Monday, September 20, 2010

Catholics and the Next America

Catholics and the Next America
Sep 17, 2010
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
FirstThings.com

One of the key myths of the American Catholic imagination is this: After 200 years of fighting against public prejudice, Catholics finally broke through into America’s mainstream with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy as president. It’s a happy thought, and not without grounding. Next to America’s broad collection of evangelical churches, baptized Catholics now make up the biggest religious community in the United States. They serve in large numbers in Congress. They have a majority on the Supreme Court. They play commanding roles in the professions and in business leadership. They’ve climbed, at long last, the Mt. Zion of social acceptance.

So goes the tale. What this has actually meant for the direction of American life, however, is another matter. Catholic statistics once seemed impressive. They filled many of us with tribal pride. But they didn’t stop a new and quite alien national landscape, a “next America,” from emerging right under our noses.

While both Barna Group and Pew Research Center data show that Americans remain a broadly Christian people, old religious loyalties are steadily softening. Overall, the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, about 16 percent, has doubled since 1990. One quarter of Americans aged 18-29 have no affiliation with any particular religion, and as the Barna Group noted in 2007, they “exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade . . . the Christian image [has] shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people.”

Catholic losses have been masked by Latino immigration. But while 31 percent of Americans say they were raised in the Catholic faith, fewer than 24 percent of Americans now describe themselves as Catholic.

These facts have weight because, traditionally, religious faith has provided the basis for Americans’ moral consensus. And that moral consensus has informed American social policy and law. What people believe—or don’t believe—about God, helps to shape what they believe about men and women. And what they believe about men and women creates the framework for a nation’s public life.

Or to put it more plainly: In the coming decades Catholics will likely find it harder, not easier, to influence the course of American culture, or even to live their faith authentically. And the big difference between the “next America” and the old one will be that plenty of other committed religious believers may find themselves in the same unpleasant jam as their Catholic cousins.

At first hearing, this scenario might sound implausible; and for good reason. The roots of the American experience are deeply Protestant. They go back a very long way, to well before the nation’s founding. Whatever one thinks of the early Puritan colonists—and Catholics have few reasons to remember them fondly—no reader can study Gov. John Winthrop’s great 1630 homily before embarking for New England without being moved by the zeal and candor of the faith that produced it. In “A model of Christian charity,” he told his fellow colonists:

We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ . . . That which the most in their churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice; as in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burdens. We must look not only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren . . . We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So we will keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
Not a bad summary of Christian discipleship, made urgent for Winthrop by the prospect of leading 700 souls on a hard, two-month voyage across the North Atlantic to an equally hard New World. What happened when they got there is a matter of historical record. And different agendas interpret the record differently.

The Puritan habits of hard work, industry and faith branded themselves on the American personality. While Puritan influence later diluted in waves of immigrants from other Protestant traditions, it clearly helped shape the political beliefs of John Adams and many of the other American Founders. Adams and his colleagues were men who, as Daniel Boorstin once suggested, had minds that were a “miscellany and a museum;” men who could blend the old and the new, an earnest Christian faith and Enlightenment ideas, without destroying either.

But beginning in the nineteenth century, riding a crest of scientific and industrial change, a different view of the Puritans began to emerge. In the language of their critics, the Puritans were seen as intolerant, sexually repressed, narrow-minded witch-hunters who masked material greed with a veneer of Calvinist virtue. Cast as religious fanatics, the Puritans stood accused of planting the seed of nationalist messianism by portraying America as a New Jerusalem, a “city upon a hill” (from Winthrop’s homily), with a globally redemptive mission. H.L. Mencken—equally skilled as a writer, humorist and anti-religious bigot—famously described the Puritan as a man “with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

In recent years, scholars like Christian Smith have shown how the intellectual weakness and fierce internal divisions of America’s Protestant establishment allowed “the secularization of modern public life as a kind of political revolution.” Carried out mainly between 1870 and 1930, this “rebel insurgency consisted of waves of networks of activists who were largely skeptical, freethinking, agnostic, atheist or theologically liberal; who were well educated and socially located mainly in the knowledge-production occupations, and who generally espoused materialism, naturalism, positivism and the privatization or extinction of religion.”

This insurgency could be ignored, or at least contained, for a long time. Why? Because America’s social consensus supported the country’s unofficial Christian assumptions, traditions and religion-friendly habits of thought and behavior. But law—even a constitutional guarantee—is only as strong as the popular belief that sustains it. That traditional consensus is now much weakened. Seventy years of soft atheism trickling down in a steady catechesis from our universities, social-science “helping professions,” and entertainment and news media, have eroded it.

Obviously many faith-friendly exceptions exist in each of these professional fields. And other culprits, not listed above, may also be responsible for our predicament. The late Christopher Lasch argued that modern consumer capitalism breeds and needs a “culture of narcissism”—i.e., a citizenry of weak, self-absorbed, needy personalities—in order to sustain itself. Christian Smith put it somewhat differently when he wrote that, in modern capitalism, labor “is mobile as needed, consumers purchase what is promoted, workers perform as demanded, managers execute as expected—and profits flow. And what the Torah, or the Pope, or Jesus may say in opposition is not relevant, because those are private matters” [emphasis in original].

My point here is neither to defend nor criticize our economic system. Others are much better equipped to do that than I am. My point is that “I shop, therefore I am” is not a good premise for life in a democratic society like the United States. Our country depends for its survival on an engaged, literate electorate gathered around commonly held ideals. But the practical, pastoral reality facing the Gospel in America today is a human landscape shaped by advertising, an industry Pascal Bruckner described so well as a “smiling form of sorcery”:

The buyer’s fantastic freedom of choice supposedly encourages each of us to take ourselves in hand, to be responsible, to diversify our conduct and our tastes; and most important, supposedly protects us forever from fanaticism and from being taken in. In other words, four centuries of emancipation from dogmas, gods and tyrants has led to nothing more nor less than to the marvelous possibility of choosing between several brands of dish detergent, TV channels or styles of jeans. Pushing our cart down the aisle in a supermarket or frantically wielding our remote control, these are supposed to be ways of consciously working for harmony and democracy. One could hardly come up with a more masterful misinterpretation: for we consume in order to stop being individuals and citizens; rather, to escape for a moment from the heavy burden of having to make fundamental choices.
Now, where do Catholics fit into this story?

Continue reading here...

10 comments:

  1. Al and Nick,

    When you guys feel the urge to make a theological leap, you should look first.

    What happened? Well, Al is upset with those gleeful adolescent new atheists who use the Old Testament to caricature God as a God of wrath.

    To prove those darn village atheists wrong, Al recites the following sentence from John Paul II's encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy): "These words of the Church at Easter re-echo in the fullness of their prophetic content the words that Mary uttered during her visit to Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah: 'His mercy is...from generation to generation.' "

    Take note of the ellipsis. Al goes on:

    "It's a great line! Now, she [Mary] is talking about this, this 'God of wrath' that people -- they caricature the God of the Old Testament: 'Oh, the Old Testament -- it's the God of wrath!' Wait a minute! Mary, OK, says to her kinswoman Elizabeth: 'His mercy -- that is, God's mercy -- is from generation to generation.' In other words, if ---- I'm on this thing because I'm doing some writing on the new atheists right now, and they are continually mischaracterizing -- mischaracterizing the God of the Old Testament. And they're always playing off this village atheist notion of this God as a God of wrath. But that is not the way the people of ancient Israel understood Him. That's why they can sing: 'His mercy is from generation to generation.' I just think it's remarkable."

    Nick chimes in: "You don't sing things like that about someone you fear."

    Al affirms Nick's observation: "Right! Right!"

    Well, here's what Mary actually said in Luke 1:50 (I filled in the ellipsis): "And his mercy is ON THOSE WHO FEAR HIM from generation to generation."

    Good luck on your Old Testament makeover, Al.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, here's what Mary actually said in Luke 1:50 (I filled in the ellipsis): "And his mercy is ON THOSE WHO FEAR HIM from generation to generation."

    Nice job on misinterpreting "Fear", dude. 'Fear of the Lord' - one of the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit - is not being afraid of God because of the consequences. It's having the proper attitude of reverence and awe due to God because of His perfection and holiness.

    That's not to say there aren't some who obey God out of the type of fear you infer - but that in no way reflects what the Church teaches.

    God is merciful to all who seek His mercy - and He exacts His justice on all who seek to be irreverent.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LarryD,

    Thanks for responding.

    I did some research before I posted my comment and, indeed, others have made the same point. For example, Curtis A. Jahn, a Lutheran, wrote a very detailed analysis of the Magnificat called,

    Exegesis and Sermon Study of Luke 1:46-55
    The Magnificat

    On Luke 1:50 he says: "This is the fear of the Lord spoken of so often in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. This fear is not the abject terror and horror that will fill the hearts of unbelievers when they face the infinite anger of God in the judgment. This fear is the respectful, reverential childlike awe that is combined with childlike trust in the heavenly Father and fills the heart of the believing child of God. It shows itself in the reverential bearing of those who recognize God’s majesty and greatness. Those who fear God in this evangelical sense truly know who God is, and they know who and what they are in relationship to him."

    I have no expertise in Bible hermeneutics, so I ask for help here. But I suspect that Christians like you and Jahn are trying to soften God's image in order to make Him more acceptable to modern sensibilities. The word "afraid" in Luke 1:30 ("And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.' ") shares same Greek root (phobou) with the word "fear" in Luke 1:50. Is the angel Gabriel instructing Mary not to be in reverence and awe?

    This doesn't seem to be as clear cut as you want to make it. From the little bit of research I've done, the words used for "fear" in the Hebrew Bible connote the usual understanding of the word "fear," along with a connotation of reverence and awe.

    There must be a reason why every translation of Luke 1:50 I found uses the word "fear" rather than the words "reverence" or "awe." (I used this RSV translation.) Why didn't the translators say "on those who revere Him" instead of "on those who fear Him?" Check out these etymologies on a website I found called Online Etymology Dictionary: fear, awe.

    So the best you've got, LarryD, is reverence accompanied by fear (the ordinary understanding of fear). To me, it looks worse: reverence grounded in fear.

    This is important, but it misses the larger point. Al is claiming that the God of the Old Testament is not really a god of wrath. But a plain reading of Luke 1:50 shows that Al is wrong. (And judging by the last sentence in your comment, you also believe that Al is wrong.) Luke 1:50 says that God reserves His mercy for those who fear Him. The implication is that God will not be merciful to those who do not fear Him, i.e., He will visit wrath upon those who do not fear Him. Hence the God of Wrath -- the God who flooded the earth, obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born in Egypt and, the coup de grace, conceived of and created Hell.

    Your turn.

    ReplyDelete
  4. LarryD,

    Thanks for responding.

    I did some research before I posted my comment and, indeed, others have made the same point. For example, Curtis A. Jahn, a Lutheran, wrote a very detailed analysis of the Magnificat called,

    Exegesis and Sermon Study of Luke 1:46-55
    The Magnificat

    On Luke 1:50 he says: "This is the fear of the Lord spoken of so often in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. This fear is not the abject terror and horror that will fill the hearts of unbelievers when they face the infinite anger of God in the judgment. This fear is the respectful, reverential childlike awe that is combined with childlike trust in the heavenly Father and fills the heart of the believing child of God. It shows itself in the reverential bearing of those who recognize God’s majesty and greatness. Those who fear God in this evangelical sense truly know who God is, and they know who and what they are in relationship to him."

    I have no expertise in Bible hermeneutics, so I ask for help here. But I suspect that Christians like you and Jahn are trying to soften God's image in order to make Him more acceptable to modern sensibilities. The word "afraid" in Luke 1:30 ("And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.' ") shares same Greek root (phobou) with the word "fear" in Luke 1:50. Is the angel Gabriel instructing Mary not to be in reverence and awe?

    This doesn't seem to be as clear cut as you want to make it. From the little bit of research I've done, the words used for "fear" in the Hebrew Bible connote the usual understanding of the word "fear," along with a connotation of reverence and awe.

    There must be a reason why every translation of Luke 1:50 I found uses the word "fear" rather than the words "reverence" or "awe." (I used this RSV translation.) Why didn't the translators say "on those who revere Him" instead of "on those who fear Him?" Check out these etymologies on a website I found called Online Etymology Dictionary: fear, awe.

    So the best you've got, LarryD, is reverence accompanied by fear (the ordinary understanding of fear). To me, it looks worse: reverence grounded in fear.

    ReplyDelete
  5. LarryD,

    Thanks for responding.

    I did some research before I posted my comment and, indeed, others have made the same point. For example, Curtis A. Jahn, a Lutheran, wrote a very detailed analysis of the Magnificat called,

    Exegesis and Sermon Study of Luke 1:46-55
    The Magnificat

    On Luke 1:50 he says: "This is the fear of the Lord spoken of so often in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. This fear is not the abject terror and horror that will fill the hearts of unbelievers when they face the infinite anger of God in the judgment. This fear is the respectful, reverential childlike awe that is combined with childlike trust in the heavenly Father and fills the heart of the believing child of God. It shows itself in the reverential bearing of those who recognize God’s majesty and greatness. Those who fear God in this evangelical sense truly know who God is, and they know who and what they are in relationship to him."

    I have no expertise in Bible hermeneutics, so I ask for help here. But I suspect that Christians like you and Jahn are trying to soften God's image in order to make Him more acceptable to modern sensibilities. The word "afraid" in Luke 1:30 ("And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.' ") shares same Greek root (phobou) with the word "fear" in Luke 1:50. Is the angel Gabriel instructing Mary not to be in reverence and awe?

    This doesn't seem to be as clear cut as you want to make it. From the little bit of research I've done, the words used for "fear" in the Hebrew Bible connote the usual understanding of the word "fear," along with a connotation of reverence and awe.

    ReplyDelete
  6. continued

    There must be a reason why every translation of Luke 1:50 I found uses the word "fear" rather than the words "reverence" or "awe." (I used this RSV translation.) Why didn't the translators say "on those who revere Him" instead of "on those who fear Him?" Check out these etymologies on a website I found called Online Etymology Dictionary: fear, awe.

    So the best you've got, LarryD, is reverence accompanied by fear (the ordinary understanding of fear). To me, it looks worse: reverence grounded in fear.

    This is important, but it misses the larger point. Al is claiming that the God of the Old Testament is not really a god of wrath. But a plain reading of Luke 1:50 shows that Al is wrong. (And judging by the last sentence in your comment, you also believe that Al is wrong.) Luke 1:50 says that God reserves His mercy for those who fear Him. The implication is that God will not be merciful to those who do not fear Him, i.e., He will visit wrath upon those who do not fear Him. Hence the God of Wrath -- the God who flooded the earth, obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born in Egypt and, the coup de grace, conceived of and created Hell.

    Your turn.

    ReplyDelete
  7. continued

    There must be a reason why every translation of Luke 1:50 I found uses the word "fear" rather than the words "reverence" or "awe." (I used this RSV translation.) Why didn't the translators say "on those who revere Him" instead of "on those who fear Him?" Check out these etymologies on a website I found called Online Etymology Dictionary: fear, awe.

    So the best you've got, LarryD, is reverence accompanied by fear (the ordinary understanding of fear). To me, it looks worse: reverence grounded in fear.

    This is important, but it misses the larger point. Al is claiming that the God of the Old Testament is not really a god of wrath. But a plain reading of Luke 1:50 shows that Al is wrong. (And judging by the last sentence in your comment, you also believe that Al is wrong.) Luke 1:50 says that God reserves His mercy for those who fear Him. The implication is that God will not be merciful to those who do not fear Him, i.e., He will visit wrath upon those who do not fear Him. Hence the God of Wrath -- the God who flooded the earth, obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born in Egypt and, the coup de grace, conceived of and created Hell.

    ReplyDelete
  8. continued

    There must be a reason why every translation of Luke 1:50 I found uses the word "fear" rather than the words "reverence" or "awe." (I used this RSV translation.) Why didn't the translators say "on those who revere Him" instead of "on those who fear Him?" Check out these etymologies on a website I found called Online Etymology Dictionary: fear, awe.

    Based on the etymologies, LarryD, the best you've got is reverence accompanied by fear (the ordinary understanding of fear). To me, it looks worse: reverence grounded in fear.

    This is important, but it misses the larger point. Al is claiming that the God of the Old Testament is not really a god of wrath. But a plain reading of Luke 1:50 shows that Al is wrong. (And judging by the last sentence in your comment, you also believe that Al is wrong.) Luke 1:50 says that God reserves His mercy for those who fear Him. The implication is that God will not be merciful to those who do not fear Him, i.e., He will visit wrath upon those who do not fear Him. Hence the God of Wrath -- the God who flooded the earth, obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born in Egypt and, the coup de grace, conceived of and created Hell.

    ReplyDelete
  9. continued

    There must be a reason why every translation of Luke 1:50 I found uses the word "fear" rather than the words "reverence" or "awe." (I used the RSV translation I found online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/browse.html) Why didn't the translators say "on those who revere Him" instead of "on those who fear Him?" Check out the etymologies of "fear" and "awe" on a website I found called Online Etymology Dictionary:
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fear
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=awe

    Based on the etymologies, LarryD, the best you've got is reverence accompanied by fear (the ordinary understanding of fear). To me, it looks worse: reverence grounded in fear.

    This is important, but it misses the larger point. Al is claiming that the God of the Old Testament is not really a god of wrath. But a plain reading of Luke 1:50 shows that Al is wrong. (And judging by the last sentence in your comment, you also believe that Al is wrong.) Luke 1:50 says that God reserves His mercy for those who fear Him. The implication is that God will not be merciful to those who do not fear Him, i.e., He will visit wrath upon those who do not fear Him. Hence the God of Wrath -- the God who flooded the earth, obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born in Egypt and, the coup de grace, conceived of and created Hell.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Regardless of Age, all Catholics are required to follow the teachings in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition" regarding Faith and Morals.
    Footnotes at the bottom of each page refer to
    Scripture or other Church documentation.

    Vatican II Council (1962-1965)
    The decree, On Divine Revelation, declares that there is one source of Divine Revelation, Jesus Christ; that there are two modes of handing on revelation: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition: "in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end," and "it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything that has been revealed."
    Concerning Inerrancy of Scripture: "The Books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation. "Emphasized that "in order to see what God wanted to communicate in Scripture, we must investigate the intention of the sacred author, and one way to do this is by paying attention to the literary form employed by the sacred writer."

    ReplyDelete