Your history of Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in England is all messed up.
1) It's absolutely not true that 'for the next hundred years Catholics and Protestants fought for political power'. Organized Catholicism ended with the death of Mary I in 1558. Catholics, at most, were fighting for toleration.
2) It may be true that puritans claimed that 'opposition to Catholicism was the primary reason English Calvinists came to the New World in the 1620s and 1630s', but they were not fleeing Catholic priests hiding in priests holes (a real thing google it). What they meant by 'Popery' were stained glass windows, bishops, singing any kind of song except metrical psalms, not enforcing strict Sunday laws, Christmas and, frankly, just about any random thing that puritans had decided was forbidden under their ever-escalating purity spirals.
3) It's technically true that James II was the last Catholic King, but your presentation is entirely misleading. There had not been another catholic monarch for over 100 years prior, and he only became king because Charles II died without heirs. He would never have converted otherwise. His programme once in power was toleration for Catholics, and he tried various alliances, first with High Church Anglicans, then with Dissenters and Whigs, but no-one would go along with it. It's true that puritans depicted this as a culmination of 100 years of catholic scheming to take over England, but that is because they were sick in the head.
So your history is accurate in the sense that it represents the self-conception of deranged, malicious New England puritans, but not as a representation of what actually happened in history. Puritans were horrible people then and are horrible people now and it would have been better had all their ships drowned. The United States of America was founded, basically, by episcopalian* southern slave-owners and enlightenment intellectuals, and one of their goals (in which ultimately they failed) was containing the lunatic puritans who had been integral to the revolution a decade before, but were more dangerous than English rule ever had been.
(=Anglican i.e. the people puritans had 'fled' from)
Also forgot to mention that the Papacy literally issued a bull saying that English Catholics who obeyed a Protestant monarchy were placed under excommunication. It was Papal policy to forment a Catholic revolt in England, this was not entirely a paranoid fantasy. Very understandable in these circumstances why Catholics were viewed as a dangerous fifth column.
It was a paranoid fantasy in perhaps the sense that someone might fear ISIS taking over the United States. Yes, ISIS would like to do this, but the reality is they can't and from about 1560, there simply was no actual threat to the English crown from Catholics. Almost all English Catholics were cismontanists who did not believe the papal bull was valid. The actual threat was from puritans *who literally murdered the King!*
There's a strong difference between a fringe movement that was rejected even by al-Qaeda, and pronouncements from the head of your faith who you belive to have a degree of secular authority. And the Gunpowder plot occurred a short 40 years before the Civil War - this wasn't ancient history. And at the very least, the Stuarts' flirtations with Catholicism (2 kings out of 4 is pretty worrying!), absolute monarchy, and persecution of Puritans was very real.
Somewhat sperately, Charles I was a dastardly tyrant who showed he could not be trusted to keep to his word or tesoect Parliament. His execution was entirely deserved and self inflicted. One of the great blows for liberty in the history of the English nation
Nuts. There is not one act of tyranny that Charles I performed that the literal military dictatorship that replaced him did not emulate and exceed. And what animated puritans wasn't that anyway, it's that he allowed churchgoers to have something nice to look at in church, and dance round the maypole.
Regarding the ISIS, change it to the Muslim Brotherhood and it works. The fact is that Muslim 'fundamentalists' are the real authentic Muslims and moderate Muslims in the west are just engaging in Cope, and there have been loads more terrorist attacks than the Gunpowder Plot. But that doesn't mean it's OK for paranoid fanatics to whip up hatred against western Muslims and accuse anyone who doesn't persecute them enough of being secretly Muslim.
"The fact is that Muslim 'fundamentalists' are the real authentic Muslims and moderate Muslims in the west are just engaging in Cope"
That's pure Anti-Islamic nonsense that anyone who's actually read the Quran can easily debunk and I'm not even Pro Islam.
1. Islamic Fundamentalism as a phenomenon only really began in the 19th Century, and Islamic Terrorism only really became common in much of the world after World War 2. Neither of which are honestly representative of Traditional Islamic practice for most of history.
2. There are a higher percentage of fundamentalist Muslims in Western countries than in actual Muslim countries, especially those outside of the Middle East.
3. The "Islam spread by the Sword" nonsense has been consistently debunked by serious historians due to the complete lack of historical evidence supporting it even from Non-Muslims sources at the time, the fact at the earliest Muslim Empires went out of their way to discourage mass conversions to Islam in their territories and the simple fact that forced conversions don't actually work.
4. Muslims who've actually read the Quran & Hadiths and are actually familiar with traditional Islamic Theology are statistically LESS likely to ever subscribe to any sort of fundamentalism or extremism than those who haven't, debunking the whole "fundamentalist/terrorists are the real Muslims" nonsense.
Again, I'm not pro Islam nor any religion for that matter, I'm just turned off by the blatant irrationality, willful ignorance, paranoia and uncritical eagerness to embrace any negative information about Islam no matter how easily debunked said info is amongst the Western Right (not that the Left is any better).
You're not exactly wrong because, by definition, a revivalist movement that seeks to return a religion to its original pure form can only emerge a long time after that religion has been around. However, regardless of how genuinely authentic Islamic revivalism is (and no doubt in many ways it isn't) it is certainly more authentic than westernised Islam. Your other points either demonstrate that you are disingenuous or highly confused. Take (2). Opinion polls in Muslims countries show the following proportions favour the death penalty for apostates:
Egypt: 86%
Jordan: 82%
Palestine: 66%
Iraq: 42%
Tunisia: 29%
These are vastly higher figures than in any non-Muslim country, so you are simply wrong and probably because (whether in error or otherwise) you are using the term fundamentalist equivocally to refer to Salafist or something equivalent.
1) islamic fundamentalism can be traced back to the 18th century actually with the emergence of the salafi movement
2) where do you draw these statistics from ? There are more muslim fundamentalists in Germany than in Pakistan or Afghanistan for exemple ? Please provide sources
3) debunked by who exactly ? the violent spread of islam is actually pretty well documented. Not because of the nature of Islam itself but because it was how religion would spread back in the day
4) once again, says who ? "Taliban" literally means "students" or "scholars". Bin Laden was highly cultured man from a very well-off family. Deobandism is highly connected to prestigious madrassas
You clearly are muslim or at least sympathetic to that religion.
When viewed in isolation and with the benefit of four centuries distance, possibly...but remember France and Spain were much closer geographically to England than Iraq and Syria to the United States...and the St. Bartholomew's day massacre and the Spanish Armada would have been much closer to mind to the 17th century puritans than to us today...
In hindsight the anti-Catholicism reacting to things like Quebec definitely seem like paranoia, but since it all worked out for them they aren't demonized now like McCarthy is.
> The United States of America was founded, basically, by episcopalian* southern slave-owners and enlightenment intellectuals, and one of their goals (in which ultimately they failed) was containing the lunatic puritans who had been integral to the revolution a decade before, but were more dangerous than English rule ever had been.
What did they actually do to "contain" them? I get the impression that the Puritans just turned into Unitarians over time.
That was the whole point, really, of separation of church and state. They weren't separating it from Catholics! It didn't work because, as you say, they evolved into Unitarians and now you have to say a catechism against racism to work as a corporate accountant (The Moldbug hypothesis). Plus obviously the abolitionist jihad and 600,000 dead.
The Puritans still had Congregationalism as the established religion of Massachusetts & Connecticut when the US was founded. The US as a whole didn't establish a church because different colonies had different preferred churches. I don't think New England representatives voted differently on the First Amendment vs Virginians or Carolinans.
You are correct, but both Congregationalists and Presbyterians were known under the general rubric 'puritan'. Congregationalists were more extreme as regards puritanism, but less extreme as regards degree of effective central control.
I agree with some of this, but I think this is missing the point slightly. Firstly, you are slightly underselling the Catholicism of the Stuarts given that James II was ofc a Catholic and Charles II literally signed a secret treaty with France that he would convert to Catholicism. Charles I also had a highly political French Catholic wife which ofc was a scandal at the time. And the external conspiracies to impose Catholicism (eg Gunpowder plot) bear mentioning.
And even when the Stuarts were not actively flirting with Catholicism, there were well founded fears that they were aligning themselves with Catholicism and looking to persecute Puritans. Look at the Stuarts' constant attempts to ally with France, their pretensions to divine right absolutism (eg Basilikom Doron), and their constant persecutions of Puritans (eg Charles I and the covenanters). The late part is especially pertinent, as Puritans lacked essential freedom to practice their faith and this was one of the key reasons they moved. Ofc they were not originally looking to build a religiously tolerant state, but they certainly built the foundations for a much more liberal and enlightened regime than anything Charles I or Prince Rupert were dreaming up.
You are presenting scattered data points that puritans used to justify their paranoid fantasies, but they do not actually justify these fantasies.
1) The author of Basilikon Doron, James I, was a strict Calvinist and, from his Scottish background, was towards the puritan end of the CofE. So while he was certainly an absolutist, he was equally certainly not a Catholic sympathiser. His absolutism was completely in line with the English Protestant tradition, of which earlier generations of puritans has been the most dedicated espousers.
2) Puritans lacked freedom to practice their faith in *precisely* the same manner they wished to impose this lack of freedom on others, except their demands were much more burdensome.
3) There were various reasons why an alliance with France made sense, and, anyway, France intervened on the Protestant side in the 30 years war. The reality is that once the puritans took power, killed the king and imposed a military dictatorship (no, not hyperbole, simply what happened) they almost immediately defaulted on their commitment to pro-Protestant foreign policy and made war with the continent's primary Protestant power, the Netherlands.
1. James I was raised Calvinist but famously chafed under their influence, saying that the Scottish Reformation was 'inordinate' and 'not proceeeding from the Prince's will', and he supported strongly the Episcopacy in England and enforced conformity. He viewed traditional Calvinism as an unacceptable check on his authority!
2. This is indeed the case of the original Puritans, but by 1700, you already had Rhode Island and other colonies in NE proclaiming religious toleration, and the Glorious Revolution lead to a toleration that was pretty broad compared to what was seen on the continent (especially compared to Catholic states!). A victory of the Stuarts in their struggles with Parliament would likely not have produced this outcome (even under James tbh - toleration was a wheeze that stemmed from his weak position. See the Sevon bishops).
3. If an alliance with France mad sense, why was hostility with France the position of the English monarchy for 700 years? The reasons for this alliance are pretty clear in the Treaty of Dover - Charles wants to convert to Catholicism and ignore Parliament by receiving funding from France, essentially turning England into a French vassal state (this the mainstream view on Charles II's foreign policy amongst historians). Side note, but the Thirty Years War had ceased to be a religious conflict in its last decade and was instead about Hapsburg power in Europe, hence French intervention.
1) James I rejected Presbyterianism, not Calvinism, which was the official doctrine of the CofE, taught (albeit with some whiggle room) in the 39 Articles. He maintained the traditional episcopal-Calvinist synthesis of the Elizabethan Church and was not at all sympathetic to any proto-High Church movements.
2) Rhode Island was one, unimportant case. In Massachusetts, Presbyterians spent the entire time trying to oppress everyone and were only prevented by the 'tyranny' of the British crown. This was literally why they supported the American revolution.
2(ii) James II's original policy was to get Anglicans to agree to Catholic toleration in exchange for a crackdown on Dissent. When they refused, he tried a Whig-Dissenter alliance (and actually had much more success, though this was furiously memory-holed after 1688). His one consistent policy was toleration for Catholics, and his opponents' one consistent policy was no toleration for Catholics. The 7 bishops were imprisoned *literally* for refusing to read an announcement that Catholicism was now legal.
3) I don't know, why isn't England at war with France now? Times change. The main point of the Treaty of Dover was to permanently position England against the Netherlands, which can't have been that bad, because the Puritan military dictatorship had already done that. Your description of the treaty is crazy Whig hyperbole, not reality.
Side note: The Thirty Years War 'ceased to be a religious conflict' *because France intervened on the Protestant side*. The point is that the French crown was simply not very interested, at least prior to the Edict of Nantes, in promoting Catholicism. Louis XIV's grandfather had been a Protestant. At the time of the Treaty of Dover, it was not yet clear that France would switch to an aggressively pro Catholic policy.
1. Presbyterianism was core to mainstream Calvinism at the time - this is what caused the Bishop Wars and therefore the Civil War later on. The two really cannot be separated, which is why James viewed Puritanism with deep suspicion and enforced conformity. In any event, English Puritans certainly did not view James as a friend by the end of his reign.
2. Not just Rhode Island, but Pennsylvania and Connectitut as well. In any event, the US ended up as a haven for religious toleration in large part because of the intellectual traditions started by the Puritans - the US as a haven from religious persecution, a scepticism of strong and overly centralised established churches, etc... In terms of James, my point about the Seven Bishops was that much of his toleration was about undermining the established Anglican clergy, and an excuse to try to imprison and remove them from their posts. And as you yourself state, he attempted at first to repress nonconformists but retreated when realising his weakness. If he had been able to play the situation better over a long time frame, there's no reason to think that he didn't want to bring back state Catholicism with persecution of Protestants.
3. What part of my characterisation of Doger was immaculate? The part where he converted to Catholicism secretly? The part where he received money from the King of France to enable him to suspend Parliament, his usual source of funds? There's becoming an ally of convenience with the French against the Dutch, but this is something else entirely. He was receiving officially 20% of his income from a hostile state (often much higher in practice), and this foreign state had a massive blackmail they could use against him in the Catholic clause. He even suspending Parliament when they investigated the French relationship. How is this not equivalent to vassal status?
1) I mostly agree with that, but this is the whole point. Puritans labelled anything they were hostile to, or was hostile to them as 'popery', but this was they paranoid fantasy (and maybe to some extent self-fulfilling prophecy) not an actual description of reality.
2) There is absolutely no reason at all to think he could have instituted state Catholicism. Maybe, at the outer margin of plausibility, he could have nurtured Catholicism enough to make such an attempt possible 100 years later. Re. the 7 bishops, again you are again representing English anti-popery as objective fact. James II wasn't looking for an excuse to imprison the bishops, he just genuinely wanted the law to change so his co-religionists weren't persecuted and imprisoned them as an act of desperation.
3) It's inaccurate to say it would make England a vassal state. You could say the precise opposite, since it turns out that a large proportion of parliament were sufficiently agents of the Netherlands that they literally invited WIlliam the Conqueror to conquer the country and jack up taxes to pay for wars that were purely in the Dutch interest. The sober and reasonable way of phrasing it, though, is that the goal was to make the crown more independent of parliament.
You accused Evangelicals of bigotry. How do either of these examples constitute bigotry?
1. But I will mention Christians donate more to charity than any other group of people bc they tithe 10%. When Christians support a project they fund it themselves through tithing rather than demanding the government/tax payers fund their ministries.
So, I dont know what you’re accusing Christians of here either or how it equates bigotry.
2. Where are Christians forcing their “moral superiority” on you exactly? Christians don’t even talk about the good works they do. People have no idea the work Christians do in your own communities bc Jesus says not to let the right hand know what the left is doing. So, Christians don’t virtue single that’s a lefty thing. Maybe there’s some bag eggs and bad churches. But that’s with anything. Jesus came for the sinner not the saint.
I think politicized religion in the developed world today is far more of a synthetic construct more than a living tradition with much if any historical relevance; Nemets on X made that point recently. https://x.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1835174879915868543
One can have different views on Roman Catholicism, but Internet tradcaths have little to do with it in any substantive sense. It's amusing to me that someone like Fuentes fantasizes about bring back witch-burnings in his monologues while IRL the Inquisition protected women from this in Early Modern Europe.
I would instead posit there is a kind of Rightoid "general factor" at play which expresses itself in some common beliefs and behaviors (anti-vaxxerism/COVID denial, anti-abortion, diverse conspiracism) which they project on religions and ideologues with "trad" and "based" aesthetics - so, not just Catholicism, though it has probably become the most powerful Schelling point for American rightoids, but also Orthodoxy and Islam. (The Orthodox larpers have more of a tankie and Third Worldist tilt, while the Islam people are manospherians like Tate and Bilzerian).
This obviously has analogues in foreign countries (given US Culture Victory in the Civilization game). One of my favorite examples is late Russian Orthodox priest/schizo Vsevolod Chaplin who praised FGM as a noble tradition, amongst other powerful takes.
My favorite is the contingent of rightoids who have recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in waves because of how based™ it is (and also partially because Russia is anti-globohomo, which to them makes their Church the bees-knees), and want more Americans to join them in droves. That has about as much of a likelihood of happening as Vajrayana Buddhism becoming the defacto religon of North America.
And what’s the problem with joining a church you find “based’?
It’s astounding how uninformed people have become about basic theology 101. Every church denomination that follows Biblical principles is fundamentally anti-globalist whether they are Orthodox, mainline Protestant or Evangelical.
(In simple terms: Bible says Globalism = bad.)
You can’t seriously think that the politics of Vladimir Putin, an admitted atheist, is the motivation behind American’s joining the Orthodox church. That’s silly.
Jesus is the One behind Christian evangelism and the way churches across every denomination in the US are growing- not Putin.
Basic theology 101 - The word "Catholic" literally means universal: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Its spiritual mission is explicitly universal.
Putin has been an avowed Christian in public life since before becoming President. I see no reason to doubt his devotion.
But thank you for illustrating my point with your personal example.
What’s wrong with seeking refuge within a religious community who shares your values and outlook? People believe different things and want a community of like minded people. It is true diversity. Not the Shallow skin color kind.
If Eastern Orthodoxy was as ascendant and ubiquitous as globohomo, you’d be looking for your own like minded community to be around as you’re under assault.
You also are completely dismissive of the evangelical nature of contemporary progressivism. It is seeking to convert diverse peoples under the one true faith.
I'm not dismissive of anything; globohomo is bad, and attempts to replace it with a different type of universalism are also bad.
I'm absolutely against any and all evangelism that pretends to be about leading people toward good, but is actually a guise for establishing political comfort, especially when it relies on being ahistorical to make it's case to the public.
“America is a Christian nation” is being (has always been?) used to launder all kinds of intellectual bullshit from internet goons whose ideological commitments stem from being pessimistic goblins; which is the main point this article is making.
Genuine question: Do Catholic Integralists have any political following at all? I am a Conservative Catholic, and I spend a fair amount of time with conservative Catholics, many of them politically active. Literally, no one has ever brought up Integralism. It seems that this movement is restricted to the subscriber base of First Things magazine. If there is evidence to the contrary, I would be interested in seeing it, once again, no snark, completely sincere here.
Americans are too parochial outside of the intelligentsia, but some of these parties (such as the Christian Dems in Italy) rose to power during the Cold War with US backing to form a bulwark against communism.
I don't think Vance belongs in that set, as I don't know of him having any inclination towards integralism. Instead he seems more like the SCOTUS justices (a number of whom like Thomas are also converts) who find that Catholicism is more suited to their elite sphere than the Protestantism they came from.
I read Deneen’s book because I was interested in the prospect of a new type of conservatism. I think it is reasonable to think that society may need institutions that temper individualistic impulses (I.e., restrain certain forms of liberty), to replace the religious institutions that kept the middle 80% of the population more or less in check throughout American history.
But these people have no interest in the definable and the measurable. They rely on $5 words and unsupported (and unsupportable) claims. It’s, indeed, more of a sermon than a work of political economy. I think this was best demonstrated when Klein asked Deneen what radical policy changes would move the world closer to his vision, and Deneen said some parental leave proposal that was already part of the Democratic platform. There’s no there there.
I still like Deneen's first book. It has some interesting criticisms of our society even if the "liberalism" he criticizes is too broad a target. But the newer book, which tries to translate this into a political project, was a disappointment; I didn't bother to finish it.
I'm inclined to think that in 100-200 years, people will look at the way our society uses technology the same way we might look at our forebears putting cocaine in Coca-Cola and serving it to children. The people who inherit the Earth will be a lot more concerned with the ways new technologies affect the family and the community.
I think I agree with you, but I think the hard question will be how to protect family/community without stifling technological development and economic growth. I don’t think we have governments in the West capable of correctly identifying tradeoffs and optimizing in the medium or long term. But the laissez faire approach I think will produce a vapid and unfulfilled populace concerned only with their next tech-mediated serotonin boost. Maybe the results of China’s red new deal will hold some lessons, in either direction.
You're right about governments. Governments, and especially national governments, don't have a solution to the present crisis; the solutions will be bottom-up. Which seemed to be what Deneen was alluding to in the first book: localism.
And at times and places this will go too far and technological progress will be stifled, but I think that's already baked into the cake. A world of upside-down population pyramids, of shrinking populations and decay of both institutions and infrastructure, is also going to be a world in which technological progress most likely slows. I'm thinking about the world on the other side of that.
Though I'm also a believer that productive technological progress has already slowed. And not merely because of bad policies or our culture's flaws (though they haven't helped), but for reasons of physics: there doesn't seem to be another source of energy that can deliver exponential growth in per capita energy usage at a rational price.
Even places that have that technology (Russia, China) are poor. It's not getting you a 4x increase in energy usage per capita. And if it did, the uranium would run out in short order.
Thank you for calling out that abortion and birth control were primarily Catholic concerns long before being taken up by conservative Protestants in the Moral Majority era.
But how did this happen? Let me throw this out.
Mainline Protestant schools either disaffiliated from their respective denominations, or went full progressive Omnicause long before it was cool, or both.
Meanwhile, Evangelical Protestant schools went hard the opposite direction. This included a lot of anti-intellectual Bible literalism (most notably young-Earth creationism--as a result kiss any chance of a good science department goodbye). As a result, conservative Evangelical Protestant schools became an educational backwater, or never came into their own to begin with.
Notre Dame is ranked #18 in US News in National Universities. Brigham Young is ranked #109. Liberty U is ranked #392.
My point is that the Catholic higher education infrastructure is strong and robust. The right of center Protestant infrastructure, not so much--only Hillsdale College (#50 among National LibArts Schools) comes to mind as an intellectually rigorous school deftly combining faith and reason. As a result, guess who is doing most of the heavy lifting in conservative thought leadership?
Look at the faith of all of the conservative SCOTUS members, with the possible exception of Gorsuch.
One point of clarification: Most of the prayer-and-Bible-study (KJV only, please!) in school laws were driven by anti-Catholic Protestants who wanted to make sure public schools were teaching a certain flavor of Christianity--nobody was going to be asking Mary to intercede on anything on their watch.
If you want to be amused, read the biblical literalist contortions for pi=3 in I Kings 7:23. Simple lack of mathematical precision in the Bible just can't happen!!!
"There seems to be a divide where the Catholics who were born into the faith tend to be decent and reasonable people, while converts who came to it as adults often are undergoing some kind of existential crisis."
Converts are always the most devout followers because they need to be. Their position is always unstable because they feel untrusted (whether real or imagined) by the tribe.
The Catholic Church wasn’t hostile to our founding or even democracy, it became very suspicious of democracy because of the French Revolution- which by the way the French Clergy initially backed. The Vatican seems to have been completely baffled at first by America, not knowing what to make of her. All issues about democracy and the Catholic reservations about America were formally resolved in America’s and democracy’s favor in 1965 at Vatican II. (That’s about how much time it takes for the Church to decide on anything). It is true the Church isn’t in favor of radical individualism, nor anything approaching Libertarian capitalism, and having great experience of anarchy not a fan of anarchy either (and soon readers you’ll know why).
The Church’s social teachings have always favored the good of the community, yes subsidiarity, a living wage, and workers and trade associations to mitigate Capitalism’s excesses and effects.
It isn’t an accident that Communalism existed for instance in French villages, or that Mondragon in Spain was essentially established by a Priest. Mondragon is a federated workers cooperatives. Nor coincidence that the Church was smashed in Mexico as a threat to Liberalism because of its prohibition against usury, nor that some Latin American revolutionary movements were founded and led by priests (FARC) we can go on. In Catholic teaching it is true the individual and his appetites aren’t considered supreme, and only God is Sacred.
This is indeed a sticking point with the modern Enlightenment bien pensants, but when only your gratifications matter, God gets in the way.
To call the Catholic Church hostile to the Enlightenment is distorting to a severe degree, it’s like saying the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor from a motive of racism. Simply not true.
One could point out that Humanism began with Catholic Scholars, as did Science, that Individualism quite possibly began unintentionally with Individual Confession at the Church’s Lateran Council of 1219.
But the truth is never as clickbaity as controversy, nor as politically profitable as sowing dissension and distrust among the enemy. If you believe in either the Constitution or Catholicism, you may count yourself as enemies of our host, Mr. Hanania, who exists to sow confusion amongst his masters enemies. That dear reader is probably you.
The Catholic Church has one purpose: to save souls. Catholics, whether cradle Catholics or converts, are taught to be in this world, but not of it. This means even though it is impossible to build heaven on earth, we should always strive for peace and the common good, while keeping our eyes on the ultimate prize, hope for a New Heaven and a New Earth. Despite the many flaws of we Catholics, fallen men and sinners like everyone else, the Catholic Church is the only institution on earth that has survived since Jesus, nearly two thousand years ago, called on Peter to be to be the rock on which He would build His church. Civilizations have disappeared, empires and monarchies and countries and nations have come and gone, and the Catholic Church is still here. I call it Divine intervention, but what do I know?
"Catholic social thought is in the end remarkably consistent in its hostility to individual liberty and support for state intervention in the economy and people’s personal lives." ????
This is a highly controversial thesis in itself. Hm.
Interesting and informative article. As an avid reader of American history, you got the history correct. I also agree that it is difficult to see how Catholic integralism can ever come to anything positive or influential. There simply is no base of mass support from Catholic voters, and the Catholics that do exist are no longer looking to the Vatican for guidance on political issues. Nor do I understand why other Americans should care what the Vatican preaches.
Many Protestant nations are social democracies with strong welfare states while many Catholic societies are considerably less generous and more impoverished. Religion has nothing to do with anything.
Religion does in a way. Then again, there are those that think Mexico is a Catholic nation. The government of over a century is Masonic and hostile to the Church, they didn’t have Diplomatic relations until the 1990s when the Cartels murdered a Bishop and they needed to improve their image.
Your history of Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in England is all messed up.
1) It's absolutely not true that 'for the next hundred years Catholics and Protestants fought for political power'. Organized Catholicism ended with the death of Mary I in 1558. Catholics, at most, were fighting for toleration.
2) It may be true that puritans claimed that 'opposition to Catholicism was the primary reason English Calvinists came to the New World in the 1620s and 1630s', but they were not fleeing Catholic priests hiding in priests holes (a real thing google it). What they meant by 'Popery' were stained glass windows, bishops, singing any kind of song except metrical psalms, not enforcing strict Sunday laws, Christmas and, frankly, just about any random thing that puritans had decided was forbidden under their ever-escalating purity spirals.
3) It's technically true that James II was the last Catholic King, but your presentation is entirely misleading. There had not been another catholic monarch for over 100 years prior, and he only became king because Charles II died without heirs. He would never have converted otherwise. His programme once in power was toleration for Catholics, and he tried various alliances, first with High Church Anglicans, then with Dissenters and Whigs, but no-one would go along with it. It's true that puritans depicted this as a culmination of 100 years of catholic scheming to take over England, but that is because they were sick in the head.
So your history is accurate in the sense that it represents the self-conception of deranged, malicious New England puritans, but not as a representation of what actually happened in history. Puritans were horrible people then and are horrible people now and it would have been better had all their ships drowned. The United States of America was founded, basically, by episcopalian* southern slave-owners and enlightenment intellectuals, and one of their goals (in which ultimately they failed) was containing the lunatic puritans who had been integral to the revolution a decade before, but were more dangerous than English rule ever had been.
(=Anglican i.e. the people puritans had 'fled' from)
come for the article, stay for the Non-Zionist rebuttal...
Also forgot to mention that the Papacy literally issued a bull saying that English Catholics who obeyed a Protestant monarchy were placed under excommunication. It was Papal policy to forment a Catholic revolt in England, this was not entirely a paranoid fantasy. Very understandable in these circumstances why Catholics were viewed as a dangerous fifth column.
It was a paranoid fantasy in perhaps the sense that someone might fear ISIS taking over the United States. Yes, ISIS would like to do this, but the reality is they can't and from about 1560, there simply was no actual threat to the English crown from Catholics. Almost all English Catholics were cismontanists who did not believe the papal bull was valid. The actual threat was from puritans *who literally murdered the King!*
There's a strong difference between a fringe movement that was rejected even by al-Qaeda, and pronouncements from the head of your faith who you belive to have a degree of secular authority. And the Gunpowder plot occurred a short 40 years before the Civil War - this wasn't ancient history. And at the very least, the Stuarts' flirtations with Catholicism (2 kings out of 4 is pretty worrying!), absolute monarchy, and persecution of Puritans was very real.
Somewhat sperately, Charles I was a dastardly tyrant who showed he could not be trusted to keep to his word or tesoect Parliament. His execution was entirely deserved and self inflicted. One of the great blows for liberty in the history of the English nation
nation
Nuts. There is not one act of tyranny that Charles I performed that the literal military dictatorship that replaced him did not emulate and exceed. And what animated puritans wasn't that anyway, it's that he allowed churchgoers to have something nice to look at in church, and dance round the maypole.
Regarding the ISIS, change it to the Muslim Brotherhood and it works. The fact is that Muslim 'fundamentalists' are the real authentic Muslims and moderate Muslims in the west are just engaging in Cope, and there have been loads more terrorist attacks than the Gunpowder Plot. But that doesn't mean it's OK for paranoid fanatics to whip up hatred against western Muslims and accuse anyone who doesn't persecute them enough of being secretly Muslim.
"The fact is that Muslim 'fundamentalists' are the real authentic Muslims and moderate Muslims in the west are just engaging in Cope"
That's pure Anti-Islamic nonsense that anyone who's actually read the Quran can easily debunk and I'm not even Pro Islam.
1. Islamic Fundamentalism as a phenomenon only really began in the 19th Century, and Islamic Terrorism only really became common in much of the world after World War 2. Neither of which are honestly representative of Traditional Islamic practice for most of history.
2. There are a higher percentage of fundamentalist Muslims in Western countries than in actual Muslim countries, especially those outside of the Middle East.
3. The "Islam spread by the Sword" nonsense has been consistently debunked by serious historians due to the complete lack of historical evidence supporting it even from Non-Muslims sources at the time, the fact at the earliest Muslim Empires went out of their way to discourage mass conversions to Islam in their territories and the simple fact that forced conversions don't actually work.
4. Muslims who've actually read the Quran & Hadiths and are actually familiar with traditional Islamic Theology are statistically LESS likely to ever subscribe to any sort of fundamentalism or extremism than those who haven't, debunking the whole "fundamentalist/terrorists are the real Muslims" nonsense.
Again, I'm not pro Islam nor any religion for that matter, I'm just turned off by the blatant irrationality, willful ignorance, paranoia and uncritical eagerness to embrace any negative information about Islam no matter how easily debunked said info is amongst the Western Right (not that the Left is any better).
You're not exactly wrong because, by definition, a revivalist movement that seeks to return a religion to its original pure form can only emerge a long time after that religion has been around. However, regardless of how genuinely authentic Islamic revivalism is (and no doubt in many ways it isn't) it is certainly more authentic than westernised Islam. Your other points either demonstrate that you are disingenuous or highly confused. Take (2). Opinion polls in Muslims countries show the following proportions favour the death penalty for apostates:
Egypt: 86%
Jordan: 82%
Palestine: 66%
Iraq: 42%
Tunisia: 29%
These are vastly higher figures than in any non-Muslim country, so you are simply wrong and probably because (whether in error or otherwise) you are using the term fundamentalist equivocally to refer to Salafist or something equivalent.
1) islamic fundamentalism can be traced back to the 18th century actually with the emergence of the salafi movement
2) where do you draw these statistics from ? There are more muslim fundamentalists in Germany than in Pakistan or Afghanistan for exemple ? Please provide sources
3) debunked by who exactly ? the violent spread of islam is actually pretty well documented. Not because of the nature of Islam itself but because it was how religion would spread back in the day
4) once again, says who ? "Taliban" literally means "students" or "scholars". Bin Laden was highly cultured man from a very well-off family. Deobandism is highly connected to prestigious madrassas
You clearly are muslim or at least sympathetic to that religion.
When viewed in isolation and with the benefit of four centuries distance, possibly...but remember France and Spain were much closer geographically to England than Iraq and Syria to the United States...and the St. Bartholomew's day massacre and the Spanish Armada would have been much closer to mind to the 17th century puritans than to us today...
In hindsight the anti-Catholicism reacting to things like Quebec definitely seem like paranoia, but since it all worked out for them they aren't demonized now like McCarthy is.
> The United States of America was founded, basically, by episcopalian* southern slave-owners and enlightenment intellectuals, and one of their goals (in which ultimately they failed) was containing the lunatic puritans who had been integral to the revolution a decade before, but were more dangerous than English rule ever had been.
What did they actually do to "contain" them? I get the impression that the Puritans just turned into Unitarians over time.
That was the whole point, really, of separation of church and state. They weren't separating it from Catholics! It didn't work because, as you say, they evolved into Unitarians and now you have to say a catechism against racism to work as a corporate accountant (The Moldbug hypothesis). Plus obviously the abolitionist jihad and 600,000 dead.
The Puritans still had Congregationalism as the established religion of Massachusetts & Connecticut when the US was founded. The US as a whole didn't establish a church because different colonies had different preferred churches. I don't think New England representatives voted differently on the First Amendment vs Virginians or Carolinans.
I assume you are correct in that, but the Jeffersonians, at least, saw the 1st Amendment also as a tool to limit Presbyterian power with states, and this is indeed how it was in due course interpreted (though, again, it didn't exactly work because puritanism evolved to get around it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Establishment_of_religion
I don't think there were established Presbyterian (rather than Congregationalist/Episcopalian) churches in the US back then.
You are correct, but both Congregationalists and Presbyterians were known under the general rubric 'puritan'. Congregationalists were more extreme as regards puritanism, but less extreme as regards degree of effective central control.
I agree with some of this, but I think this is missing the point slightly. Firstly, you are slightly underselling the Catholicism of the Stuarts given that James II was ofc a Catholic and Charles II literally signed a secret treaty with France that he would convert to Catholicism. Charles I also had a highly political French Catholic wife which ofc was a scandal at the time. And the external conspiracies to impose Catholicism (eg Gunpowder plot) bear mentioning.
And even when the Stuarts were not actively flirting with Catholicism, there were well founded fears that they were aligning themselves with Catholicism and looking to persecute Puritans. Look at the Stuarts' constant attempts to ally with France, their pretensions to divine right absolutism (eg Basilikom Doron), and their constant persecutions of Puritans (eg Charles I and the covenanters). The late part is especially pertinent, as Puritans lacked essential freedom to practice their faith and this was one of the key reasons they moved. Ofc they were not originally looking to build a religiously tolerant state, but they certainly built the foundations for a much more liberal and enlightened regime than anything Charles I or Prince Rupert were dreaming up.
You are presenting scattered data points that puritans used to justify their paranoid fantasies, but they do not actually justify these fantasies.
1) The author of Basilikon Doron, James I, was a strict Calvinist and, from his Scottish background, was towards the puritan end of the CofE. So while he was certainly an absolutist, he was equally certainly not a Catholic sympathiser. His absolutism was completely in line with the English Protestant tradition, of which earlier generations of puritans has been the most dedicated espousers.
2) Puritans lacked freedom to practice their faith in *precisely* the same manner they wished to impose this lack of freedom on others, except their demands were much more burdensome.
3) There were various reasons why an alliance with France made sense, and, anyway, France intervened on the Protestant side in the 30 years war. The reality is that once the puritans took power, killed the king and imposed a military dictatorship (no, not hyperbole, simply what happened) they almost immediately defaulted on their commitment to pro-Protestant foreign policy and made war with the continent's primary Protestant power, the Netherlands.
1. James I was raised Calvinist but famously chafed under their influence, saying that the Scottish Reformation was 'inordinate' and 'not proceeeding from the Prince's will', and he supported strongly the Episcopacy in England and enforced conformity. He viewed traditional Calvinism as an unacceptable check on his authority!
2. This is indeed the case of the original Puritans, but by 1700, you already had Rhode Island and other colonies in NE proclaiming religious toleration, and the Glorious Revolution lead to a toleration that was pretty broad compared to what was seen on the continent (especially compared to Catholic states!). A victory of the Stuarts in their struggles with Parliament would likely not have produced this outcome (even under James tbh - toleration was a wheeze that stemmed from his weak position. See the Sevon bishops).
3. If an alliance with France mad sense, why was hostility with France the position of the English monarchy for 700 years? The reasons for this alliance are pretty clear in the Treaty of Dover - Charles wants to convert to Catholicism and ignore Parliament by receiving funding from France, essentially turning England into a French vassal state (this the mainstream view on Charles II's foreign policy amongst historians). Side note, but the Thirty Years War had ceased to be a religious conflict in its last decade and was instead about Hapsburg power in Europe, hence French intervention.
1) James I rejected Presbyterianism, not Calvinism, which was the official doctrine of the CofE, taught (albeit with some whiggle room) in the 39 Articles. He maintained the traditional episcopal-Calvinist synthesis of the Elizabethan Church and was not at all sympathetic to any proto-High Church movements.
2) Rhode Island was one, unimportant case. In Massachusetts, Presbyterians spent the entire time trying to oppress everyone and were only prevented by the 'tyranny' of the British crown. This was literally why they supported the American revolution.
2(ii) James II's original policy was to get Anglicans to agree to Catholic toleration in exchange for a crackdown on Dissent. When they refused, he tried a Whig-Dissenter alliance (and actually had much more success, though this was furiously memory-holed after 1688). His one consistent policy was toleration for Catholics, and his opponents' one consistent policy was no toleration for Catholics. The 7 bishops were imprisoned *literally* for refusing to read an announcement that Catholicism was now legal.
3) I don't know, why isn't England at war with France now? Times change. The main point of the Treaty of Dover was to permanently position England against the Netherlands, which can't have been that bad, because the Puritan military dictatorship had already done that. Your description of the treaty is crazy Whig hyperbole, not reality.
Side note: The Thirty Years War 'ceased to be a religious conflict' *because France intervened on the Protestant side*. The point is that the French crown was simply not very interested, at least prior to the Edict of Nantes, in promoting Catholicism. Louis XIV's grandfather had been a Protestant. At the time of the Treaty of Dover, it was not yet clear that France would switch to an aggressively pro Catholic policy.
1. Presbyterianism was core to mainstream Calvinism at the time - this is what caused the Bishop Wars and therefore the Civil War later on. The two really cannot be separated, which is why James viewed Puritanism with deep suspicion and enforced conformity. In any event, English Puritans certainly did not view James as a friend by the end of his reign.
2. Not just Rhode Island, but Pennsylvania and Connectitut as well. In any event, the US ended up as a haven for religious toleration in large part because of the intellectual traditions started by the Puritans - the US as a haven from religious persecution, a scepticism of strong and overly centralised established churches, etc... In terms of James, my point about the Seven Bishops was that much of his toleration was about undermining the established Anglican clergy, and an excuse to try to imprison and remove them from their posts. And as you yourself state, he attempted at first to repress nonconformists but retreated when realising his weakness. If he had been able to play the situation better over a long time frame, there's no reason to think that he didn't want to bring back state Catholicism with persecution of Protestants.
3. What part of my characterisation of Doger was immaculate? The part where he converted to Catholicism secretly? The part where he received money from the King of France to enable him to suspend Parliament, his usual source of funds? There's becoming an ally of convenience with the French against the Dutch, but this is something else entirely. He was receiving officially 20% of his income from a hostile state (often much higher in practice), and this foreign state had a massive blackmail they could use against him in the Catholic clause. He even suspending Parliament when they investigated the French relationship. How is this not equivalent to vassal status?
1) I mostly agree with that, but this is the whole point. Puritans labelled anything they were hostile to, or was hostile to them as 'popery', but this was they paranoid fantasy (and maybe to some extent self-fulfilling prophecy) not an actual description of reality.
2) There is absolutely no reason at all to think he could have instituted state Catholicism. Maybe, at the outer margin of plausibility, he could have nurtured Catholicism enough to make such an attempt possible 100 years later. Re. the 7 bishops, again you are again representing English anti-popery as objective fact. James II wasn't looking for an excuse to imprison the bishops, he just genuinely wanted the law to change so his co-religionists weren't persecuted and imprisoned them as an act of desperation.
3) It's inaccurate to say it would make England a vassal state. You could say the precise opposite, since it turns out that a large proportion of parliament were sufficiently agents of the Netherlands that they literally invited WIlliam the Conqueror to conquer the country and jack up taxes to pay for wars that were purely in the Dutch interest. The sober and reasonable way of phrasing it, though, is that the goal was to make the crown more independent of parliament.
frame this comment its perfect
Bigoted when it comes to teaching of the Bible?
Example?
You accused Evangelicals of bigotry. How do either of these examples constitute bigotry?
1. But I will mention Christians donate more to charity than any other group of people bc they tithe 10%. When Christians support a project they fund it themselves through tithing rather than demanding the government/tax payers fund their ministries.
So, I dont know what you’re accusing Christians of here either or how it equates bigotry.
2. Where are Christians forcing their “moral superiority” on you exactly? Christians don’t even talk about the good works they do. People have no idea the work Christians do in your own communities bc Jesus says not to let the right hand know what the left is doing. So, Christians don’t virtue single that’s a lefty thing. Maybe there’s some bag eggs and bad churches. But that’s with anything. Jesus came for the sinner not the saint.
I think politicized religion in the developed world today is far more of a synthetic construct more than a living tradition with much if any historical relevance; Nemets on X made that point recently. https://x.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1835174879915868543
One can have different views on Roman Catholicism, but Internet tradcaths have little to do with it in any substantive sense. It's amusing to me that someone like Fuentes fantasizes about bring back witch-burnings in his monologues while IRL the Inquisition protected women from this in Early Modern Europe.
I would instead posit there is a kind of Rightoid "general factor" at play which expresses itself in some common beliefs and behaviors (anti-vaxxerism/COVID denial, anti-abortion, diverse conspiracism) which they project on religions and ideologues with "trad" and "based" aesthetics - so, not just Catholicism, though it has probably become the most powerful Schelling point for American rightoids, but also Orthodoxy and Islam. (The Orthodox larpers have more of a tankie and Third Worldist tilt, while the Islam people are manospherians like Tate and Bilzerian).
This obviously has analogues in foreign countries (given US Culture Victory in the Civilization game). One of my favorite examples is late Russian Orthodox priest/schizo Vsevolod Chaplin who praised FGM as a noble tradition, amongst other powerful takes.
My favorite is the contingent of rightoids who have recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in waves because of how based™ it is (and also partially because Russia is anti-globohomo, which to them makes their Church the bees-knees), and want more Americans to join them in droves. That has about as much of a likelihood of happening as Vajrayana Buddhism becoming the defacto religon of North America.
And what’s the problem with joining a church you find “based’?
It’s astounding how uninformed people have become about basic theology 101. Every church denomination that follows Biblical principles is fundamentally anti-globalist whether they are Orthodox, mainline Protestant or Evangelical.
(In simple terms: Bible says Globalism = bad.)
You can’t seriously think that the politics of Vladimir Putin, an admitted atheist, is the motivation behind American’s joining the Orthodox church. That’s silly.
Jesus is the One behind Christian evangelism and the way churches across every denomination in the US are growing- not Putin.
Basic theology 101 - The word "Catholic" literally means universal: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Its spiritual mission is explicitly universal.
Putin has been an avowed Christian in public life since before becoming President. I see no reason to doubt his devotion.
But thank you for illustrating my point with your personal example.
"Vegan"
"Against animal oppression"
"I left the left"
You are gay
What’s wrong with seeking refuge within a religious community who shares your values and outlook? People believe different things and want a community of like minded people. It is true diversity. Not the Shallow skin color kind.
If Eastern Orthodoxy was as ascendant and ubiquitous as globohomo, you’d be looking for your own like minded community to be around as you’re under assault.
You also are completely dismissive of the evangelical nature of contemporary progressivism. It is seeking to convert diverse peoples under the one true faith.
I'm not dismissive of anything; globohomo is bad, and attempts to replace it with a different type of universalism are also bad.
I'm absolutely against any and all evangelism that pretends to be about leading people toward good, but is actually a guise for establishing political comfort, especially when it relies on being ahistorical to make it's case to the public.
“America is a Christian nation” is being (has always been?) used to launder all kinds of intellectual bullshit from internet goons whose ideological commitments stem from being pessimistic goblins; which is the main point this article is making.
Like those who twist Roman History (or make up nonsense whole cloth) to suit their ideas regarding how modern-day America is failing.
Genuine question: Do Catholic Integralists have any political following at all? I am a Conservative Catholic, and I spend a fair amount of time with conservative Catholics, many of them politically active. Literally, no one has ever brought up Integralism. It seems that this movement is restricted to the subscriber base of First Things magazine. If there is evidence to the contrary, I would be interested in seeing it, once again, no snark, completely sincere here.
Christian Democratic parties in Europe
For example?
That’s interesting. I wonder if they have any following in the USA outside of purely intellectual discussions.
Americans are too parochial outside of the intelligentsia, but some of these parties (such as the Christian Dems in Italy) rose to power during the Cold War with US backing to form a bulwark against communism.
The term is one I only see online, not among people I know, who are a spectrum of Catholics.
I don't think Vance belongs in that set, as I don't know of him having any inclination towards integralism. Instead he seems more like the SCOTUS justices (a number of whom like Thomas are also converts) who find that Catholicism is more suited to their elite sphere than the Protestantism they came from.
In high school I was taught that the colony of Maryland was founded by Roman Catholics. The first canonized Roman Catholic saint worked in Baltimore.
I wonder why that part of the history of American Catholicism goes unmentioned.
I read Deneen’s book because I was interested in the prospect of a new type of conservatism. I think it is reasonable to think that society may need institutions that temper individualistic impulses (I.e., restrain certain forms of liberty), to replace the religious institutions that kept the middle 80% of the population more or less in check throughout American history.
But these people have no interest in the definable and the measurable. They rely on $5 words and unsupported (and unsupportable) claims. It’s, indeed, more of a sermon than a work of political economy. I think this was best demonstrated when Klein asked Deneen what radical policy changes would move the world closer to his vision, and Deneen said some parental leave proposal that was already part of the Democratic platform. There’s no there there.
I still like Deneen's first book. It has some interesting criticisms of our society even if the "liberalism" he criticizes is too broad a target. But the newer book, which tries to translate this into a political project, was a disappointment; I didn't bother to finish it.
I'm inclined to think that in 100-200 years, people will look at the way our society uses technology the same way we might look at our forebears putting cocaine in Coca-Cola and serving it to children. The people who inherit the Earth will be a lot more concerned with the ways new technologies affect the family and the community.
I think I agree with you, but I think the hard question will be how to protect family/community without stifling technological development and economic growth. I don’t think we have governments in the West capable of correctly identifying tradeoffs and optimizing in the medium or long term. But the laissez faire approach I think will produce a vapid and unfulfilled populace concerned only with their next tech-mediated serotonin boost. Maybe the results of China’s red new deal will hold some lessons, in either direction.
You're right about governments. Governments, and especially national governments, don't have a solution to the present crisis; the solutions will be bottom-up. Which seemed to be what Deneen was alluding to in the first book: localism.
And at times and places this will go too far and technological progress will be stifled, but I think that's already baked into the cake. A world of upside-down population pyramids, of shrinking populations and decay of both institutions and infrastructure, is also going to be a world in which technological progress most likely slows. I'm thinking about the world on the other side of that.
Though I'm also a believer that productive technological progress has already slowed. And not merely because of bad policies or our culture's flaws (though they haven't helped), but for reasons of physics: there doesn't seem to be another source of energy that can deliver exponential growth in per capita energy usage at a rational price.
Maybe someday our scientists can harness the power of the atom itself!
Even places that have that technology (Russia, China) are poor. It's not getting you a 4x increase in energy usage per capita. And if it did, the uranium would run out in short order.
Where’s Bill the Butcher when you need him?
The Know-Nothing Party did nothing wrong.
Thank you for calling out that abortion and birth control were primarily Catholic concerns long before being taken up by conservative Protestants in the Moral Majority era.
But how did this happen? Let me throw this out.
Mainline Protestant schools either disaffiliated from their respective denominations, or went full progressive Omnicause long before it was cool, or both.
Meanwhile, Evangelical Protestant schools went hard the opposite direction. This included a lot of anti-intellectual Bible literalism (most notably young-Earth creationism--as a result kiss any chance of a good science department goodbye). As a result, conservative Evangelical Protestant schools became an educational backwater, or never came into their own to begin with.
Notre Dame is ranked #18 in US News in National Universities. Brigham Young is ranked #109. Liberty U is ranked #392.
My point is that the Catholic higher education infrastructure is strong and robust. The right of center Protestant infrastructure, not so much--only Hillsdale College (#50 among National LibArts Schools) comes to mind as an intellectually rigorous school deftly combining faith and reason. As a result, guess who is doing most of the heavy lifting in conservative thought leadership?
Look at the faith of all of the conservative SCOTUS members, with the possible exception of Gorsuch.
One point of clarification: Most of the prayer-and-Bible-study (KJV only, please!) in school laws were driven by anti-Catholic Protestants who wanted to make sure public schools were teaching a certain flavor of Christianity--nobody was going to be asking Mary to intercede on anything on their watch.
If you want to be amused, read the biblical literalist contortions for pi=3 in I Kings 7:23. Simple lack of mathematical precision in the Bible just can't happen!!!
Maybe kiss that math department goodbye, too.
"There seems to be a divide where the Catholics who were born into the faith tend to be decent and reasonable people, while converts who came to it as adults often are undergoing some kind of existential crisis."
Converts are always the most devout followers because they need to be. Their position is always unstable because they feel untrusted (whether real or imagined) by the tribe.
It's another example of how Christianity at its core is essentially at odds with the values and worldviews of the Modern West.
The Catholic Church wasn’t hostile to our founding or even democracy, it became very suspicious of democracy because of the French Revolution- which by the way the French Clergy initially backed. The Vatican seems to have been completely baffled at first by America, not knowing what to make of her. All issues about democracy and the Catholic reservations about America were formally resolved in America’s and democracy’s favor in 1965 at Vatican II. (That’s about how much time it takes for the Church to decide on anything). It is true the Church isn’t in favor of radical individualism, nor anything approaching Libertarian capitalism, and having great experience of anarchy not a fan of anarchy either (and soon readers you’ll know why).
The Church’s social teachings have always favored the good of the community, yes subsidiarity, a living wage, and workers and trade associations to mitigate Capitalism’s excesses and effects.
It isn’t an accident that Communalism existed for instance in French villages, or that Mondragon in Spain was essentially established by a Priest. Mondragon is a federated workers cooperatives. Nor coincidence that the Church was smashed in Mexico as a threat to Liberalism because of its prohibition against usury, nor that some Latin American revolutionary movements were founded and led by priests (FARC) we can go on. In Catholic teaching it is true the individual and his appetites aren’t considered supreme, and only God is Sacred.
This is indeed a sticking point with the modern Enlightenment bien pensants, but when only your gratifications matter, God gets in the way.
To call the Catholic Church hostile to the Enlightenment is distorting to a severe degree, it’s like saying the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor from a motive of racism. Simply not true.
One could point out that Humanism began with Catholic Scholars, as did Science, that Individualism quite possibly began unintentionally with Individual Confession at the Church’s Lateran Council of 1219.
But the truth is never as clickbaity as controversy, nor as politically profitable as sowing dissension and distrust among the enemy. If you believe in either the Constitution or Catholicism, you may count yourself as enemies of our host, Mr. Hanania, who exists to sow confusion amongst his masters enemies. That dear reader is probably you.
The Catholic Church has one purpose: to save souls. Catholics, whether cradle Catholics or converts, are taught to be in this world, but not of it. This means even though it is impossible to build heaven on earth, we should always strive for peace and the common good, while keeping our eyes on the ultimate prize, hope for a New Heaven and a New Earth. Despite the many flaws of we Catholics, fallen men and sinners like everyone else, the Catholic Church is the only institution on earth that has survived since Jesus, nearly two thousand years ago, called on Peter to be to be the rock on which He would build His church. Civilizations have disappeared, empires and monarchies and countries and nations have come and gone, and the Catholic Church is still here. I call it Divine intervention, but what do I know?
"Catholic social thought is in the end remarkably consistent in its hostility to individual liberty and support for state intervention in the economy and people’s personal lives." ????
This is a highly controversial thesis in itself. Hm.
Interesting and informative article. As an avid reader of American history, you got the history correct. I also agree that it is difficult to see how Catholic integralism can ever come to anything positive or influential. There simply is no base of mass support from Catholic voters, and the Catholics that do exist are no longer looking to the Vatican for guidance on political issues. Nor do I understand why other Americans should care what the Vatican preaches.
Many Protestant nations are social democracies with strong welfare states while many Catholic societies are considerably less generous and more impoverished. Religion has nothing to do with anything.
Religion does in a way. Then again, there are those that think Mexico is a Catholic nation. The government of over a century is Masonic and hostile to the Church, they didn’t have Diplomatic relations until the 1990s when the Cartels murdered a Bishop and they needed to improve their image.
In no way is Mexico run by Catholics.
No, but there is no doubt Mexico is culturally Catholic.
Was the groyper who challenged Vivek specifically Catholic? I didn’t get tgat impression.