The Europeans know what they are doing with their church politics, keep them voting democrat, this environmental political statement will help them greatly.
Or maybe it's t'other way around.
Maybe some religious sociologist will have to look at this more comprehensively than either you or I have done so far, but I have seen the exact symmetrical opposite of what you say. Seriously.
What I have seen --- since at least the age of nine, when I started noticing things, and that would be 1960 or so --- is a recurring current, inside and outside the Catholic church, pushing Catholics to be "more American."
As early as 1898 Pope Leo XIII detected this tendency in its larval form and coined a new term, "Americanist heresy," to describe the overall bias in favor of Catholic assimilation to WASP political and ecclesial ideals. I, personally, don't recall any public figure from my childhood ever saying he seriously wanted to make America more Catholic (I will salute the single saintly exception of Bishop Fulton Sheen) but I couldn't count on all my fingers and toes the number of times we were nudge, nudge, nudged to be more miscible, more Vacation-Bible-School, more Boy Scout, more American.
Jack Kennedy, after all, appealed to the electorate, not by saying he was such a comprehensive Catholic, but by pledging in public that he was nothing of the kind. He swore he had no truck with creeds or popes, policies or preferences, traceable to the Catholic Church. His famous address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association was just the capstone of this series.
Prominent Catholics were constantly trying to shuck their "distinctives" --- whether minor or major, whether it was changing their non-WASP surnames (how many thousands of Schmidts became Smiths?) or effacing their own monuments (the Church "Wreckovation" movement which stripped down Catholic sanctuaries until they looked like they'd been vandalized by Calvinist iconoclasts).
Our Catholic youth groups either went toward Pentecostalism (Charismatic) or Youth Band Praise Chorus. Teenagers of my generation were given the idea they could reinvent liturgies along the lines of any Jesusy Godspell impulse. Our hymnals were filled with Protestant ditties--- not all bad, mind you, I can love me some Wesley or Watts --- but just thin, thin and banal when compared to the treasuries of Catholic liturgical music which were thrown by the boxful into the dumpsters around 1965-75.
Three generations of people-pleasing priests became assertively "ecumenical" --- happy to encourage the view that "We're Just Like You" -- "You" being anything that isn't papist.
And anyone who pushed for something that would disturb the neighbors as being intellectually, culturally or politically Catholic, was chided for being Triumphalists or tribalists or paleo-something.
"Parochialism" was a bad word, and Federal and local governments cooperated to break up or bulldoze parish-based ethnic neighborhoods --- and of course that means Catholic voting blocs--- often under the pretext of "urban renewal" (we called it "urban removal.") E. Michael Jones was right about that (LINK)
In things large scale and small, the prevailing wind was always pushing Catholic Americans away from "Catholic" and toward "American," which could have either a secularist or a Protestant tinge (in my childhood America was still culturally Protestant) but it was always "NOT the way you did things in Rheinpfalz" (or Galway or Gdansk).
So politically, we've got Catholic Supreme Court justices indistinguishable from Episcopalians, and Catholic Congressmen that palaver like Methodists? And Catholic voters that vote (within 1 percentage point plus or minus), like Everybody Else? Imagine my surprise.
The whole problem with the Catholic voters; the Catholic politicos; the Catholic opinion-leaders; is that they are not Catholic enough. I would be a happier woman if they were all members of the Catholic faction of the Catholic Church. And you might be more satisfied --- or if not, you would have a quite different set of things to complain about.
It could be objected that I am painting with a broad brush --- the polemic form has something to do with that --- but manifestly, in my lifetime, American Catholics became more assimilated to American Broad Church Christianity; not the reverse; and I'd say for worse.
The Europeans know what they are doing with their church politics, keep them voting democrat, this environmental political statement will help them greatly.
Appealed to the electorate?
You mean to the non-Christians and Catholics, he only won 1% more of the Christian vote that is not Catholic, than the democrat candidate before him, did, a big jump from 42% to 43%.
I hope that it is changing though. First, it has gotten to the point when more people recognize that they faith was gradually stolen from them and they learn to resist it.
Second, we have more courageous priests and religious, and lay apologists who educate the public. Mother Angelica with EWTN, Father Fessio with Ignatius Press, Karl Keating and his Catholic Answers Live and catholic.com have become leaders of American Catholic revival. That cannot be reversed.
Thirdly we have the Internet. I am convinced that through efforts of countless bloggers and through unimpeded access to the Holy Scripture and the works of the Fathers of the Church the foundational lies of Protestantism will be exposed. Soon the day will come when no one will be taking seriously Protestant claims of adherence to the Word of God, and with that, Catholic Church will be one clear choice for anyone interested in the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Will it be culturally more Latino-Pole-Italian-Bavarian etc.? Probably not. The assimilation process is in the American fabric; we recently notice the Latinos because the left-wing cultural regime stopped assisting people who assimilate. But like water cannot run uphill, so americanization of the Latino is inevitable. The people around me in the pews are all, perhaps, Schmidts who style themselves Smiths, but they are all American. There are distinctly immigrant churches, -- I lovingly remember one in Sacramento that was Vietnamese-Hispanic at about 80%, but the cusp of New American Catholic movement will be educated and white, and mainstream.
Your off to a great start in 2015, Mrs. Don-o. You’ve written the truth and you’ve written it well. And yes, it did all start with Cardinal Gibbons and Americanism, but ask a priest about that today and they’ll call it the “phantom” heresy. The average catholic has never even heard of it.
As you know, of course, so much more could be said; but unfortunately, there are very few Catholics who would listen today. Your observations about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (which they now call the “Eucharistic Celebration”), is spot on. In fact, it is for many of the very reasons you’ve articulated in your post that my wife and I make the long drive into DC to attend the Tridentine Mass at St Mary’s..
Most of us who care about the Church can do little about any of this; but what we can and must do is to continue to keep the leaders of the Church in our prayers. I am absolute convinced that all of the difficulties that we are witnessing in the Church today relates back to Fatima. Perhaps in time the pope and bishops will recognize that as well, and then do what the Blessed Mother requested of them. Maybe then we’ll get back on the right track.