One of my best friends studied under a strictly orthodox professor at a prestigious Catholic university, and that scholar did not like America. He is well-known in Catholic intellectual circles for his critique of the American founding, which, he says, was flawed because it is rooted in secularism.
That is not enough to conclude that he dislikes America. A nation's political arrangements will reflect its character, sure, but that isn't the only component. But this professor rejects American society in many respects. He condemns the superficial way people relate to one another. He decries its music. He condemns our fast food, and it bothers him that we Americans have no room in our hearts for metaphysics.
I met this professor in person twice, and he is quite engaging and personable. His contempt for his motherland is nothing if not rational, although tinged with elitism. Indeed, I agree with many aspects of his critique. Most American popular culture is vulgar garbage. Far too many of our fellow citizens revere rootlessness, and I certainly would not defend what passes for food on many dinner tables.
But where the professor's critique breaks down is his choice of Italy as an exemplary nation. Now, I love Italy, as it happens. I've been there a couple of times (our honeymoon was in Rome), and my wife and I could easily spend several months happily touring and eating our way around the peninsula. I show my kids books with Italian art, and often I cook Italian food.
Yet to anyone looking with Catholic eyes, Italy has some serious problems as well. Italy maintains a deeply Catholic culture, but it is dying. I don't mean that it is changing into something else. I mean it's literally dying: the Italian birthrate is 1.2 children per adult woman during her life. Other social indicators are better than the States — their abortion rate is very low, as is the divorce rate (which reflects traditional attitudes toward marriage, true, but also widespread acceptance of extramarital sex and cohabitation.) Italy has tons of priests, and more Italians go to church than in any other European country, save perhaps Ireland.
Yet it is the birthrate that is the most telling statistic. It shows that, far from being the generous and people-oriented people the professor would like them to be, Italians are deeply selfish, content to wallow in the vita bella without perpetuating it. They care about their cultural riches the same way the prodigal son cared about his father's wealth: as a source of stimulation and amusement, not something to be protected and nourished.
So it would seem that the professor, while ostensibly approaching the matter from a Catholic perspective, has very little to stand on here. America — largely Protestant, and officially secular — has a higher level of religious committment than Catholic Italy, which teaches religion in state-run classrooms. The source of his antipathy must lie elsewhere.
But it is not for me to probe his psyche. Rather, I have to ask: if you're that deeply dissatisfied with the U.S., and you think another country is a utopia, why not move? He has taught in Italy before, and speaks fluent Italian. If being in Italy is good for your soul, and America is hazardous for your spiritual health, well then, isn't the choice obvious?
Personally, I don't think I would want to leave America even if I agreed with the professor's critique. If you think your nation has gone astray, you ought to love her the same way you might love an alcoholic mother: with sadness, to be sure, but always with prayers and actions directed at reforming her character.
He can't be that much of a scholar if he thinks America's founding was secular! It was unabashedly Reformation Protestant, a late outbreak of the English Civil War. (but with a tolerance for Catholics and Jews not found in the previous episode)
And surely he would know that America was only made 'secular' by a series of ultra vires actions by the Nine in Black. Not by any legal process.
Eric,
Is the number of letters in his last name one fewer than the number of letters in his first name?
Coward:
I would guess two fewer letters in his last name.
Puzzled:
Even apart from who he is, I recognize the type Eric describes. And this person, I strongly suspect would probably (certainly the "type" I recognize would) dismiss Protestantism as secular liberalism in disguise or secular liberalism as applied to religion. The priesthood of all as just a proto form of the-self-as-God ("Here I stand, I can do no other"); the desacramentalization of religion as a step in the demystification of life and the reduction of God's presence in the world; the elimination of hierarchy as a disastrous democratizing step toward turning the world over to the rabble, to public opinion, the hoi polloi and whatnot.
It is more accurate to say that the founding of America was sectarian Protestant rather than Reformation Protestant. In rejecting an "establishment" of religion, they were rejecting state control over religion rather than state support for religion. Although the founders were anti-Catholic, they share with Catholics the idea that the state is under God and that the primary loyalty of a Christian is to a kingdom "not of this world."
We sometimes forget that on a political level the Reformation was all about bringing the Church under the domination of the state.
Puzzled, you're right about the founding -- I wasn't really addressing the substance of the professor's arguments, with which I disagree. He seems to accept the secular interpretation of the founding, and then uses it to build his case. But the American experiment in limited republican government is essentially grounded in the fact of an all-powerful, all-just God who will judge all nations and peoples. The Bill of Rights isn't a repudiation of religion: it's an explicit endorsement of it, as a government-protected sphere of human activity.
You guys are way off with the professor's name. I just didn't want to get hung up on his writings, which are voluminous, and I am not the one to offer a comprehensive rebuttal to his views. If you want to e-mail me privately, I'd be happy to tell you who I'm talking about.
Charles, I think you mean that Protestantism was about state control of religion for the Anglican and Lutheran strains, and perhaps Calvinism (Calvin ran Geneva as a theocratic dictator). However, American Protestants had little interest in state control, and many had fled countries with state churches.
I don't know that it's fair to consider the Founders to be anti-Catholic. There was a Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence (John Carroll), and Catholicism was generally tolerated, although in 1776 most states forbade Catholics from voting or holding public office. But George Washington, to give one prominent example, was not anti-Catholic, and one of his aides in the Revolutionary War helped found my parish. According to local tradition, Washington himself gave some money towards the purchase of the church's land.
There are a fair number of hard-line fundamentalist Protestants who think that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, et al, were in deep-seated spiritual rebellion against God, as well as against His agent George III, by throwing off the British Empire's reign over the united colonies. I occasionally get one such whack-job's emails. I have no clue how I got on his list.
Anyway, this guy basically theorizes America has been some great whore of Babylon or whatever ever since 1776. It's even more entertaining than folks who think celebrating Christmas is some horrendously grave sin against God which is provoking His wrath.
Charles, the prohibition on the federal government interfering with the several State establishments of various Christian denominations, such as Congregationalist (Puritan) and Anglican was a matter of trying to forge a defensive alliance without fearing imposition of another denomination on them, as England had tried to do.
Victor, that may be what he believes, but it is unhistorical.
Eric, Calvin did not run the canton of Geneva, nor had he any political power, nor did he want any. All he ever wanted to do was study in Strassbourg. William Farrel on at least two occasions, laid a guilt trip on him to stay in Geneva and teach. So he did, he was pastor of a church, the city council would occasionally come to him for advice in some religious or moral matters, such as what to do with that unitarian that all Europe was seeking to capture and execute, and he'd give his opinion, which they often acted on, but the city council ran the Canton of Geneva. Calvin was such a head-in-the-clouds scholar that he didn't take care for himself. A wife was basically imposed on him to care for him, and keep him alive, and they did come to love each other dearly. I'm not saying Calvin was -right- in all of this theology, but that this is the sort of man he was.
What a shame. For a man most notable for TULIP, he should have stopped more to smell the roses.
You got a source on that, Puzzled? I'll admit that calling him a "dictator" overstates the case, and I'll take that back -- it implies day-to-day control over events. But most of the sources I can find, even the ones sympathetic to Calvin, say that he took a direct hand in reorganizing Geneva's government, and he had to flee the city when it was turned over to his opponents.
Church history that I studied in both college and in (Presbyterian) seminary.
Ken, indeed. It would have been better. One thinks of Asperger's.
Thanks for clarifying what you were saying, Eric. I agree with you.
Puzzled, I would really like to read more about this. I understand if you don't want to chase a source for me, but if I presented a contrarian fact, I wouldn't expect you to trust my memory or personal authority.