Sounds like he thinks the one I live in is "past tense". I think he is mistaken, it still exists.
And the last time I looked this is still Texas where I live.
Disagree with this.
Catholic church is helping illegals — legal help, shelter, jobs, etc. This is the church growth plan for the future. 20 million illegals/Catholics here. That’s a huge population and with high birth rates it’ll assure expansion over the next few decades.
Overall, this is fairly well written and reasoned out, althought the author falls prey to America’s own little creation myth in citing so much Puritan influence, when in fact the government of Viriginia was well established over a decade prior. These were no Puritans. They were Anglican.
Second, the author either fails to notice or deliberately glosses over another key influencing trend during the 1870 - 1930 era cited as being the source of a putative American “falling away” from Christian faith of the Protestant variety. One needn’t look too far or too hard to understand that this corresponds almost precisely with the waves of ... Catholic immigration.
It also coincides with the explosion of overweening, intrusive government made possible by the Federal leviathan having run roughshod over the Constitution during the so-called Civil War, and most especially doing so in the Reconstruction era. These things did not occur in a vacuum, and occurred to the dismay and frequent resistance of the descendants of Old Virginia and the south in general, among whom the Christian faith remains much stronger than in the population as a whole.
It was inevitable that the Protestant energy that created America’s greatness would be spent at some point, and now it has. For the past 50 years or so America cannot be described as Protestant country. It has become a country where many Protestants live.
To us Catholics it means two things. First, while our dispute with the Protestants is doctrinal, our dispute with the secularists, moneychangers at the helm of the economy and the political whores in Washington is existential. We simply do not share goals or meanings of words with them. We could co-exist, despite mutual acrimony, with the Protestants. With the atheist trash, either we win or they win, but we cannot coexist.
Second, we Catholics all of a sudden are at the forefront of the struggle, as one authentic Christian Church that is not going to quietly dissolve into irrelevance like the Protestants did. Future America is either Catholic or barbaric. In my humble opinion.
Rule One: "Rome" is the locus of all evil in the universe.
Rule Two: In case of doubt, see Rule One.
Corollary
"Rome" must be destroyed. All else is irrelevant.
=============================================================
Some folks behave in a manner indistinguishable from one who is motivated by "THE RULES" above.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Nice to see that First Things is still going strong even with Neuhaus gone.
In the Aenead there were half carrion bird half maiden creatures who would descend on a feast, devour part of it and foul the rest with their droppings.
Here we have a thoughtful piece on the place of religion generally and Catholicism specifically in America. Chaput, despite my disagreement with him about illegal immigrants, is one of the leading intellectuals in the American Catholic episcopate.
But almost before the pixels are dry on your post in come the winged shrieking creatures to foul the conversation to wrench it away from the OP and direct it into how Catholics ruined the American movie industry for crying out loud.
This is not debate. This is not discussion. This is an exercise in sociopathy and psychoneurosis, a living parable of the deadly effects of the capital sin of wrath.
I dare say the antis in their game of whack-a-mole think they are accomplishing something. And in fact they are. Day by day they make me ever more delighted to have shaken their dust off my feet, ever more grateful to have been pulled from the wreck and brought safely into the ark.
Future America is either Catholic or barbaric.
One need look no further than this thread to see how true that is.