Once upon a time there was a
church founded on God’s entering
into human history in order to
give humanity a path to eternal life and
happiness with him. The Savior that God
sent, his only-begotten Son, did not write
a book but founded a community, a
church, upon the witness and ministry of
twelve apostles. He sent this church the
gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of love
between Father and Son, the Spirit of the
truth that God had revealed about himself
and humanity by breaking into the
history of human sinfulness.
This church, a hierarchical communion,
continued through history, living
among different peoples and cultures,
filled with sinners, but always guided in
the essentials of her life and teaching by
the Holy Spirit. She called herself
“Catholic” because her purpose was to
preach a universal faith and a universal
morality, encompassing all peoples and
cultures. This claim often invited conflict
with the ruling classes of many countries.
About 1,800 years into her often
stormy history, this church found herself
as a very small group in a new country in
Eastern North America that promised to
respect all religions because the State
would not be confessional; it would not
try to play the role of a religion.
This church knew that it was far from
socially acceptable in this new country.
One of the reasons the country was established
was to protest the king of England’s
permitting the public celebration
of the Catholic Mass on the soil of the
British Empire in the newly conquered
Catholic territories of Canada. He had
betrayed his coronation oath to combat
Catholicism, defined as “America’s
greatest enemy,” and protect Protestantism,
bringing the pure religion of the
colonists into danger and giving them the
moral right to revolt and reject his rule.
Nonetheless, many Catholics in the
American colonies thought their life
might be better in the new country than
under a regime whose ruling class had
penalized and persecuted them since the
mid-16th century. They made this new
country their own and served her loyally.
The social history was often contentious,
but the State basically kept its promise to
protect all religions and not become a
rival to them, a fake church. Until recent
years.
There was always a quasi-religious element
in the public creed of the country.
It lived off the myth of human progress,
which had little place for dependence on
divine providence. It tended to exploit
the religiosity of the ordinary people by
using religious language to co-opt them
into the purposes of the ruling class.
Forms of anti-Catholicism were part of
its social DNA. It had encouraged its citizens
to think of themselves as the creators
of world history and the managers
of nature, so that no source of truth outside
of themselves needed to be consulted
to check their collective purposes and
desires. But it had never explicitly taken
upon itself the mantle of a religion and
officially told its citizens what they must
personally think or what “values” they
must personalize in order to deserve to
be part of the country. Until recent years.
In recent years, society has brought social
and legislative approval to all types
of sexual relationships that used to be
considered “sinful.” Since the biblical vision
of what it means to be human tells
us that not every friendship or love can
be expressed in sexual relations, the
church’s teaching on these issues is now
evidence of intolerance for what the civil
law upholds and even imposes. What
was once a request to live and let live has
now become a demand for approval. The
“ruling class,” those who shape public
opinion in politics, in education, in communications,
in entertainment, is using
the civil law to impose its own form of
morality on everyone. We are told that,
even in marriage itself, there is no difference
between men and women, although
nature and our very bodies clearly evidence
that men and women are not interchangeable
at will in forming a family.
Nevertheless, those who do not conform
to the official religion, we are warned,
place their citizenship in danger.
When the recent case about religious
objection to one provision of the Health
Care Act was decided against the State
religion, the Huffington Post (June 30,
2014) raised “concerns about the compatibility
between being a Catholic and
being a good citizen.” This is not the
voice of the nativists who first fought
against Catholic immigration in the
1830s. Nor is it the voice of those who
burned convents and churches in Boston
and Philadelphia a decade later. Neither
is it the voice of the Know-Nothing Party
of the 1840s and 1850s, nor of the Ku
Klux Klan, which burned crosses before
Catholic churches in the Midwest after
the civil war. It is a voice more sophisticated
than that of the American Protective
Association, whose members promised
never to vote for a Catholic for
public office. This is, rather, the selfrighteous
voice of some members of the
American establishment today who regard
themselves as “progressive” and
“enlightened.”
The inevitable result is a crisis of belief
for many Catholics. Throughout history,
when Catholics and other believers in revealed
religion have been forced to
choose between being taught by God or
instructed by politicians, professors, editors
of major newspapers and entertainers,
many have opted to go along with
the powers that be. This reduces a great
tension in their lives, although it also
brings with it the worship of a false god.
It takes no moral courage to conform to
government and social pressure. It takes
a deep faith to “swim against the tide,” as
Pope Francis recently encouraged young
people to do at last summer’s World
Youth Day.
Swimming against the tide means limiting
one’s access to positions of prestige
and power in society. It means that those
who choose to live by the Catholic faith
will not be welcomed as political candidates
to national office, will not sit on
editorial boards of major newspapers,
will not be at home on most university
faculties, will not have successful careers
as actors and entertainers. Nor will their
children, who will also be suspect. Since
all public institutions, no matter who
owns or operates them, will be agents of
the government and conform their activities
to the demands of the official religion,
the practice of medicine and law
will become more difficult for faithful
Catholics. It already means in some
States that those who run businesses
must conform their activities to the official
religion or be fined, as Christians
and Jews are fined for their religion in
countries governed by Sharia law.
A reader of the tale of two churches, an
outside observer, might note that American
civil law has done much to weaken
and destroy what is the basic unit of
every human society, the family. With the
weakening of the internal restraints that
healthy family life teaches, the State will
need to impose more and more external
restraints on everyone’s activities. An
outside observer might also note that the
official religion’s imposing whatever its
proponents currently desire on all citizens
and even on the world at large inevitably
generates resentment. An outside
observer might point out that class
plays a large role in determining the
tenets of the official State religion.
“Same-sex marriage,” as a case in point,
is not an issue for the poor or those on
the margins of society.
How does the tale end? We don’t
know. The actual situation is, of course,
far more complex than a story plot, and
there are many actors and characters,
even among the ruling class, who do not
want their beloved country to transform
itself into a fake church. It would be
wrong to lose hope, since there are so
many good and faithful people.
Catholics do know, with the certainty
of faith, that, when Christ returns in
glory to judge the living and the dead,
the church, in some recognizable shape
or form that is both Catholic and Apostolic,
will be there to meet him. There is
no such divine guarantee for any country,
culture or society of this or any age.
