Church and Nation: America’s Original Sin
Can a faithful Catholic be a good American? Can a good American be a faithful Catholic? While these questions may seem relics of the era of the Know-Nothings and "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," they are still around today. And, as some comments on recent posts on this website have shown, an increasing number of people—both non-Catholic and Catholic—are beginning to have doubts that either question can be answered with a Yes.
To open a reasonable debate on these questions, I've decided to take up Dr. Fleming's call to discuss ecclesiastical issues by inaugurating an occasional series on "Church and Nation." I have chosen the series title carefully, because it is not my intent to discuss questions of religious freedom or establishment of religion. While certain (indeed, perhaps all) installments of this series will touch on matters of policy and the role of Catholics in the public square, the point is not to begin, as Rousseau would, by setting the facts aside, but to take as a given the American constitutional system, both historically and in its attenuated condition today.
To that end, this first post will not dive directly into such current political matters as immigration, the Church's opposition to the war in Iraq, abortion, and embryonic stem-cell research, but address a fundamental matter at the heart of many debates between Catholics and Protestants in the United States: namely (to state it from the Catholic side), whether the Protestant nature of the American founding represents a fundamental flaw at the heart of the American nation—one which prevents Catholics from being true Americans.
Catholic writers such as David Schindler and John Rao have been discussing this notion for years, and I would encourage both Catholic and Protestant readers to take a look at their works. Ultimately, the question they raise is one that we have addressed here at Chronicles in recent years (albeit from a different, more historical and philosophical angle): not whether the United States is fundamentally flawed, but whether the entire modern world has gone wrong in rejecting tradition, hierarchy, and religion and embracing abstraction, egalitarian individualism, and skepticism.
It's an interesting and important question, and coming to grips with it can help us figure out how to begin to return to life the way it was meant to be lived. But bringing the question up every time someone addresses, say, immigration policy is, at best, not particularly useful—and may be downright destructive. In the context of policy discussions or questions involving American national sovereignty, the mention of what some Catholic traditionalists and even conservative Novus Ordo Catholics call "America's Original Sin" becomes simply a convenient way of not discussing the issue at hand.
Some Catholics who favor massive Mexican immigration use this idea to dismiss any concerns over national sovereignty: The United States was illegitimate from the beginning; Catholic Mexicans are just righting that wrong. The Constitution, too, is blithely dismissed: It doesn't matter that abortion was historically a matter for the states; if the Constitution stands in the way of imposing a national ban on abortion, then to hell with the Constitution.
The response of some Protestants is hardly better. Starting from the fact that the United States was overwhelmingly Protestant at its founding, the more extreme among them declare that the Founding Fathers would have been horrified by the participation of Catholics in public debates. (Apparently, the papists somehow managed to destroy that section of Madison's notes on the Philadelphia convention in which Daniel Carroll of Catholic Maryland was summarily ejected.)
The problem for extremists on both sides is that the Catholic Church does not declare a government illegitimate simply because it is not Catholic, nor condemn a nation for not converting en masse to the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Faith. In fact, as Catholics, we are to find truth wherever it resides, and that includes especially the history and traditions of our nation and native land. As Pope John Paul II wrote in his final book, Memory and Identity:
The term "nation" designates a community based in a given territory and distinguished by its culture. Catholic social doctrine holds that the family and the nation are both natural societies, not the product of mere convention.
The mention of doctrine is important here. We cannot simply say, "Well, the nation into which I was born is overwhelmingly Protestant, with traditions that are alien to me as a Catholic. Therefore, in the name of Catholic doctrine, I simply do not regard myself as an American—at least not until America becomes a Catholic nation, by hook or by crook." To do so is to reject the natural society into which we were born, and thus to undermine the very doctrine that we claim to be upholding.
Patriotism, writes Pope John Paul II in the same book,
is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius.
Here in the United States, simply by the facts of demographics, that history, those traditions, our compatriots, and the fruits of their genius are primarily Protestant. As faithful Catholics, we have to embrace what is good and true in all of those--and, as we know, the Church does teach that truth, even if sometimes only partial, can be found outside of Rome.
Of course, as faithful Catholics, we are also called to provide witness to the fullness of the truth, but that's a discussion for another post (or posts). What we are not allowed to do, however, is to reject out of hand that which is good because it is not, somehow, fully ours.
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The Catholic Church or better yet the Churchmen can and do declare a government illegitimate. But this does not take away from the fact that unbelievers can and do have true lordship. Sometimes the Churchmen forget this and therefore do more harm than good by declaring a government illegitimate. The United States of American has true lordship but this lordship is merely permitted and tolerated by the Blessed Trinity and therefore this form of government can be changed by the will of a few good men. These men will never give offense to the Blessed Trinity by changing the country's bad customs and bad laws.
My question to you Scott P. Richert is if you will be able to write a few works on nation and state without ignoring the history of Roman Catholic governmental offices (HRE) that have since been annihilated by modern man (Treaty of Pressburg 1806)?
And if these Roman Catholic governmental offices are neccessary to govern modern man. If so how to re-establish such an neccessary Office.
Red Phillips @ 30
You and I essentially agree; I would, however, argue that Puritianism flowed out of Calvinism (not all Calvinists were Puritan.). New England Puritans were a select set of Puritans (not all Puritans were New Englanders.). Among the New England Puritans there emerged a new manifestation of the Arian heresy. (Not all New England Puritans embraced it.) The Unitarian view of Christ and ultimately a secularized version thereof came and has come to prevail in the intellectual, religious and political classes of New England and has spread itself across the republics of this union.
Edward, I brought up the Church's contemporary stance on capital punishment because many devout Catholics believe that the Church has an abolitionist attitude, as exemplified by Denver's Absp. Chaput when he equated Justice Scalia to Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice (the pro-abortion group). Scalia himself seemed to think that supporting capital punishment would be going against Church teaching, as this essay from First Things indicates:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2022
Scalia's salient point:
So I have given this new position thoughtful and careful consideration-and I disagree. That is not to say I favor the death penalty (I am judicially and judiciously neutral on that point); it is only to say that I do not find the death penalty immoral. I am happy to have reached that conclusion, because I like my job, and would rather not resign. And I am happy because I do not think it would be a good thing if American Catholics running for legislative office had to oppose the death penalty (most of them would not be elected); if American Catholics running for Governor had to promise commutation of all death sentences (most of them would never reach the Governor’s mansion); if American Catholics were ineligible to go on the bench in all jurisdictions imposing the death penalty; or if American Catholics were subject to recusal when called for jury duty in capital cases.
This was Chaput's response:
When Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia publicly disputes church teaching on the death penalty, the message he sends is not all that different from Frances Kissling disputing what the church teaches about abortion,... the impulse to pick and choose what we're going to accept is exactly the same kind of 'cafeteria Catholicism' in both cases.
Chaput is considered to be one of the American Church's guiding lights. Yet he not only displays ignorance about Church history and ethics but he publicly smears the credibilty of a decent man for doing nothing more than examining the implications of the late Pope's "prudential judgement" concerning capital punishment.
What's the point? Sometimes those who are charged with maintaining fidelity with divine revelation -- even bishops and popes -- break that committment to pursue their own agendas. If that's true, then perhaps American Catholics should spend their time more profitably by challenging the superiors in their own faith, if they are to use that faith as a guide to being a good citizen.
BTW, Edward, the CCC (while not denying the state's ability or necessity to impose punishment proportional to the crime), adds this exerpt from Evangelium vitae to article 2267:
If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'
If the CCC is a compendium of doctrine that all Catholics are advised to study, then how are they to determine which papal pronouncements are "prudential" and which are not?
What the CCC seems to be saying is that, while we cannot deny the inherent morality of the death penalty, we can warn political leaders to be extremely prudential and selective when applying it to specific cases. If there was something principally or intrinsically wrong with the death penalty then the CCC would state it quite simply. It does not.
The Scalia issue just illustrates my point. He is obviously right and the Bishop is wrong, but the Bishop is wrong in a very specific way. He is wrongfully condemning the death penalty as an intrinsic evil akin to abortion. This is not part of the Tradition of the Church. The Catholic Church has always maintained the threefold effect of imposition of the death penalty: Legitimate defense, spiritual rehabilitation, and (last but not least) retribution or retributive justice. The reason this issue can become so clouded is because the death penalty is rarely discussed in principal and is almost always placed within the context of a specific case within a specific country's penal system. And it is precisely in this situation where Catholics are free to agree or disagree with its imposition.
If we can get back to what started this, though, we can see that there is no struggle, properly understood, between 'traditionalists' and 'progressives' for the sole rights to the title of 'Catholic'. The Church has specific positions and doctrines and either you agree with and believe in them or you do not. Calling people who follow the Church 'traditional' as opposed to 'progressive' is what is truly disingenuous.
"Legitimate defense, spiritual rehabilitation, and (last but not least) retribution or retributive justice. "
As a life-long Protestant and as a Christian since the age of nine, I can and do support the three-fold imposition of the death penalty cited supra. However, I too have grave difficulty with the death penalty in the context of the "justice" system in many states in which state prosecutors and judges have embraced the death penalty as a mean to and a means to keep political office. In reality, my concern goes well beyond the death penalty - it goes to the corruption of the entire system - the rise of positive law and the adjudication of almost all of social life, i.e. the state encroaching ever more on the domains of life which rightly and historically belong to the family, to the Church and other non-state institutions.
It is as evil to send a man to prison for a rape which he did not commit as it is to send him to prison with a death sentence for a murder which he did not commit. Ironically, the guy on death row, usually separated from other inmates, might well survive longer in prison than the guy sent in for rape. The guy sent in for rape may well be murdered by one of his fellow inmates or contract a STD, including HIV, from the relationships forced upon him.
It is possible that the Greeks avoided truth per se *instinctively, in behalf of propositional truth. Then were coincidently fascinated by the notion of Christ as the truth, himself. All of this no doubt occurring on the road toward our all being further and further civilized as a result, thankfully. Until dealing with the raw nerve ending of truth itself becomes doable. [Here's where people tend to turn white (even people of color) and I say 'Breathe,' thus reminding myself as well.]
So what one has always is both the need for propositional truth arrived at as the Greeks did by discussing derivative essences of truth. Juxtapositioned inevitaby with the essence (i.e. totality) of truth itself which the Greeks did not consciously acknowledge, though of course can't ever be 'gotten rid of.' And usually in fact is more or less experienced by most of us as a hot potato. Like Pilate, literally and metaphorically washing his hands of it and saying in exasperation - here you deal with the hot potato... err, "what is truth?"
The above comments of mine Scott are just another you might say derivative take on your quote: "Of course, as faithful Catholics, we are also called to provide witness to the fullness of the truth, but that’s a discussion for another post (or posts). What we are not allowed to do, however, is to reject out of hand that which is good because it is not, somehow, fully ours." (end quote)
I wholeheartedly agree, as I've attempted to delve down toward above.
Regarding Buster's final comment (50), Pope Benedict seems to come awfully close, actually, in statements such as the following, but I can't determine whether he refers to the content of the Mass itself; or to the liturgical abuse whereby it has been poorly celebrated so much.
"What happened after the Council was something completely different [from how liturgy had historically developed] : in the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product."
My own deficient thoughts...
American institutions and traditions are coloured by "Protestant nature" because they were established by British Protestants and their descendants. If the U.S.A. is not a proposition nation, then there is nothing preventing a "good American" from also being a "good Catholic. If it is a proposition nation, then being fully "American" entails subscription to some sort of creed that is decisively not Catholic.
If by "American founding" we speak of the separation from England, it is difficult not to see that "founding" as squarely Freemasonic and deist. The founding may not have been "irredeemably tainted" insofar as said central government left the sovereign states alone, but we all know how that turned out.
So what is then the difference between being a good American Catholic and, say, being a good French Catholic? The Republic of France is another rabidly, perhaps even more so, Freemasonic and arguably atheist state, founded on a movement whose origins were direct and explicit manifestations against the Catholic Church. The difference is that no [real] Frenchman is French only because of a tie to the national government. He is French because of his folk, ethnic and linguistic ties: no government can take those away from him.
(Given the diversity of the French compared to other European ethno-linguistic groups such as the Dutch, Czech, Welsh, etc. [though less so than, say, the Italians, but the Conquest of Italy is a whole other issue to be dealt with (and hopefully reputed)], one could reasonably argue that the French national identity rests in part on identification with an historic state. However, the historic French state was not an enlightened republic but a Catholic monarchy; at times, THE pinnacle of Catholic monarchies. Nearly all decent Frenchmen I have met who involve themselves in politics are at least royal nostalgists.)
Most Americans rely upon the existence of this particular federal government from which to derive their national identity. To those who object, consider: if the state supposedly based upon the Constitution of 1787 were to collapse, what would replace it? What would hold the fifty States together? What would we be called? I do not know the answers to these questions, but I have a strong inkling that perhaps they would not be held together and we would no longer be usurping the hemespheric adjective "American" for our nationality.
I am hopeful this discussion will touch seriously upon what it means to be "American," whether there is such thing as being a "good" or "bad" American (we say a born-and-bred Frenchman is a "loyal" or "trecherous" Frenchman, but a "good" versus a "bad" Frenchman? Usually not unless we're making jokes about whether he prefers Brie to Kraft cheese or Bordeaux to Bud Light), whether being a "good" American requires a commitment to some sort of creed and whether said creed is compatible with the Credo.
My Catholic ancestors in Louisiana and Texas helped the American colonies obtain independence, so I believe that the answer to the question, "Can a Catholic be a good American?" is "yes." However, I have difficulty identifying what nation I belong to if I reject the proposition that "Might makes Right." Louisiana has been under 10 flags in a (by world history standards) very short period of time. Should I call myself an Apache Choctaw? a Frenchman? A Spaniard? an Acadian? A West Floridian? A Louisianian? A Confederate? an American? I appreciated Pope John Paul II's Easter message in 1995 in which he called for the recognition of the political aspirations of the Palestinians and the Kurds, and I appreciate Pope Benedict XVI's message of 2005 "that no nation should be the target of a collectively assigned culpability and that we have to see the individual person and his personal value before we condemn him for his national origin." I know those Popes have had special insights into what it means to belong to a nation that has been conquered but still deserves recognition and respect. Jesus gave his apostles the commission to go forth and make disciples of all nations. I look forward to being received into heaven and knowing what flag I'm supposed to rally to.
Thanks for yours NGPM. I see America as having taken the subconscious Greek error of imbalancing too far in the direction of propositional truth 'as if' truth itself, and her/i.e. America's having elevated that up to the level of the sacred.
If so, then the traditional Catholic notion held by a relative few, that this original sin of America's, since not the truth (i.e. truly too imbalanced in that regard) will inevitably bring her down. ... And we'll all become something else closer to not only reality but the actual, or that which is more *essential or whole in terms of the truth, that can't by its very nature 'go away.'
I am not what has come to be known as a "blood & soil" type 'as if' that were the whole truth. Although since it may come closer to it, than the largely or overly propositional ('as if' the divine or the deity or God or truth itself.) This niggling, invisible mistake of Western Civilization is more attenutated in Europe precisely because of each group or people's ancient history of blood and thus place or soil.
Also Euopean nations did not take a proposition and elevate it to a sacred level, to my knowledge. Again this was/still is one of the mistakes of Western Civilization which is otherwise more accurate than not. But a mistake that only so far America apparently has writ large and has been moving in the direction of making the imbalance larger still. Yes it feels good the propositional to be sure. That's precisely why it's so tempting. That doesn't automatically mean it can endure, sadly. But both sadly, as well as happily are of the truth.
So how can one be a good American and a good Catholic or a good American and a good Jew or a good American and a good Muslim or a good American and a good anything that does not wish to go over the edge? I do not know. The mistake, in its inflamation now seems to be becoming more and more apparent to more and more people?
Simply because like the truth can't go away subsequently so too mistakes uncovered and unaddressed cannot go away either until ameliorated.
A good American today may be one dedicated to addressing this invisible 'given' and hoping to redress it perhaps in some form of Constitutional convention, if that is still possible. I would rely on your knowedge NGPM in that area much more so than on my own.
As of today what does it mean to be an American? It probably means being unaware, that we took a heretofore invisible Greek error of imbalancing toward the propositional truth 'as if' truth itself. And in also not seeing the error and no doubt subconsciously hoping to transcend the mistake via even greater denial of it we wrote it larger. That's human, sometimes when we don't see a mistake we can assume we were deficient or insufficient in its application and so we simply need more of the same.
An outstanding essay, Scott, on a point that is much more fundamental than any particular issue about the "public square." Let's make sure that the way you stated the issue, "whether the protestant nature of the American founding represents a fatal flaw at the heart of the American nation--one which prevents Catholics from being true Americans," is indeed what we focus on here. First, let's dismiss the relevance of JFK's speech to the Houston Baptists: Kennedy was the most secular of men, and if you read the Houston speech carefully you will discover that he was saying, "Don't worry about me, my Catholicism has nothing to do with either my public or my personal life." Second, I'm not sure the "founding" (a poor and meaningless term, except to Straussians and neocons) was especially Protestant. As Barry Shain and others have convincingly pointed out, the Enlightenment language of many leaders wasn't even Christian, much less particularly Protestant. The City on a Hill triumphalism of modern evangelicals doesn't do justice to the tolerant and loving Christianity of John Witherspoon, Timothy Dwight, Elias Boudinot and many others who articulated the prudential American relationship between church and nation. Certainly the Carroll family didn't feel left out of such a formulation. Third, Peter, James, Paul and almost all the Doctors of the early Church (especially Augustine) were united in saying that the Church trumps the world, and I'm not sure any of my Protestant friends would, come right down to it, disagree. Fourth, the former Unitarian ideologue turned Catholic Orestes Brownson gave a view of "The American Republic" which was probably as well thought-out a decentralist essay as ever was produced in the overwhelmingly Protestant South. Let me stop there, for now. In more recent American letters the Jesuit John Courtney Murray, the historian Carlton J.H. Hayes, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen have a great deal to teach us about the central question you propose. Again, a terrific start to a most important topic, Scott.
"Third, Peter, James, Paul and almost all the Doctors of the early Church (especially Augustine) were united in saying that the Church trumps the world, and I’m not sure any of my Protestant friends would, come right down to it, disagree." -Allen Wilson
I agree with all of yours above in #64 to the extent I understood it, especially the quote of yours I've highlighted here above. I would just go further (for myself in terms of clarification) in indicating that in fullness or wholeness of truth the Church is world. The distinction being herein between world (all of our worlds each being a world unto themself) and Earth which belongs in my estimation solely to God or the divine, as do we all also in our respective worlds. They're the same world and Earth but not identical.
Which is the 'why' of why it is so that art for example, one facet of the divine, or truth at work, belongs to that which is wrested (not in a taking but in an essential manifestation) from the earth or mother Nature herself. This means Church in so far as she is wed to truth is also of God and His Earth.
So church is then not merely a will to power but rather a happening and a letting happen of the truth. It's why I like Catholicism.
This is important given our inherited cultural proclivity where truth is concerned toward the propositional. I too am thankful and in agreement with Scott. Don't mirror, if you are, any will to power in me if it yet resides in yourself, if that is the case, which it perhaps is not.
[p.s. sorry I quoted and referenced John Willson in my post #65 above, not Allen Willson.]
Carlton J.H. Hayes is one of the least appreciated Catholic thinkers of the 20th century. He helped to start Commonweal in the 1920s long before it became a voice for liberal Catholics; Hayes wanted it to show that the Catholic principle of subsidiarity was identical to the Tocquevillian understanding of America as a nation of family, church, neighborhood, and voluntary associations. Hayes also founded the study of nationalism and in a series of books made the important distinction between nationalism and patriotism that is at the heart of so much of what you have to say, Scott.
Fr. John Courtney Murray showed that the basic American beliefs of constitutionalism, limited government and the rule of law were not American innovations but medieval in origin, and the product of Catholic tradition. This was also the burden of the arguments of Erik Maria Ritter von Keuhnelt Leddihn, who like Murray and Hayes has been too soon forgotten.
Bishop Sheen, who is almost always portrayed by pseudo-scholars as a Christian popularizer in the company of Norman Vincent Peal, was actually one of the greatest Christian scholars of the 20th century. Along with reintroducing Aquinas to America and dissecting the communist regimes that murdered more Christians than any other in human history, he correctly identified the simple yet basic American problem: "The family is the barometer of the nation. What the average home is, that is the nation."
As the Church defends the family, the nation has a chance to be healthy.
"A good American today may be one dedicated to addressing this invisible ‘given’ and hoping to redress it perhaps in some form of Constitutional convention, if that is still possible. I would rely on your knowedge NGPM in that area much more so than on my own."
I have long believed that if our country (if we can now call it that) is to survive it must in one way or another be reconstituted, though I admit that how to approach this for a people who derive their national identity from a particular constitution (in England the constitutional tradition runs the other way, as well it should) escapes me.
But don't rely on my knowledge too much; it's been years since I read the words of any American patriarch in anything more than passing.
"Fr. John Courtney Murray showed that the basic American beliefs of constitutionalism, limited government and the rule of law were not American innovations but medieval in origin, and the product of Catholic tradition. This was also the burden of the arguments of Erik Maria Ritter von Keuhnelt Leddihn, who like Murray and Hayes has been too soon forgotten."
Just a remark: I am not overly familiar with many American Catholic intellectuals, but I am well-acquainted with Kuehnelt-Leddhin, and while I appreciate a great deal of what he has to say, there are some serious flaws in his philosophy. It has been several years since I have read his works, but I recall in particular of "Leftism Revisited":
1. That his central argument rested upon Leftism as an idealization of equity as opposed to the Right, which emphasized liberty;
2. That he did not once address the Freemasonry and deism of many of America's founders and only briefly conceded that there was a hint of toxic "enlightenment" egalitarianism;
3. That he whitewashed classic 19th century liberals and libertarians.
Kuehnelt-Leddhin was a well-travelled, highly educated and extremely intelligent gentleman, and to his credit, he did at one point hint that serious changes might now be necessary for this country "saddled with the Constitution of a small eighteenth-century farmer's republic." However, overall I had the impression that he was so in love with his adopted U.S.A. and probably reacting with such horror at the (admittedly horrifying) ensnaring of half his home continent by the U.S.S.R. that he was bending his very solid conservative instincts to support the former.
(I also have to question Kuehnelt-Leddhin's discretion for choosing to write under William Buckley, even though National Review was less terrible in those days.)
Leftism is a reaction against the Christian foundations of Western Civilization; there is simply no way around that. Within Christendom there is room for various states and institutions of varying sizes and degrees of centralization; there can be no room for deistic "natural rights."
Catholics of old favored the "Confessional State", with the Church recognized by law as the dominant religion and other sects or religions given bare toleration. Only such an arrangement can preserve the Catholic faith in a nation (or any other Christian faith for that matter - the European experience of Confessional states becoming liberalized and thus de-Christianized is instructive). This is of course has not been nor could it be the situation in America, with its Catholic minority and its liberal, secular legal foundation and religious pluralism. We are reduced, therefore, to a sort of non-violent guerilla warfare - opposing the liberalizing, secularizing trends that threaten the Church within and without, attempting to preserve ourselves and our children in the Faith in a society hostile to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It is not unlike the situation faced by the Church in its early Roman Empire days (absent the lions!).
An addendum for Dr. Wilson (from the Catholic Encyclopedia):
A second revival of slavery took place after the discovery of the New World by the Spaniards in 1492. To give the history of it would be to exceed the limits of this article. It will be sufficient to recall the efforts of Las Casas in behalf of the aborigines of America and the protestations of popes against the enslavement of those aborigines and the traffic in negro slaves. England, France, Portugal, and Spain, all participated in this nefarious traffic. England only made amends for its transgressions when, in 1815, it took the initiative in the suppression of the slave trade. In 1871 a writer had the temerity to assert that the Papacy had not its mind to condemn slavery" (Ernest Havet, "Le christianisme et ses origines", I, p. xxi). He forgot that, in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime" (magnum scelus); that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; that Urban VIII forbade it in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741; that Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade and Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, in the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the "supreme villainy" (summum nefas) of the slave traders. Everyone knows of the beautiful letter which Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed to the Brazilian bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery -- a letter to which the bishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church.
I believe Dr. Wilson was referring not to the Church as a broad teaching institution, but rather to the particular episcopacy in the particular area of America's South, in the particular time of the 19th century.
As for the Mormons not fighting to defend their religious rights, I'm not really surprised. Perhaps they (mistakenly? I'm not sure...) believe that political correctness and the ACLU will strive to do to them what has been done to the Ten Commandments and prayer.
Mr. Oosbree, I'm in agreement with you. I just wonder WHEN the lions will be added to the mix. And whether or not they will be preying upon not just us, but everyone who refuses to espouse syncretism.
The Church's strictures were primarily directed against the slave trade, which was also banned by the Confederate Constitution.
The slave trade to Catholic Brazil and Catholic Cuba remained active long after 1815, and indeed even after emancipation in the U.S.
Las Casas opposed enslavement of the native Americans and offered enslavement of Africans as a positive alternative.
Dr. Wilson: The ban on the slave trade by the Confederate Constitution was motivated by a fear that European nations would withhold recognition otherwise and by a wish to protect the internal slave trade in the Confederacy (an exception to the usual Southern opposition to protectionism!). Moral scruples took third place. The Church's failure to convince secular authorities to ban slavery or the slave trade illustrates the sad fact that it is next to impossible to convince a man of the truth of something if it will cost him money.
Mr. V O. You are wrong about the Confederate Constitution. You are making hypothetical judgments of the motives of people you know nothing about. Southern opinion had been overwhelmingly against the foreign slave trade for a long time by 1860, except for a few fire-eaters who proposed re-opening it mainly to irritate the attacking Yankees. If you wish to put it on self-interest, then you can say that the trade was totally unnecessary because the black population in the South had been multiplying prolifically (which was not true of the free blacks in the North nor of the slave population in the Catholic countries and colonies). The American Catholic Church, like most Southerners, was doubtful about slavery abstractly considered, but it vigorously opposed abolitionism. Prior to 1860, Catholics were most numerous and most welcome in the South. Convents were attacked and burned down in Boston and Philadelphia with collusion of local authorities. Yankee soldiers destroyed Catholic churches, schools, etc. just as readily as any others, perhaps more so. May I respectfully suggest that you learn more about the people you are judging. Then you can make moral judgments based upon accurate information rather the ideology.
Dr. Wilson: Was there a turn against catholics in the south after the civil war or is that overstated? Was there a majority denomination in the south prior to and after the civil war?
72Clyde Wilson
Convents were attacked and burned down in Boston and Philadelphia with the collusion of local authorities. Yankee soldiers destroyed Catholic churches, schools, etc. just as readily as any others, perhaps more so.
I would suggest that the Yankee anti-catholicism came from the mass immigration that was occurring at the time. Many of the Yankees were concerned that mass Catholic immigration would overwhelm them, which it did. The fact is that the states that were founded by the Protestant Yankees are now majority Catholic, with the original settlers a minority in the lands their fathers settled.
Seeing the local Catholics celebrating 'El Virgen de Guadelupe' makes me reconsider any support I ever had for St. Patrick's day. Both are ethnic festivals originally Catholic in origin promoted by the Roman church here in America to prevent the immigrants and their children from dropping their previous identity. The effects of this alienation be seen in the northeast and southwest where ethnic Catholics celebrate their ethnic festivals and vote Liberal as a way of sticking it to the native Yankees.
I seem to have screwed up my html tag in the above post. I meant to put at the end of the first paragraph not , oops.
#73. The South did not suffer from any considerable anti-Catholicism until the late 19th and early 20th century. When it did appear it was 1)part of the reaction against the many alien seeming aspects of the hostile and exploitive North and 2) a product of absorption of Southern Protestantism (from the top down) into the intellectual world of Northern Protestantism.
I appreciate Mr. Duck's point.
However the flip side is equally worth considering: In my experience the problem is not that of too many American Catholics fiercely holding on to their Catholic identity -- but that American Catholics are obsessed with fitting in, and acquiring the trappings of success as per the Yankee model.
The WASP-iest people here in Louisville are the ones who send their kids to elite Catholic schools as a ticket to respectable "moderate Republican" yuppiedom.
Historically a great many Catholic bishops have fallen all over themselves to prove their loyalty to the Enlightenment-inspired, American Proposition -- such as by suppressing and/or discouraging German identity among German Catholics.
Probably had the distinctively ethnic character -- German, French, Italian, Pole, etc. -- of various Catholic parishes been retained, there would be considerably less taint of leftism and statism found in American Catholicism today.
If Catholics vote for pro-abortion, pro- gay lobby, pro-feminist politicians "as a way of sticking it to the native Yankees", they can hardly be said to have held on to their Catholic identity, now have they?
And since we're speaking of America's Original Sin -- and hopefully I won't be mistaken for a leftie here -- what about the American Indian?
Would "America" as we know it -- a vast, unitary industrial state networked across the entire continent -- have been possible without the dishonorable treatment of the tribes native to this continent?
78G.S.
Would “America” as we know it — a vast, unitary industrial state networked across the entire continent — have been possible without the dishonorable treatment of the tribes native to this continent?
No, America probably wouldn't be what it is today if it had not killed the Indians, it would be Mexico from the beginning. A significant part of the population of Mexico is either full blooded native or at least part, which partly explains the differences between the US and its' southern neighbor.
Since we were talking about New England and the Indians, here is the first Indian war fought in the colonies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip's_War
I would say that at the very least we should honor our treaties with the Indians we have now or negotiate a treaty with them we are willing to keep.
77G.S.
I appreciate Mr. Duck’s point.
Thank you.
However the flip side is equally worth considering: In my experience the problem is not that of too many American Catholics fiercely holding on to their Catholic identity — but that American Catholics are obsessed with fitting in, and acquiring the trappings of success as per the Yankee model.
Probably had the distinctively ethnic character — German, French, Italian, Pole, etc. — of various Catholic parishes been retained, there would be considerably less taint of leftism and statism found in American Catholicism today.
I see your point, but this loss of ethnic character does give the church an opportunity to clean house. By emphasizing the unity of American catholics as a single group with common concerns, the church hierarchy could use them as a tool to clean up America. In one central American country the bishop was able to call out 300,000 people to gather in the nation's capital to rally to criminalize abortion. That kind of national unity isn't possible if the various parishes are emphasizing their differences.
In fact if the church were to see itself as a national branch of the Catholic church instead of a tower of Babel, it would be a backdoor way for you traditionalists to reintroduce the latin Mass and set itself up as THE standard of what is and is not American. This is why in some of my earlier anti-Catholic rants I have suggested that the Pope eliminate the USCCB, cut the US cardinals down to archbishop and appoint a single national cardinal to lead the national church. This man would be a focus of unity for US catholics and a recognized spokesman for the church. Instead of having that Catholic League defending the church, the church could defend itself in public.
Don't get me wrong, I am still anti-catholic, but the churches decay, size and new leadership at the top does give it an opportunity to clean house and grow.
Since the only "americanists" I know are Mormon John Birchers, I don't consider myself one. I would have to subscribe to a "my country right or wrong" mentality. I see the leaders of the US attacking various and sundry bogeymen chosen by David Frum and other non-Americans, and must disagree with such wrong actions -- read: wars.
Whenever I return to the UK, I tell folks there that I am a Virginian because that's where I plant my garden and pay property taxes. It is a response that leaves Europeans of all stripes befuddled. And why not? It was at Jamestown where I learned that the tripartite essence of being English, was king, language, and church (not place). Since the constitution forbids the establishment of a national church, and we are a republic not an empire, that leaves us with the English language, itself an institution under fire from enlightened progressives.
As for the church, well, my beloved Anglicans have checked into the funny farm, and since I decided that no American religion measured up to any decent tradition, I became Romanian Orthodox!
One of the problems I’m having with this discussion is Scott’s use of the term “faithful Catholics”. I’m not sure, especially in postmodern America what this term means?
A Faithful Catholic is one who maintains the Bonds of Unity in Worship, Doctrine, and Authority.
I am living proof one can be a Faithful Catholic and a good American.
I am one who rejects the ideology of splitting the history of the Church into Pre or Post any Ecumenical Council, especially if the idea bears the toxic and heretical notion the Church as the authoritative Pillar and Ground of truth has ceased to exist.