So it's always refreshing to read someone in the New World who is advancing my side's view of things, even using the words of a Scot. Thus I enjoyed a few lines out of Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski's recent article, the "Tradition of Nothing Worship," in the most recent Latin Mass issue. There he quotes Alasdair MacIntyre:
"You may confess on your lips any god you like, provided you are willing to kill for America," and to be killed for it, as MacIntyre wryly puts it, "It is like being asked to die for the telephone company."
4 comments:
This is all very nice. (Glad to see you in the saddle again.) But in this land, the traditionalist altars and all that have been destroyed have not been made rubble by the telephone company or the government, as near as I can tell.
This was not so during the last century in places like the CCCP or in its satellites. Are you confusing love of country and loyalty to government? For one can--and should--have the former if even the latter does not deserve it.
The problem is that the Americanists won. The largest anti-Americanist bloc was the German Catholics, and their influence was broken by World War I. From that point forward, traditional Catholic Social teaching was subverted in this country. This is not only the source of the misguided jingoism of many Trads, it is also the reason that so many American Catholics became modernists almost overnight. Americanism is a mild form of modernism, and it was very easy to transition from that to the Hippie Church of liberalism. Many Trads are simply Americanists - they share many of the errors of the liberal modernists (e.g.: religious liberty, pluralism, etc.), but are unwilling to take the next step into full-fledged modernism.
I love America. I believe it was Mr. Senior who said something like if we lived according to the vision of the Framers, like Jefferson, then cities such as Chicago and L.A. could be as beautiful as Assisi and Salamanca. Perhaps we'd have even seen more Mark Twains, Edna St. Vincent Millays, and Wila Cathers and less of Steven King, William Carlos Williams and Dr. Suess. I'd even say that we wouldn't have seen Dred Scot. No matter where America has strayed, our countrymen have done some glorious things including laying down their lives for some noble causes and people. I really don't know what Father Hecker had in mind when he coined the term Americanist. I also don't know the full context of a statement like "it's like being asked to die for the telephone company" but it's disheartening to veterans and soldiers. Generally speaking, they are generous and strong souls.
Father did not coin the term. Americanism is a heresy that was condemned by Pope Leo XIII. It was championed by many (mostly Anglo-Irish) American Bishops, led by that reprobate Archibishop Ireland of St. Paul. They ignored the Papal condemnation, and their views became the dominant views of American Catholics following World War I.
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