A Simplistic Narrative

1P5: The Conflicted Legacy of American Catholicism

So it was that the American republic — with its subdued secularism in comparison to the guillotine of the French lies of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” — convinced, in no small part, the partisans of the New Springtime that Jacques Maritain’s vision could become a reality. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance for Catholics who seek to investigate the effects of the Vatican II springtime to evaluate the legacy of the American republic as it regards the social and political doctrine of the Church, especially in the foundational error of the separation of Church and State, which we will return to below.

A historian must make judgement about motives as a part of constructing a narrative. But reliance on a caricature of the federation of American states and "subdued secularism" (which many Latin traditionalists will blame on Protestants rather than on the elites who hold power in the state) is wrong and offensive to faithful Protestant Anglo-Americans who trace their descent to the very beginning. Latin traditionalists sound like the ugly duckling who never belonged in the first place and unfortunately will never become a swan, having become crippled by envy and pride (Latin triumphalism)--sounds almost gamma.

Except for places with a pre-1776 dominant Catholicism — like the formerly New Spain American southwest and the formerly New France New Orleans — by and large, the Catholicism of America was of immigrants. This meant that at best, they created ethnic ghettos and national parishes speaking their mother tongue with little influence on American Protestant society. At worst, they were immigrants seeking acceptance at any cost — including the Catholic faith and identity. The impetus to convert all of America and the whole republic into a Catholic republic that submits to Christ the King was greatly hindered by this conflict.

We can generalize to say that the legacy of American Catholicism was conflicted between conformity to the Protestant American society and non-conformity to it, taking refuge in ethnic enclaves. The Irish immigrants led by prelates such as John Ireland and James Gibbons dominated the conformity party. The German immigrants dominated the non-conformity party. A third force in this legacy was those Catholics who accepted wholeheartedly the fundamental doctrines expounded by the Pian Magisterium (1799–1958) and sought to convert America to Christ the King.

In what shape was an immigrant Latin Church to convert their Protestant neighbors, when most of its members had chosen to live in large cities for the sake of economic opportunity?  There is nothing preventing Latin traditionalists to try their great experiment in evangelization now. At least they will have results right away as to whether their strategy is as easy and fruitful as they think it would be.



As for the desire to integrate and assimilate -- the desire taken in the abstract is proper and right, since immigrants should be seeking to integrate with and assimilate to their host societies, rather than to pursue mere economic opportunity; otherwise, they shouldn't be allowed to immigrate in the first place, nor should they immigrate if the native peoples do not want them, only the oligarchs seeking cheap labor. The problem here is that most sought to assimilate to urban cultures that were starting to exceed the limits of civilized existence as those cities grew.

On the other hand, the shibboleth of the conforming party was the separation of Church and State. This error had been condemned by multiple popes and subjected to papal mockery as being “absolutely ridiculous” [2]. Nevertheless, the conforming party sought acceptance from the Protestant American society, and the price of that acceptance was to believe in the condemned error “that the Church should be separated from the state, and the state from the Church” [3]. This was seen as being “patriotic,” while the non-conforming party were viewed by most Americans as political threats to the so-called “Native Americans.”

Did the conforming party absolutely believe in the separation of Church and State? Or was it a conditional recognition that they had no political power or numbers to bring about some version of a Catholic state? Imposing such a state through "democracy" could never have happened, and even if it could have been achieved, it would have been unjust to non-Catholic native Americans. 

Nota bene: this was not the pragmatic toleration of religious differences for the sake of peace and the common good, which had a long tradition in Catholic states. This was, rather, the suppression of what even Dignitatus Humanae calls “the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” (1). If such is the moral duty of the society, there can never be a true separation of Church and State. Nevertheless, the conformist party pressed for this in its thirst for acceptance.

I am not fond of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but have Latin traditionalists justly turned them into villains? Where is the evidence that these bishops were not just posturing for the sake of their non-Catholic neighbors and to allay fears that Catholics threatened a non-Catholic social and political order? Even now we could find "conservative" Catholic bishops talking about Catholicism bringing about a restoration of American political identity. Do we not have the same error here of putting the cart before the horse? What use is there in preaching about the "moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ" to Christians who are not Roman Catholic, before actually "converting" them?

As for the "social question," maybe Roman Catholic bishops in large cities believed the problems of capitalism/liberalism could be ameliorated by the government. Most likely they were ignorant that the state itself was the problem, just as Roman Catholics today are ignorant of that fact.

Flanders writes that the "non-conformists" briefly triumphed, with the application of the Motion Picture Production Code as an example of the social and cultural power of Roman Catholics. But who are the bishops who were behind these efforts? Were they so different from their predecessors who were supposedly of the "conformist" party? Maybe one could support the point with evidence that more non-Irish were being named bishops. As it stands, the division between a "conformist" and "non-conformist" party does not help us understand how Roman Catholic bishops acted during the 20th century. I see no reason why a "conformist" bishop would nonetheless support a sort of "Judeo-Christian morality" guiding the mass entertainment.

Flanders concludes:

[I]f the partisans of springtime sought to distance themselves from the French Revolution by looking to the American, they must meticulously refute every ideology that unites and justifies them both. But this was the project of the Pian Magisterium, abandoned at Vatican II.

The facile conflation of the American Revolution with the French is not something new. It's something repeated by Latin traditionalists again and again, as though liberalism were the driving force behind both.

But even if they are wrong, does it matter at this point, if the results of the American Revolution have been lost? It does, in so far as Latin traditionalists cannot be interested in finding allies among those (including paleoconservatives) who still hold on to a true narrative about the American Revolution and the rightful desire for political liberty, as they would rather insult them and accuse them of liberalism or worse, "rebellion."

Latin traditionalists are welcome to continue their intellectual fantasizing while they live in their ecclesial ghettoes. (How are these really better than the ethnic ghettoes of their immigrant forefathers?) But with their attitude, they rightly deserve to sink with everyone else.

Charles Coloumbe, who is cited in the 1P5 essay, has an essay out for Crisis today which is historically more nuanced at least in detailing the intellectual differences between various groups of American Roman Catholics: The Long, Strange Road to a Catholic America.