The folks at Called to Communion generally avoid the culture wars and that is to their credit, though their apolitical posture is hardly characteristic of Roman Catholics in the United States these days. Two of the significant GOP presidential hopefuls were Roman Catholics — Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. And now another is on the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan for vice president (though whether Ryan is a “good catholic” depends on how your understand the church’s social teaching).
Other bloggers are not so circumspect about the United States and its increasing barbarism. Fr. C. John McCloskey III, writes at the Catholic Thing. He recently argued that if the United States is going to be a Christian nation it needs Roman Catholicism because Protestantism has run out of gas:
With the passage of time, homegrown American Protestant sects sprang up so profusely that they now can be counted in the thousands. Despite this variety, almost all shared a biblical moral philosophy not far removed from Catholics. The loosening of divorce laws and the propagation of the birth control pill in the Sixties, however, precipitated further retreat mere decades later by mainstream and traditional Protestant denominations on other moral fronts, including abortion, homosexual activity, and most recently same-sex marriage.
The primary reason is the lack of dogmatic authority in Protestantism and the reliance on the principle of private judgment. Leaving people to rely on only their opinions or feelings as moral guide is not enough to sustain a country that was once Christian and now is increasingly pagan.
What is the solution? Can American become Christian again? In my judgment, mainstream Protestantism is in an irreversible freefall. Don’t count on any great religious revivals. America needs witness, not enthusiasm. The United States will either become predominantly Catholic in numbers, faith, and morals or perish under the weight of its unbridled hedonism and corruption.
Notice the theme of Protestant diversity and subjectivity versus Roman Catholic unity and objectivity that Called to Communion paradigmatists also stress.
Protestants certainly deserve their share of blame for what has happened to moral conventions in the United States. The mainline churches have been particularly negligent on sexual ethics and marriage, not to mention the atonement.
But the analysis here which reflects a common trait of conservative intellectuals — to attribute rotten cultural fruit to bad religious seed — misses the elephant in the room, namely, government. Churches may promote or tolerate all sorts of moral goofiness but the state can still pass and enforce laws that proscribe conduct. The abolition of plural marriage in Utah is one example. At the same time, churches do not have the power and never have had it to enforce temporally or civilly their teachings or codes of conduct.
In the sixteenth century when Roman Catholics wanted to rid the Low Countries of Protestantism they depended on Phillip II and the Duke of Alba (Margaret of Parma wasn’t too shabby either) to implement the church’s ban on heretics. In fact, Rome’s mechanisms of inquisition generally relied up civil authorities to enforce the temporal penalties for heresy.
So if Fr. McCloskey wants a Christian United States he is going to need more than Roman Catholic priests, religious orders, and parishioners. He is also going to need a strong state. Nowhere has Christianity (or Islam for that matter) become the cohesive glue of a society or country without a government that enforces religious teaching and practice.
In which case, the real problem with the United States is the freedom granted in the Constitution. We cannot have religious uniformity and have the political framework established in the nation’s system of government.
Meanwhile, if national order requires an iron fist, would not the same go for ecclesiastical order? I have made the point before, but it may bear repeating. If the structures of Roman Catholicism yield the kind of uniformity and solidarity that Protestantism does not, then why is liberalism a problem for Roman Catholics in the United States? Churches may depend on the state to enforce their norms in the general society, but churches do have the power to enforce their teachings and rules within the household of faith.
Again, Rome suffers from this problem no more than Protestants do. Without a civil pope to call the shots, churches have to make do with the spiritual powers they have, limited though they are. And yet, if Christians — Roman Catholic and Protestant — are longing for the political equivalent of the papacy to restore decency in the United States, do they still qualify as political conservatives who — think Constitution — are supposed to be wary of the centralization of power in one person?
Last I checked, it is still 2012, some 236 years after the Declaration of Independence. The American Revolution has many faults, and one of them may very well be no provisions to check dangerous religious and philosophical views. At the same time, the order that the revolutionaries established granted freedoms that protect Protestants and Roman Catholics to worship, teach, and blog. Those freedoms were not readily available in places like the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century. It may just be (all about) me, but I think I’d rather live now under Obama than then under Phillip II.
Old Life 
If good morals are what this is all about we could unite behind being Southern Baptists, Orthodox Presbyterians, or Pentecostals. The morals of the people in those churches are generally as good as Catholics. Blaming “Protestants” for moral decay and then citing Mainline Protestants as the standard bearers of Protestantism is bogus. Those aging hipsters will be exiting the scene for good soon.
Actually the morals of the Protestant groups I cited may be better than Catholics. I seem to remember the girls who went to the Catholic grade school as being some of the biggest swingers by the time they got to our public high school.
I would also note that Newt, Santorum and Ryan are pretty much trying to appeal to evangelicals in their political work as those are the most dependable Republican constituency today so I don’t know if we can draw many conclusions about their Catholic affiliation one way or another. An Evangelical is way more likely to vote Republican than a Catholic.
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People are also no more or less intrinsically moral than they have ever been. We just have two things people in the past didn’t have – a welfare state to pick up our slack and modern technology (Hollywood, the internet, surgical & chemical abortion, a modern legal system, etc.) to facilitate our sin.
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“An Evangelical is way more likely to vote Republican than a Catholic.”
Boy that used to be true for sure, but with the Evanjellyfish going social justice, as well as a number of PCAers, and then RC’s of my father’s generation, appalled by the homosexual and feminist arms of the left, not to mention reproduction politics, or the continuing dissolution of power in the labor unions, much of which was RC, and I think you’re starting to see a big shift of RCers to the right. Just the abortion issue alone is going to determine the politics for many RCers.
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Sean – I would love to know how many Catholics voted for Obama last time but won’t be voting for him this time due to his overreach on Obamacare and Catholic institutions. If a lot of them switch I might have to take the CTCers to their favorite Irish Pub for a Guinness to celebrate our new Mormon President together.
Given how many Catholics view the church’s teachings on morality as “optional” however, I don’t know if I’m optimistic.
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“It may just be (all about) me, but I think I’d rather live now under Obama than then under Phillip II.”
Well, until at least until BO’s 2nd term.:)
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If exit polls have any validity at all this may be of interest:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/exit-polls.html
(be sure to click on the lower radio button, too, to view the results according to share of electorate by category) Yes, indeed, the RC vote went to Obama and I’m sure a large part of that had to do with the unions. However, if we can expect that vote to swing over to the Republicans for Papal reasons, what do you do with states like Massachusetts?
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Re. Catholics in unions voting for Barack “my daughters shouldn’t be punished with a baby” Obama – Always a good thing to put your job ahead of your church…Uh, Bryan…
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A Roman Catholic priest laying immorality at the feet of Protestants is like the pot calling the kettle black. The problem with the RC is that it’s all done behind closed doors and gilded curtains. I have worked as a chaplain in both hospital and prison settings, and the number of immoral (by the standards of the good Fr. McCloskey) Catholics vs. Protestants has always been pretty equal – be it homosexuality, pedophilia, property crimes, or just plain ignoring what the church teaches. The Roman Catholics may talk a good line on the political front, but in practice they have no moral high ground over Protestants.
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Well, there are two kinds of puritans, separatists and then the kind who–when they get in power- make other people be separatists. As Governor Bradford explained to Roger Williams, we were here first and it’s our collective conscience to which you must consent. Or get out..
The good old days….
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I’ll second Warren. The only thing holding back Obama is the skeleton framework of the constitution that is still being followed. The unprecedented use of executive orders will continue unabated in a second term. Then again… Romney isn’t going to stop the corporatism nor reform our financial ponzi scheme.
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Err… Italy is a paragon of virtue?
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The conservative impulse amongst certain Catholics and certain Protestants still continues to struggle with the implications of the separation clause, and DGH is right, it would take the re-establishment of religion under the sanction of the government in order to accomplish the ambitions of those conservatives who would wish to recover some form of “Christian America”. But given the polarity amongst Catholics, who are also a significant Democratic voting bloc, and mainline Protestants, one could easily make the case that the most politically cohesive religious group in the US is actually the Mormons. Given their increasing presence and prominence in American politics and in the culture at large, from an establishmentarian standpoint, they might be able to one-up the Catholic claims to cohesion, since they do have a centralized authority in the prophetic office of their President.
But, the fact of the matter is that unless establishment of some form of a state religion were to be broadly Christian (broad enough to include a sub-Christian cult), the cohesion of social and political conservatism would likely be shattered by the power-plays between various factions aiming to ensure their denomination/sect wins the race to establishment. In reality, nothing like this is ever likely to happen in America, and conservatives seeking a “Christian America” will continue to struggle with the ground-swell of social changes at ideological and demographic levels that will make a post-Christian America more and more of a reality. Unlike Europe however, it is unlikely in the foreseeable future that Christian (or quasi-Christian) political groups are going to loose a seat at the table of political influence. But, instead of being grateful for this continued influence, and seeking ways in which this influence could be wisely and beneficially exerted in American politics, they are so intent on winning the culture wars that they will likely continue to miss on what is in reality a good political opportunity. Not that liberals are any better on this account, because they most certainly are not, but conceding to the fact that America persists in its nearly equal division along party and ideological lines might enable conservatives to work together with liberals for acceptable political compromise – which is as likely to happen as establishment.
Of course 2k has meaningful critiques and answers to how people of faith, typically conservative, might better coexist politically and socially with those whom they disagree. But, we’re too dangerous to the the designs of a good deal of Christians’ designs for reclaiming America, however doomed these designs may be to fail. I woke up on the pessimistic side of the bed today, and I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
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Jed, and to pile on, the bulk of conservatives and liberals play a winner takes all game. What is good for us is good for the nation. The US used to have a way of allowing for a diversity of political and cultural traditions at the local level. But not any more. And an important factor is the military-industrial complex. Lack of social and political cohesion is not good for a strong and ready military. And yet it is conservatives who are the most supportive of a strong military, even as it breaks down those associations and institutions that conservatives hope to defend and preserve.
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“And an important factor is the military-industrial complex.” – Can you expound? How does a strong military break down “those associations and institutions that conservatives hope to defend and preserve”?
It is puzzling to me that conservatives who complain about too much government spending flip out if there is talk of Omaba loosening work requirements for welfare recipients but are good with fighting wars of dubious value in far-off lands. Wars cost an awful lot of money. At the same time, however, those on the far-left (and the far-right) make it hard to protect ourselves domestically so the remedy the moderate right & left come up with is to fight terrorists where they live overseas.
How hard is it to keep an eye on potential Muslim extermists who are in the U.S.? It would be way cheaper than fighting wars.
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DGH,
** Sorry for the lengthy response, this statement hit my brain like a flash of lightning. **
The US used to have a way of allowing for a diversity of political and cultural traditions at the local level. But not any more. And an important factor is the military-industrial complex. Lack of social and political cohesion is not good for a strong and ready military.
I wonder if this isn’t an issue where blame can be equally allocated across party lines. It seems as if the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has co-opted the narratives of political conservatism, predominantly by neo-conservatives, and of progressivism/liberalism as well. One can trace the betrayal of the MIC and liberalism at least back to the LBJ’s inability to juggle the policies of the Great Society and manage Vietnam, where the growing liberal consensus on the ground was anti-war and pro social welfare, but the Democratic party couldn’t escape the inherent contradictions of Guns and Butter. This lead up to the nomination of McGovern who did represent the ideals of a purer liberalism, but couldn’t garner the support of the party brass. This quandary continued through Carter, who came on a rising tide of a liberalism amenable not only to traditional liberals, but evangelicals (just like you wrote in The Betrayal of American Conservatism), however as his presidency failed, especially his (frankly farsighted) initial energy policy focusing on sustainability in the wake of the OPEC embargo, he opted for the Carter Doctrine that declared all Middle-East oil to be the property of the US, a policy that could only be upheld by the might of the MIC.
It is not as if Clinton or Obama have fared much better in terms of millitarism, or the pandering to the increasing interdependency of the MIC and Wall Street; Clinton upended Glass-Stegal, which lead to a good deal of war profiteering in the Bush-Obama era by banks who could now leverage massive investments in the MIC and maintain a huge percentage of commercial and private deposits, making the average American depositor the backbone of financing the MIC excursions into Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Obama is instrumental in passing healthcare reform, a policy that rivals FDR and LBJ’s massive social programs, yet continued, with little modification, the policies of Bush in the Middle East. Of course Democratic party loyalists may have gone along with all of this dating back to the 60’s, but Democratic policy has been unable to overcome the dichotomies it maintains with it’s liberal ideals, where the anti-war sentiment is strongest and most prominent in American politics.
Similar criticisms can and have been made of the GOP and the betrayal of conservatism, which like liberalism at it’s core has a strong anti-war bent (for far more isolationist reasons). But, to tie this back to the initial point of your post, Christians on all sides of the political spectrum have failed to come up with a sustained political response to the disruptions of the MIC to the social cohesion of the US. Some have embraced the US’s imperialistic militarism whole-heartedly, linking military patriotism to Christian devotion (and generally fighting the good fight in the conservative cause in the culture wars). Others, especially politically liberal Christians may have at times been more ambivalent, even opposed to certain examples of militarism, especially the post-911 invasion of Iraq. Yet, they seem to endorse the more Democratic policies of protection from harm, and have supported missions into Bosnia, Somolia, Libya, push currently for a military response to repression in sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention Obama’s current tactics in the War on Terror. Meanwhile, there has been no effort to return to a tolerance of political diversity, as each side fundamentally ignores it’s own internal contradictions in relation to the MIC, but never fails to point these contradictions out in others (e.g. how conservatives blasted Obama’s policies and intervention in Libya).
To make matters worse, politically active Christians continue to cloak their social and domestic policy ambitions in the language of Christianity, convinced that they represent the true “biblical” vision for a Christian America, whether that be the conservative and orthodox America envisaged in the mythology of the right, or relativized and pluralistic American Christianity of the left that seeks to address the ills of society in pursuit of its utopian ideals. The problem is, the current paradigms of Christian political involvement on the right and on the left, to ape one of Bryan Cross’ favorite terms, can’t go on forever – and things that can’t go on forever don’t. So, until the McCloskey’s, Gingrich’s, Santorum’s, Kenedy’s, or Kerry’s of Roman persuasion can begin to grapple with the implications of 2k theology in a post 1789 world, their “Christian” solutions to Americas political maladies will be no improvement to the fractured spectrum of Protestant political activism. A little 2k could go a long way – if they’d let it. Wasn’t 2k policies of anti-establishment that gave Catholics cover to flourish when they were a despised social and political minority in the US for many decades anyhow?
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This sort of rhetoric I think is rather disqualifying. In the 2009 and 2010 roughly 1000 anti-abortion bills were proposed by state legislatures and about 100 passed. This is arguably the most pro-life the USA has been in decades. When exactly was this golden age of Protestant more rectitude in America? What years can we look upon American and see everyone more or less agreeing with Catholic moral theology?
As for revivals. The US has had 4 in its history. The last one certainly increased the religiosity and moral focus on the population. For better or worse, yes they do seem to work.
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As for revivals. The US has had 4 in its history. The last one certainly increased the religiosity and moral focus on the population. For better or worse, yes they do seem to work.
Whether or not the revivals “worked” is up for debate, both as a whole, and each individual revival. There were certainly some good social developments that came out of the revivals in their times, however there is also a flip-side. The revivals gutted the confessional identity of Reformed Christianity in the Americas, so much so that we have Reformed scholars this very day urging Reformed denominations to recover their Confessional identities in terms of doctrine, piety and practice. Because of the incredible capital placed on the convert’s unmediated experience of Divine grace, the doctrinal moorings of Protestant America became experiential as opposed to something that was to be derived by the exegetical reflections of church leadership and officers who are charged with confessing the faith. The legacy of the 2nd Awakening is how they left the grounds of New York and New England wide open to cults such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This should lead us to not be pollyannish about the revivals of the past, and their enduring legacy and effects on the church. The Reformers would likely looked on Revivalistic Protestantism in America as a religion barely recognizable to their own, except on the most superficial connections – something that may very well be deemed a “theology of glory” by the first Protestant, Martin Luther. Drawing the connections down to today doesn’t solve much, the revivals of the past are no indication of how God will work in the future, and we as Reformed Christians believe that the church’s fidelity to God can simply be measured in the preaching of the gospel, the admistration of sacrament, and the discipline of the church to bring the covenant community into fuller maturity in Christ (Belgic Confession Art. 29).
BTW, a good deal of us Reformed Christians don’t think there is such a thing as a “golden age” to be found in the past, such an age can only come when Christ returns and puts an end to sin, both to those in the church (finally!) and those outside of it, and takes his bride home to be with him forever in glory. There may be high points both in terms of the doctrinal purity and the practice of the Church that serve as an example to us for enduring in the faith, but the church and her leaders are not free from sin in this age, thus there will always be warts to be seen if we are willing to look with open eyes. Like one of my old pastors once said, “God draws straight lines with crooked sticks.”
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Erik
“And an important factor is the military-industrial complex.” – Can you expound? How does a strong military break down “those associations and institutions that conservatives hope to defend and preserve”?
See Robert Higgs or Ron Paul and the libertarians. Wars are expensive, so they generally require money printing – i.e legal government counterfeiting which is what the Fed. Reserve does – and the growth of the state/military industrial complex which doesn’t like to get put back in the bottle once it is out and the war is over, much more civil liberties usually take a beating in wartime. All these take their toll on business, society, church and the family.
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CD-H, perhaps you’ve heard of Anthony Comstock?
But since when is RC moral theology the standard for Protestants? Protestants have a better practice of the 3rd commandment (our 4th) than those Saturday evening masses.
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“And an important factor is the military-industrial complex.” – Can you expound? How does a strong military break down “those associations and institutions that conservatives hope to defend and preserve”?
I’d second Bob S’ reference to Robert Higgs, but I’d also throw in Bill Kauffman. His book, Ain’t My America is wonderful on the topic, especially chapter 5, “Blood, Treasure, Time, Family: The Costs of American Empire.” Or you can watch this incredible speech by Kauffman: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2709566974565153720
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Jed —
I don’t disagree with you on fact though I’d phrase this somewhat differently. By the 18th century English Separatist Protestantism (Reformed tradition) was a failed religion in the recruitment sense. That is it was not able to maintain anything like the level of intra generation recruitment necessary for long term viability. What emerged from the first two great awakenings was a religion that was capable of reclaiming the population, essentially American Protestantism as a distinct faith. And absolutely Mormonism of the Joseph Smith variety is a child of the 2nd great awakening. Mormonism is a direct response to the failures of 1820s-1830s America (I’d actually argue most of those are still present but that has nothing to do with a Catholic critique). I’d put the Jehovah’s witnesses as part of the 3rd which I think had more to do with slavery and industrialization than any failure or success of Reformed theology.
As for their not being a golden age, we again agree. That was my point in response to Fr. C. John McCloskey III. There is no collapse just change with some things getting better and others getting worse.
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Joel, it is a complicated answer, but if you look as social histories of the U.S. in WWI and WWII, you see a recurring theme of the national government controling more and more of society, from science and industries, to health care and public education. The basic tension is between centralization of society’s resources to work effectively to support war. This centralization is the opposite of limited government. And once war is over, the centralization does not stop — all sorts of benefits to veterans become the basis for expanding federal welfare programs.
For a quick overview of conservatism and war, see this article on Robert Nisbet.
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DG —
So you are putting America’s moral age at the mid to late 1870s? Thanks for a direct answer! For you that’s fine. For Fr. C. John McCloskey III its a problem because during the Comstock age Catholics were Democrats and opposed Comstock arguing the government should not involved in sexual morals while ignoring the financial corruption that it was directly promoting. The Comstocks of the world upheld Catholic morality on sex, while attacking the financial reformers; Catholics opposed public Catholic morality while focusing on financial reform.
So I’m hard pressed to see how that age teaches the less Fr. C. John McCloskey III wanted to draw from it.
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CD-H., I’m not pointing to anything. You seemed to surmise that Protestants were not capable of any moral reform or social teaching. Anthony Comstock would prove that assertion false.
My own idea is that no Christians are going to make this a moral nation unless they take over the reins of power. The over-under on that is 2275. I’m taking the over, but I don’t think I’ll be around to collect.
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You seemed to surmise that Protestants were not capable of any moral reform or social teaching
Huh? I said nothing of the kind, if anything the opposite. Fr. C. John McCloskey III said something along those lines and I disagreed.
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Sorry, D.G., I didn’t make it clear that I was replying to Erik’s earlier question, which you must have missed.
Anyway, thanks for the Woods article, he’s brilliant.
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DGH-
Excellent article on Nisbet and the transformation (mutation?) of conservatism/America over the last 100 years. Where is a Coolidge when we need him? Oops, we would need many more than one; from the least to the most visible. History, mercilessly, marches on…
I’m reminded of Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism”. The problem for conservativism is that they had adopted too much of French mindset at the expense of Burke.
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Thank you, Dr. Hart, for a very interesting post.
It is amazing to me that even Roman Catholic priests can be so ignorant of their own history. Where have virtuous societies existed that were “predominantly Roman Catholic”? The Papal States would certainly be the prime example to the contrary. This most ‘predominantly” RC country to ever exist is described by historians as “the most monsignorially mismanaged” country in all of Europe – a state where no one was ever secure in their person or effects. And what of France? The church in France was independent of Rome until Napoleon’s Concordat of 1801 which granted Rome power over the Gallican church. Now, a scant 200 years later, France is almost entirely secular! Irenaeus’s “elder sister of Christianity” is now moral wasteland.
And what of Mexico which is nearly 100% Catholic?
And it is to be observed that of all the ills that Fr. McCloskey complains – homosexuality, divorce, abortion – are championed in precisely those states that are “predominantly Roman Catholic” – i.e. Massachusetts, California, New York! And that these ills have arisen in concert with the rise of Roman Catholicism in the United States. Before the great 19th century Irish and Italian immigrations, Catholicism was a minority in this country. At the time of JFK’s presidency, there were 30 million and the number is now almost 70 million.
So the plain historical fact is that all of these social ills about which McCloskey complains have grown along with Catholicism. Rome’s influence on this country has been identical with its influence on others: as Catholicism grows, so does moral decline.
That, it seems to me, is the true history of the matter which leads to quite a different conclusion that offered by our confused Fr. McCloskey.
Thank you, again, for the interesting article.
Peace.
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