An American Moment? – The Catholic Thing

Catholics who travel between the United States and Europe say that there is a noticeable difference in the Catholic cultures of the two.  The reports are anecdotal, of course. But this is what I see and hear: that on the American side, practicing Catholics seem more youthful and more hopeful; their culture is more vigorous; it is more outspoken; it has a bolder public presence.  It is looking towards the next generations.  It is building for the future. In short, it is more apostolic and evangelical.

If this is true – some European friends have asked me – how would I, as an American, explain it?

I said that there are deep-running fibers in the American character that make Americans especially well-suited to living the faith in the contemporary world, in the true spirit of Vatican II.  (Yes, my friends and I remain very enthusiastic about what Vatican II truly taught.)

Consider the idea that the “first freedom” is not speech but rather freedom of religion, based on a fundamental duty to serve God.  “This duty,” James Madison famously wrote,  is “precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.” (“Memorial and Remonstrance”)

This is why we insist on “under God” in the pledge and “in God we trust” on our coins, and why, despite an apparent consensus secularity, many still struggle, rightly so, with whether we should deem ourselves, after all, a “Christian nation.”

As if a constant witness, today the vibrant First Liberty Institute voices this American outlook publicly.

St. John Paul II, in an address to the United Nations, similarly said, “religious freedom is at the basis of all other freedoms and is inseparably tied to them all.”  Such a conviction ran throughout all of his teachings against the culture and death, and “socialism,” construed as the denial of the transcendence and subjectivity of human society.

Or consider the idea that civil society itself, understood as an aggregate of families engaged in worship, schooling, and business with one another, for common flourishing, is prior to the state.

This Society, “the people” as Lincoln styled it, enjoys a “right to revolution.” They are free to change their whole form of government if that government is failing them: they have the authority to do so.   So we believe and feel in our bones as Americans.

True, the ideology of the social contract, as articulated by philosophers, has been individualistic, silent about the natural institutions of the family and the marketplace.  But in American culture, never purely dictated by “liberalism” – in films, stories, and songs – more prominent than the loner is the father who is defending his wife, children, and homestead against a threat.

And yet a similar insight underlies the spirit of social reform let loose by Rerum Novarum, and evident later in Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes:

A family, no less than a State, is. . .a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty.

This view of the family entails several consequences: “If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.”

It’s obvious that this outlook, articulated by Pope Leo in the words just quoted from Rerum Novarum, has been embraced far more intuitively by Americans than Europeans.

Then there is the spirit of innovation, invention, daring, and entrepreneurship so evident in the American character – we are a country founded by risk-takers, and the “frontier,” and our wilderness has always fostered boldness.

 This spirit is maligned when it is cast as individualistic, as mere Emersonian “self-reliance.”  The reason is that American daring from its origin has been social: the Mayflower Compact; Benjamin Franklin’s famous and very truthful witticism (“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately”); and even America’s history of citizens extravagantly forming corporations.

When you hear this word “corporation,” do not think first of public companies, but rather of any common, freely accepted work, among many individuals, which enjoys a legal structure.  European associations needed a royal charter, or some other granting or sharing of political power.  They were formed top-down.

But in the United States, we suppose that citizens are free to engage in their own “social contracts,” so that, by their own will (admittedly in a limited domain), they may form legal personalities, which the state more properly recognizes than constitutes.  Our corporations are formed bottom-up.

How many times, to foster a similar outlook among the laity, does the Vatican Council use a word like “responsibility”?  Its Decree on Lay Apostolate, for instance, speaks of

• “unmistakable work being done today by the Holy Spirit in making the laity ever more conscious of their own responsibility” (n.1).
• “On all Christians therefore is laid the preeminent responsibility of working to make the divine message of salvation known and accepted by all men throughout the world” (n.3).
• “The apostolate in the social milieu, that is, the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives, is so much the duty and responsibility of the laity that it can never be performed properly by others.” (n. 13)

My European friends were ultimately wondering how an American Pope could bring this American spirit of faithful daring to the Church.  Which raises the interesting question: Are we facing an “American moment” for the universal Church?