so many decades of struggle, Catholics arrived on America’s center stage just as management of the theater had changed hands -- with the new owners even less friendly, but far shrewder and much more ambitious in their social and political goals, than the old ones. Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, despite their many differences, share far more than divides them, beginning with Jesus Christ himself. They also share with Jews a belief in the God of Israel and a reverence for God’s Word in the Old Testament. But the gulf between belief and unbelief, or belief and disinterest, is vastly wider.
In the years since Kennedy’s election, Vatican II and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, two generations of citizens have grown to maturity. The world is a different place. America is a different place—and in some ways, a far more troubling one. We can’t change history, though we need to remember and understand it. But we can only blame outside factors for our present realities up to a point. As Catholics, like so many other American Christians, we have too often made our country what it is through our appetite for success, our self-delusion, our eagerness to fit in, our vanity, our compromises, our self-absorption and our tepid faith.
If government now pressures religious entities out of the public square, or promotes same-sex “marriage,” or acts in ways that undermine the integrity of the family, or compromises the sanctity of human life, or overrides the will of voters, or discourages certain forms of religious teaching as “hate speech,” or interferes with individual and communal rights of conscience—well, why not? In the name of tolerance and pluralism, we have forgotten why and how we began as nation; and we have undermined our ability to ground our arguments in anything higher than our own sectarian opinions.
The “next America” has been in its chrysalis a long time. Whether people will be happy when it fully emerges remains to be seen. But the future is not predestined. We create it with our choices. And the most important choice we can make is both terribly simple and terribly hard: to actually live what the Church teaches, to win the hearts of others by our witness, and to renew the soul of our country with the courage of our own Christian faith and integrity. There is no more revolutionary act.
Charles J. Chaput is the archbishop of Denver.
Jesus Himself often met people’s physical needs before sharing with them. It was the tangible demonstration of His love which opened their hearts to then receive the message.
It is not a standard boilerplate answer.
That’s pretty cheeky.
I know what my experience is as surely as you claim to know what your experience is.
It’s a fallacy to lump all Catholics into a generic potpourri of drinkers and smokers —or “anything else” .
Your presentation of the Catholic milieu as an accurate composite of all that is Catholic is neither just nor accurate.
There’s probably nothing more ho-hum and looked askance-upon than the personal, anecdotal report from someone like me; frankly, it’s taken for just what you have described as “standard boilerplate”.
If that is Christian witness, I wouldn’t be drawn to any “preaching” from its source. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now.
Not only do I know my parish well, but I am often interacting with the other 4 parishes in our deanery here in the valley. I know what the parishioners are like, I know what the parishes are doing, I know what their focus is; I have mentioned all of this in other posts which no doubt you haven’t read, but even if I were to post them again now, I realize that all I would say would be considered “standard boilerplate”.
Your view of Catholics at this particular time does not fit what is actually happened.
You may not believe that, but that isn’t my problem.
There is a certain point when the repetitive accusations against Catholicism, and by association those who are practicing Catholics with their “boilerplate” mindset, becomes overkill.
The LEAST I am able to say is that your portrait of Catholics is one-dimensional.
“actually happened” should be actually happening.
Amen.
I suppose the "National Catholic Reporter" can't be trusted, but here's what one of it's reporters, Father Raymond A. Schroth, professor of humanities at St. Peter’s College and NCR ’s media critic, said in 2006 about a generally favorable book written about Ratzinger...
"Benedict dines alone. His favorite beverage is Fanta, the orange-flavored soda pop. He does not love cats, he adores them. With bright red shoes from Prada and sunglasses from Serengeti, he has undergone a fashion makeover guided by his handsome Bavarian secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein.
Georg Ganswein, the "handsome Bavarian secretary" is another story altogether.
But if experience has shown us anything, it is that Roman Catholic apologists can and will deny the simple truth that is staring them right in the face.
So go ahead and tell us how compromised this priest/reporter is and how NCR is a socialist rag and how all the hundreds of news reports that stated Ratzinger wore Prada shoes were dastardly plots against this humble man who would dress up in jeans and a wife-beater if only his job didn't call for all that pomp and opulence.
It certainly explains the “blame it all on God” theology of the Calvinists. John Calvin had to come up with some way to justify his family being crooks and his family getting excommunicated, and to explain why his father took away his study of theology forcing him to become a French lawyer. You know, don’t take responsibility for your own actions - call it predestination.
"Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’ [Matt. 26:26]. For he carried that body in his hands" (Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).Tertullian on Communion:
"I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s table. . . . That bread that you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ" (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).
"What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction" (ibid., 272).
"Nobody eats this flesh without previously adoring it" (Explanation of the Psalms 99).
"He took flesh from the flesh of Mary . . . and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. . . . We do sin by not adoring" (ibid).
Tertullian regularly describes the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks, ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the Eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument, based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the Eucharist ‘the flesh feeds upon Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water.Macarius (Patriarch of Antioch 681) on Communion:
"[T]here is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed [in baptism], in order that the soul may be cleansed . . . the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands [in confirmation], that the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds [in the Eucharist] on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may be filled with God" (The Resurrection of the Dead 8 [A.D. 210]).
To Macarius the Eucharist was a palmary argument against Nestorianism.Theodoret on the Eucharist
The flesh and blood of which we partake in the Eucharist is not mere flesh and blood, else how would it be life-giving?
It is life-giving because it is the own flesh and blood of the Word, which being God is by nature Life. Macarius develops this argument in a manner which shows how shadowy was the line which separated the Monothelite from the Monophysite
Theodoret of Cyrus (from his Eranistes). It is a Greek style dialogue such as those found in Socrates between a student (Eran) and a teacher (Ortho):
Eran.--And after the consecration how do you name these?
Orth.--Christ's body and Christ's blood.
Eran.--And do yon believe that you partake of Christ's body and blood?
Orth.--I do.
Eran: "Therefore, just as the symbols of the Lord's body and of his blood are one thing before the priest's invocation, but after the invocation are changed, and become something else, so to was the Lord's body changed, after the ascension, into the divine essence."
Ortho: "You have been caught in the nets which you have woven, for not even after the consecration do the mystical symbols depart from their own nature! They continue in their former essence, both in shape and appearance, and are visible, and palpable, as they were beforehand
But they are regarded as what they have become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be. Compare then the image with the archetype, and you will see the likeness, for the type must be like the reality. For that body preserves its former form, figure, and limitation and in a word the substance of the body; but after the resurrection it has become immortal and superior to corruption; it has become worthy of a seat on the right hand; it is adored by every creature as being called the natural body of the Lord.
Eran.— Yes; and the mystic symbol changes its former appellation; it is no longer called by the name it went by before, but is styled body. So must the reality be called God, and not body.
Orth.— You seem to me to be ignorant— for He is called not only body but even bread of life. So the Lord Himself used this name and that very body we call divine body, and giver of life, and of the Master and of the Lord, teaching that it is not common to every man but belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ Who is God and Man. For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
"For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the Flesh and Spirit. For as bread which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of resurrection to eternity (...) Even as the blessed Paul declares in his epistle to the Ephesians that ‘We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones’: he does not speak these words of some spiritual and invisible man, for a spirit has not bones nor flesh; but he (Paul) refers to that dispensation by which the Lord became an actual man, consisting of flesh, and nerves, and bones, - that flesh which is nourished by the cup which is His blood, and receives increase from bread which is his body. And just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its season, or as a corn of wheat falling on the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the use of men, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of the Christ (...)”.
+Augustine believed in the True Presence of Christ IN The Eucharist —> which you and the OPC don’t believe in, correct?
Link please.
It’s customary to provide the link to your proof.
” “National Catholic Reporter...”
The catholics I know never have conversation about Christ or His work. I am regularly in the presence of Catholics and they talk about football or movies or gossip. if "faith" comes up at all it is about "having" to get to mass..
And that is your experience.
My experience is different.
One might say that it’s that simple.
God is aware of all.
And He works His mysterious ways, even with those you may say are not talking about God.
I have learned that just as all that glitters is not gold, that in the same way, all that is “talk” is not necessarily genuine.
I could write a book about that.
I don't have time to sit on the computer all day, pretend I'm being persecuted for God and flog this petty issue like those in the 27,000 member OPC.
The Communists knew that if you repeat a lie long enough, it would be believed. The anti-Catholics have long used the left’s tactics and made common cause with them against all things Catholic.
It's 40 days and there are other Protestants joining Catholics for this cause.
Just stay in your comfy chairs and keep fighting that crusade against Computer Keyboard Persecution. Ah, putting on the tunic and hefting that broadsword as Keyboard Warriors scan GOOGLE for headlines!
Such exhilaration!
Barbarity is absence of laws against murder and theft and lack of interest in civic virtue, religion and arts. We in America have abortion legalized, have divorce and homosexuality normalized, think that religion is a private affair, and have “piss Christ” for art. We are barbarians.
Thanks much, Opus. :-)
And it is certainly the Alinsky-type tactic of the left.
Despite any protestations to the contrary, some of the anti-Catholics on here are neither Protestants nor Christians, they are devoted agents of Satan.
You show the Lord's death by eating a cracker?
We, Catholics do all that. But highlighting part of the Gospel and gliding past or omitting other parts is not Gospel, it is Protestant denial of the entirety of the Holy Scripture. In the same passages it is stated that the bread and the wine are now Christ's body; that we ought to "discern" this fact lest we are condemned by what you think is cracker (1 Cor 11:29, you omitted that), that if we eat Christ's flesh -- not if we remember Him or listen to Him, -- we have everlasting life, and otherwise we don't (John 6:54-55/53-54, you omitted that also).
Cannibal you are perhaps not, by you are a Protestant. You read parts of the Bible that are convenient for you. Others you ignore. Pressed to the wall, you will explain them away like Christ or St. Paul did not mean what they plainly say. That is shameful, and of course is a crippled, deformed faith.
Real Presence is a specific Catholic doctrine, see link at 373.
I don’t think the Netherlands is already majority Catholic, although, same as in Britain, the trend is that way.
None of that is an argument for any religion. It is easier for a camel to go through an eye of the needle than for a nation that celebrates its prosperity to come to salvation.
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