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Posted on 04/13/2009 9:42:34 AM PDT by NYer
For people whose view of history extends beyond last week, the furor over Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to be its commencement speaker and receive an honorary degree is simply the latest chapter in an old story by the name of “Americanism.” Notre Dame is a paradigmatic institution — flagship of the Americanist impulse in U.S. Catholicism — and with the uproar over our pro-abortion president the university’s special status has come home to roost for folks under the Golden Dome.
Pope Leo XIII in 1899 condemned a heresy he called Americanism as a “reprehensible” error. He had in mind a set of attitudes and practices intended to adjust Catholic belief and behavior (or in some cases just sweep them aside) to suit contemporary secular standards in unacceptable ways. The existence of such views, Leo XIII said, “raises a suspicion that there are those among you who envision and desire a Church in America other than that which is in all the rest of the world.”
Prominent figures in U.S. Catholicism like Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore—to whom the Pope’s letter was addressed—and Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul promptly insisted they held none of the views which Leo XIII had condemned. And thereupon, one historian writes, Americanism “quickly disappeared as a meaningful force in the U.S.”
But of course it didn’t. Instead, as the 20th century progressed, the Americanist spirit merged with the sociological phenomenon of cultural assimilation. Especially after World War II, higher education, new affluence, and population shifts—the breakdown of inner-city ethnic parishes as Catholics moved to the booming suburbs—fueled a progressive thinning-out of Catholic identity that’s still going on.
One result of this is easy to state: “American Catholics are firmly implanted in the American mainstream.” Those words come from an official history of Notre Dame on the university website. The overview leaves no doubt that Notre Dame considers itself similarly “implanted” while at the same time remaining a Catholic school.
The cultural assimilation of American Catholics has been a good thing in many ways—but not all. That’s painfully clear from empirical data on U.S. Catholicism showing declines in Mass attendance and sacramental participation, in priests and religious, in adherence to Catholic doctrine, and even in number of Catholics (partially masked by Hispanic immigration). Life in the secular mainstream has not proved to be all that healthy for the Church.
Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama — an aggressive supporter of abortion “rights” who already has promulgated several anti-life policy decisions and threatens more — is part of this Americanist pattern. What could be more mainstream for a Catholic school, after all, than having the President of the United States as commencement speaker? That the official policy of the Catholic bishops of the United States rules it out evidently doesn’t matter.
“Quite a coup,” Kenneth L. Woodward, former Newsweek religion editor and a longtime Notre Dame booster, crowed on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. “Our voices must be raised to say that we are thrilled such a distinguished Catholic university is considered such a part of the life of the nation,” gushed an America magazine blogger named Michael Sean Winters.
At least since the time of Leo XIII, American Catholics have faced a choice between assimilation and counterculturalism. The emergence of legalized abortion makes that choice even more demanding. But Notre Dame’s invitation to Obama comes from the assimilationist heart of Catholic Americanism. The outrage it has produced is counterculturalism’s response. However this turns out, the argument will go on.
The 1967 Land O’Lakes conference statement on the modernization of Catholic universities made Americanism and Modernism a focus for Catholicism, eventually disconnecting the colleges and universities from the Catholic Church, as we see now.
As Newbusters.org pointed out, Kenneth Woodward, before drooling all over his keyboard or going under the table in an Obamagasm, should have engaged in a little full-disclosure by letting everyone know that HIS SON IS ASSOCIATE VICE-PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME.
Also, as regards, the permanently-dissenting, full-time Democrat apologist Michael Sean Winters at America, what I like to do everytime America sends me a subscription offer is print up my little essay on Winters, stick it inside the envelope whose postage America is paying for, and mail it pack to them.
I know, just a small handfull of sand at the big old American Catholic Church machine . . . but it feels good.
Notre Dame honoring Obama is like Oberlin honoring Justice Taney in 1859.
Too bad the ND administration hasn’t got the spine and integrity of nineteenth century abolitionists.
Thank you for the picture.
It is worth MORE than a thousand words!
Why the Roman Catholic church didn’t drop Notre Dame like a hot potato when it signed on to Land O’ Lakes is a mystery to me. People see the church trumpeting “do what I say not what I do” and then the church wonders why it isn’t taken very seriously.
I was thinking “those poor saps.”
Didn’t Hitler eventually turn on them too?
For more detail on exactly what happened and why, I recommend:
The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing by E. Michael Jones
Americanism? Wouldn’t that imply that Notre Dame’s version of Catholicism is somehow a uniquely American one? I daresay abortion is neither unique to America nor an universally American institution or value.
With Obama at ND, it shows how liberals and anti-Catholics have infiltrated and taken over Catholic colleges and universities since 1967. The people who made the decisions inspired by the '67 Land O'Lakes conference to modernize, liberalize, and secularize Catholic colleges were VERY naïve. But this is what happens when fruitcakes are in charge. It used to be the numbers of priests on the faculty were declining. Now it's just hard to find Catholic men (in positions of authority). Land O'Lakes destroyed the universities like Georgetown, Notre Dame, etc.
At least Prof. Rice and McInerny have spoken out against it. Rice says he will attend the Rosary protest at the Lourdes prayer grotto on campus rather than the commencement ceremony. It's extraordinary that Catholic faculty in good conscience cannot attend the commencement at Notre Dame because the administration has chosen to honor a heretic pro-abortion maniac who may not even be a Christian. That's what the "modernization" from Vatican II and Land O'Lakes have come to - pro-abortionism and genocidal population control at Catholic university commencements!
Someone ought to get a very good close-up photo of the handshake Obama slips Fr. Jenkins on the stage.
Americanism isn't what it used to be. It used to be very much aligned with Catholic morality, but not anymore.
It was good to see that Leo XIII recognized the blight in its early stages. It's unfortunate that the blight has persisted and expanded.
Excellent analysis. I have referred to it as the protestantization of the Catholic Church in America, but the term Americanization is more accurate.
The fruit of this error is relativism, because a protestant culture, by its very nature, is multiple choice.
In a relativist society all sets of beliefs, regardless how opposed they might be, are considered valid, whereas in a truly Catholic culture moral truths are universal.
I believe it was Cardinal Paul Joseph Pham Dinh Tung of Viet Nam who, after being told how we were praying so hard for Catholics in Viet Nam who were under oppression said that it was us who needed prayers since our souls were at much greater risk because of the culture of death we are mainstreamed into. Notre Dame is ample evidence of that.
Which, as (then) Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out in his Pro-Eligendo homily, has led to so much confusion among christians, including Catholics. Each week a new denomination surfaces, all declaring themselves to be the Church of Jesus Christ.
I believe it was Cardinal Paul Joseph Pham Dinh Tung of Viet Nam who, after being told how we were praying so hard for Catholics in Viet Nam who were under oppression said that it was us who needed prayers since our souls were at much greater risk because of the culture of death we are mainstreamed into. Notre Dame is ample evidence of that.
Wow ... I had never heard this before. Thanks for the post.
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