I came across this really insightful article at NOR and its editors
have graciously allowed us to republish the article in its entirety on
AnarchoCatholic. I think the article addresses many of the things
frequently discussed on this blog: Catholics need to start being and
acting like Catholics in their tradition. More often than not, American
Catholics are Americans first (ala patriotism) and Christians second.
Thus, their devotion is to Caesar first and then Jesus second. As
Catholics let us look to St. Mary as an example of a human being who
put her devotions to God first, even above her own will. Making such a
comparison only yields an understanding of the enormity of her devotion
and also how empty and mediocre the distractions are for American
Catholics. I think this article raises important questions for American
Catholics to consider about our faith, identity, and ultimate devotion.
SBW
"WE USE MORE SULFURIC ACID THAN YOU"
American Catholics as Cultural Protestants
November 1999By Thomas Storck
Thomas Storck is a Contributing Editor of the NOR and author most
recently of Foundations of a Catholic Political Order, published in
1998 by Four Faces Press in Beltsville, Maryland.
Archbishop Francis George of Chicago made a startling statement during
the Synod of Bishops for the Americas in November 1997. Archbishop (now
Cardinal) George said that U.S. citizens “are culturally Calvinist,
even those who profess the Catholic faith.” American society, he
continued, “is the civil counterpart of a faith based on private
interpretation of Scripture and private experience of God.” He
contrasted this kind of society with one based on the Catholic Church’s
teaching of community and a vision of life greater than the individual.
Cardinal George’s remarks deserve thorough consideration, and need
some unpacking. We are no longer accustomed to thinking in such terms
as “Catholic culture” or “Calvinist culture.” There aren’t many
honest-to-goodness Calvinists (or Puritans) left in America, but the
Calvinism of early America went a long way toward putting an
individualistic stamp on America as we know it today. In this sense we
all are part of a Calvinist culture, however secularized. As for the
notion of community, it has been so misused since the Second Vatican
Council that the very term is now suspect in the eyes of solid
Catholics. But in fact both the idea of culture and the idea of
community are valuable means for understanding the ways in which
society and religion interact, and thus for understanding how our faith
affects, or fails to affect, our own life and the life of our society.
A society or culture tends to reflect in a larger pattern the
dominant religious beliefs of its members. For example, two of the most
basic articles of the Catholic faith are the Holy Trinity and the
Incarnation, and both involve the concept of community. The Trinity is
itself a community of Persons and the doctrine of the Incarnation leads
to the doctrine of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, the
extension of the Incarnation. St. Paul describes the Church as one body
made up of many interrelated members with different functions — in
fact, a community of persons linked in the most intimate way possible,
since we are all members of Christ Himself. From the doctrine of the
Incarnation comes that wonderful union of the Divine and the human
which is one of the hallmarks of Catholicism. Thus, just as the Divine
Word brought the Infinite and Timeless Majesty of God into human form
at a certain time and place, so Catholics are ready to incarnate their
faith in objects and places, everything from blessed medals to shrines
— sacred but still material — just as God the Son did not think it
incompatible with His Divinity to actually experience our material
condition.
It is certainly the case that some Catholics have promoted a false
notion of community, as if we could have community without God or as if
a community inside a church building were the primary locus of the
Divine. But the best way to create a community is to look toward God.
Christ formed the Church as His Mystical Body, and no amount of
standing around and holding hands could ever have done so. But on the
other hand, since Jesus Christ has constituted us as His Mystical Body,
we naturally exhibit that unity in outward forms, as Catholic cultures
have always done in their processions, pilgrimages, and festivals, just
as these same cultures have exhibited the concreteness of the
Incarnation by consecrating shrines and holy places to show that God
and the life of mankind are not separate from each other.
But this is not the case with Protestant cultures. Though Protestants
do not deny either the Incarnation or the concept of the Mystical Body,
their theology has focused on different matters. Protestant theology
emphasizes certain truths, but sometimes emphasizes them out of
proportion or out of context; in other cases what it promotes is not
true at all. But in any case the final product results in a different
belief and thus in a different society expressing that different
belief. An example of this is what Cardinal George says about the U.S.
being “a civil counterpart of a faith based on private interpretation
of Scripture.” Our economic system in particular encourages each of us
to think only in terms of his own private good and rarely or never in
terms of the common good. Similarly, our obsession with rights, which
are usually conceived of as being rights over against someone else, is
another indication that our society is not based on Catholic principles.
If this is a fair assessment of American society, then we can ask,
along with Cardinal George, whether American Catholics also hold these
basically Protestant values. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII warned Catholics in
the United States of the heresy of subjecting Catholicism to certain
traits which were part of the spirit of American civilization. Pope Leo
called this heresy nothing other than Americanism! Thus the tendency on
the part of Catholics in the U.S. to accept the same cultural attitudes
as their Protestant neighbors is not a new phenomenon.
Cardinal George made his remarks while considering the recent
immigration of many Latin American Catholics to the U.S. He noted that
it is difficult for these immigrants from Catholic cultures to adapt to
living in this country. He said, for example, “The government schools,
which are the U.S. equivalent of a state church, teach the children of
immigrants a history of human progress from which religious influence
has been expunged.”
As a child (not then a Catholic) I went to these government
schools, and Cardinal George’s statement would have been accurate even
back then. One of the dominant impressions public school gave me was
that industrial and scientific progress is the highest (and
unquestionable) good. My high-school chemistry textbook stated
unforgettably that the level of civilization in a country could be
measured by the amount of sulfuric acid it consumed. Sulfuric acid was
very important at the time (late 1960s) in manufacturing processes, and
industrialization was the mark of civilization, ergo, sulfur equaled
culture. Even then I knew that religion, morality, literature, art, and
music were much better indices of civilization than technology. But I
suspect that many North American Catholics could read that statement
about civilization and sulfuric acid without batting an eye. Such
Catholics, whatever the quality of their faith, are sadly deficient in
a sense of Catholic culture, for they implicitly accept a materialistic
understanding of society. The Germany in which Hitler ranted certainly
used more sulfuric acid than the Paris in which St. Thomas Aquinas
taught or the Italy in which St. Francis preached. Did Nazi Germany
therefore have a higher level of civilization?
North Americans, including North American Catholics, are apt to
consider Latin America backward, disorderly, and dirty. Without doubt,
Latin America is not perfect. But I am afraid that our attitudes toward
that region confirm that Cardinal George is on the mark: U.S. Catholics
are Calvinist in their cultural assumptions. Yet if we care about
living lives that are entirely Catholic, about showing our faith in
what we do, then we ought to try to rethink things from the standpoint
of the true Faith. Reading sound Catholic books is one way in which we
can work against the individualistic atmosphere in which we are forced
to exist. The books of the English Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc,
especially Essays of a Catholic and Survivals and New Arrivals
(available from TAN Books, 800-437-5876), are excellent antidotes to
Calvinist thinking, as are the works of Christopher Dawson, the
historian, and G.K. Chesterton, the journalist, novelist, apologist,
poet, and wit.
The Archbishop of Chicago has definitely identified a weakness of
Catholics in the U.S. In the midst of our battles to preserve orthodoxy
in the Church, it might not seem like a very big weakness. But if we
really want to preserve and hand on the Faith, then it should go
without saying that we want to be Catholic in every part of our being.
We want to believe as Catholics, to think as Catholics, to live as
Catholics. And if Belloc were alive, he might add: “Yes, and to sing,
to walk, to sail, even to drink as Catholics!” To which I would say,
Amen.
This article first appeared in the November 1999 issue of the New Oxford Review, and is reprinted with permission. Copyright © 1999 New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley CA 94706, U.S.A., www.newoxfordreview.org.