The Vortex—Star-Spangled Heresy

This is a tough Vortex to speak. I’m as patriotic as the next guy. I remember being a young lad of 15 as my country celebrated its bicentennial back in 1976.

I watched TV that day from six in the morning until well past midnight as the non-stop, commercial-free, wall-to-wall coverage on the giant national birthday party was broadcast from sea to shining sea.

I watched the tall ships sail into New York harbor, saw the explosive fireworks show over D.C. I listened and sang my lungs out with a lump in my throat as Arthur Fielder conducted the Boston Pops on the Esplanade playing one stirring American hymn after another. I watched Walter Cronkite move effortlessly from one sprawling scene of Americana to another. There was no other place I would have rather been on that glorious Fourth of July all those years ago.

Few know that it was illegal to be Catholic in 10 of the original 13 colonies. Even after the War of Independence, hostility to Catholicism remained intense. But more importantly, it is the philosophical underpinnings of America that are the very heart of the problem.

America was born from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Those philosophers were driven by their hatred of scholastic philosophy — the mind of Aquinas, you might say. Aquinas expounded a philosophy as solid as rock: that God is the center of the Universe and man is bound to certain codes and creeds in face of that reality.

In order to break away from those codes and creeds, Enlightenment philosophers set out to change the perception of reality. What sprang up in place of Aquinas and the Catholic Church was a new system of thought: that MAN was the center of the universe — or at least the functional center.

Sure there may have been a God of Nature, but that God had little to do in reality with man’s day-to-day life. So man was free to set course to develop his own religions, moral codes, even separate truths, when the time was right to pull that trigger. All of this social philosophy came to a legal, formal construct in the birth of the American nation.

As an aside, a few years later, this same philosophy would be responsible for the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror where thousands and thousands of Catholics were beheaded.

Here in America, a new nation emerged from the Age of Enlightenment, and although it was decidedly divorced from the past politically, it still took a couple of centuries to shake off the morality it had learned from the Catholic Church. The PEOPLE were now the arbiters of truth. No longer crushed underfoot by kings and monarchs, power would be derived from the consent of the governed.

And THERE is the problem, the decidedly anti-Catholic proposition. What happens when the consent of the governed now agrees with contraception, abortion and sodomy? What happens when the majority of the governed accept no-fault divorce, cohabitation, pornography, single parenthood, explicit sex education in schools and a host of other evils?

In America, these are all allowed because the majority of the governed accept them — and that places faithful Catholics on the outside looking in. America says man gets to decide. The Church says God gets to decide. Those two principles cannot co-exist. Either America will be converted by the Church, or the Church will be converted by America. We know how that turned out.

Too many Americans who are also Catholic have twisted themselves into theological pretzels to insist a person can be a good Catholic while also being a good American. As long as America remained essentially Catholic in its morality, that tightrope could be walked, however gingerly.

But once Protestant-majority America — with all the diversity that description contains — realized it was living Catholic morality, without adhering to the underlying Catholic theology, it threw off the morality and turned secular. Catholic Americans took more pride in their country than they did their Church, always struggling for a place at the table, always ready to compromise or accommodate their Protestant neighbors.

Even John F. Kennedy in 1960 was willing to sell out his faith in front of an audience of protestant preachers to be accepted and win the White House. He learned that groveling act from a succession of bishops in the American hierarchy stretching back more than a couple hundred years, and who the present crop for the most part continues in that sad tradition.

The silly appeals to so-called religious liberty will fall flat. What Catholics in America have not understood is that the will of the governed could be turned on them at any point — and now has.

This is one of the topics Church Militant was able to discuss with Bp. Athanasius Schneider when we were in Rome recently when he sat down with us and granted us an exclusive far-reaching interview.

What I did not know in my innocent youthful naïveté was the seeds for America’s self-destruction had been in place from the beginning. See, America at her core has always been at war with the Catholic Church. Few know that it was illegal to be Catholic in 10 of the original 13 colonies. Even after the War of Independence, hostility to Catholicism remained intense. But more importantly, it is the philosophical underpinnings of America that are the very heart of the problem.

America was born from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Those philosophers were driven by their hatred of scholastic philosophy — the mind of Aquinas, you might say. Aquinas expounded a philosophy as solid as rock: that God is the center of the Universe and man is bound to certain codes and creeds in face of that reality. In order to break away from those codes and creeds, Enlightenment philosophers set out to change the perception of reality. What sprang up in place of Aquinas and the Catholic Church was a new system of thought: that MAN was the center of the universe — or at least the functional center....

....America says man gets to decide. The Church says God gets to decide. Those two principles cannot co-exist. Either America will be converted by the Church, or the Church will be converted by America. We know how that turned out. Too many Americans who are also Catholic have twisted themselves into theological pretzels to insist a person can be a good Catholic while also being a good American. As long as America remained essentially Catholic in its morality, that tightrope could be walked, however gingerly.

The writer of the above screed, Michael Voris, wrote an related piece that was the subject of this FR thread: Catholic Government [Michael Voris video]. The video itself has since been pulled from the RealCatholicTV YouTube channel, but copies exist elsewhere such as the one featured on this thread. So that there is no mistaking the message, I took the time to transcribe the entire video. Here's the complete text for the Michael Voris/RealCatholicTV video episode titled "Catholic Government", dated August 12, 2010:

Hello everyone, and welcome to "The Vortex", where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed. I'm Michael Voris.
There's an inherent problem with democracy. Actually, it's definitional. It's this: everyone gets to vote. That's right, EVERYONE gets to vote.
Consider for a moment: the informed get to vote, those who have studied the candidates and issues, and consider the impact not only on themselves but the society at large. But in addition to the informed, the ignorant get to vote as well, those who have studied nothing and don't care about anything except themselves and their own narrow interests.
Imagine the scene: two voters, walking into voting booths side-by-side. One casts a vote with an eye to improving society at large, by rolling back abortion, defending traditional marriage, or reducing government's ability to crush families with heavy taxation, etc. Such a voter casts his vote with an eye to the common good - the authentic common good, what's best for the culture as a whole. Right next to his is a voter who doesn't give a hoot about society at large. All he cares about is his own selfish interests: insuring abortion stays legal so he can have sex with no consequences, or have his decision to have sex with another man celebrated as a right. Such a voter exhibits little else than an adolescent preoccupation with self-absorption. Imagine, he actually gets to vote! What a country! What a system! And it is a system that will end in self-destruction.
The nature of man is to be self-absorbed. That is because our nature is fallen. It no longer looks at God. Rather, it looks into a mirror. In fact, it stares into the mirror, totally absorbed, and can think of little else. This is why, if we're going to insist on a system where we're going to elect leaders - if we're going to insist on that system - only virtuous people should be allowed to vote. Ruthless men and women who, knowing human nature very well, and thereby the means to control and manipulate it, hold great influence over the selfish masses. They connive and scheme their way to power by appealing to the most base level of human ignorance, namely, to a false sense of liberty. They class everything in terms of "rights": a "right" to marry your homosexual sex partner, a "right" to kill your child, a "right" to have others in society pay for your lack of effort, your desire for contraception, food, housing, medical services, education, clothes - anything that can be imagined. Such societal parasites will cast their votes in such a way that will only hasten the destruction of a nation. It's like a cancer destroying its host. It enjoys ravaging the body, until the body is dead.
The cancer must be eliminated, and the only way to prevent a democracy from committing suicide is to limit the vote to faithful Catholics. Only a true Catholic nation in fact will survive, can survive, because only truly Catholic people will be the ones looking at God & not staring in the mirror. When they cast their their votes, they cast them with an eye to what God desires, not fallen human nature. But as the body politic continues to be ravaged by the cancer of ignorant self-centered voters, it becomes more and more clear that a national euthanasia is occurring.
But in truth, this is really the way the whole idea of democracy is little less than an experiment doomed to failure from the outset. Eventually, the evil in the heart of man overtakes him, when he dismisses God. No, the only way to run a country is by benevolent dictatorship. A Catholic monarch, who protects his people from themselves, and bestows on them what they need, not necessarily what they want, who protects their rights as human beings. It was this political system that caused Europe to emerge from the morass of marauding barbarians and create Western Civilization. A noble Catholic monarch advances the common good while loving and caring for his people. If you think about it, this is exactly how the universe is governed, isn't it? "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven."
God bless you, I'm Michael Voris.

And that said, I do wish that Catholics would make up their minds about assuming credit for the founding of this country:

...the core of the Declaration of Independence has its roots in Catholic thought....The following comparisons, clause for clause, of the American Declaration of Independence and of excerpts from the political principles of [Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Robert Bellarmine], evidence striking similarity and identity of political principle.
-- from the thread Fortnight For Freedom: The Catholic Roots of the Declaration of Independence
American Catholics, a very small percentage of the population of the 13 colonies, 1.6 percent, were overwhelmingly patriots and played a role in the American Revolution out of all proportion to the small fragment of the American people they represented....Figures on how many Catholics served in the Continental Army or the American militias is speculative as records of religious affiliations were not normally kept. From anecdotal evidence my guess would be at least five percent, far in exess of the Catholic percentage of the population. The foreign volunteers who came to fight for our freedom were overwhelmingly Catholic, including LaFayette, Duportail, Kosciuszko and Pulaski.
-- from the thread Fortnight For Freedom: Catholics in the American Revolution

once Protestant-majority America — with all the diversity that description contains — realized it was living Catholic morality, without adhering to the underlying Catholic theology, it threw off the morality and turned secular.

No matter how desperate RC attempts at damage control become, they really should not resort to contriving American history.

Rather than the absurd, unsubstantiated assertion that Protestant America threw off morality and turned secular because they realized it was Catholic morality (which as absurdity is an understatement), the reality it was not Catholic morality - which includes requiring RC rulers to exterminate all Protestants, and to disallow public dissent of RC teaching (inlcdg. the popes encyclicals) - but it was Biblical morality and polity they preached.

Let us hear the words of a Catholic historian:

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859. French political thinker and historian; best known for his two volume, “Democracy in America”) — The sects that exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God...Moreover, all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same...

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth...

There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated, In Europe almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and fluctuating desires. Agitated by the tumultuous passions that frequently disturb his dwelling, the European is galled by the obedience which the legislative powers of the state exact. But when the American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom of his family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace...

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live...

Thus religious zeal is perpetually warmed in the United States by the fires of patriotism. These men do not act exclusively from a consideration of a future life; eternity is only one motive of their devotion to the cause. If you converse with these missionaries of Christian civilization, you will be surprised to hear them speak so often of the goods of this world, and to meet a politician where you expected to find a priest.

They will tell you that "all the American republics are collectively involved with each other; if the republics of the West were to fall into anarchy, or to be mastered by a despot, the republican institutions which now flourish upon the shores of the Atlantic Ocean would be in great peril. It is therefore our interest that the new states should be religious, in order that they may permit us to remain free." (Democracy in America, Volume I Chapter XVII, 1835; http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/religion/ch1_17.htm)

Of which Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790. One of the Founding Fathers; leading thinker; author; printer; statesman; postmaster; diplomat, and a non-Christian deist) wrote, — ...serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there; Infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested His approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness by which the different sects treat each other, and by the remarkable prosperity with which He has been please to favor the whole country. (Benjamin Franklin, "Information to those who would Remove to America" In Franklin, Benjamin. The Bagatelles from Passy. Ed. Lopez, Claude A. New York: Eakins Press. 1967; http://mith.umd.edu//eada/html/display.php?docs=franklin_bagatelle4.xml. Also, John Gould Curtis, American history told by contemporaries .... Volume 3, p. 26)

And which obedience God blessed, but like Israel of old to whom God had written the great things of His law, they counted them as strange thing, (Hosea 8:12) and began following men like RCs follow popes, rather than Scripture being supreme.

And rather than Catholics being the most moral, the reality is that it RCs who are the most liberal today as compared with with those who most strongly hold to the primary evangelical distinctive in Scripture literally being the wholly inspired and accurate word of God.

See for yourself by the grace of God.

And note that Biblically, it is what one does and effects that constitutes the evidence of what one really believes, which Rome shows in part by treating even proabortion/sodomy/Muslim souls and their supporters as members in life and in death.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.