Posted on 05/28/2010 7:41:33 AM PDT by GonzoII
An old advantage that the Church had back in the days before mass media and assimilation was the fact that immigrants and their descendants saw the Church as as bulwark of protection against the larger American society. These ethnic communities were also tightly knit, hostile to outsiders, and centered around the Church. In the short term, this brought considerable political influence to the Church, but, in the long term, caused the Church to be seen as an "ethnic social club" that one abandoned as they became assimilated and moved up the social ladder. Even amongst many in my own family, the Church is seen as a remnant of the days of the tenement/rowhouse and having limited expectations.
Problems extend beyond the aggressively secular bourgeois outlook of the descendants of (white) "ethnic Catholics." Aside from the Filipinos, many of the new immigrants are coming from cultures that lacked an indigenous clergy to foster devotion, or (in the case of urbanized Latin Americans) have seen the same secularist impulses, albeit at a lesser extent than her, in their own home countries. For the past few decades, the Church has centered their outreach on provision of social services to the immigrants, with little (or very poor execution of) catechises.
Jumping right on the Deist bandwagon, I see, with a fine helping of bible-thumpin’ stereotype to boot.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself were profoundly Protestant, the product of an overwhelmingly Protestant society. Your exceptions do not override that reality.
The canard of “picking and choosing” between churches is almost complete historic anachronism. Those who did so fell prey to State pressure to conform, or fell prey to the State for not conforming. It wasn’t like changing your socks, forsaking the beliefs that your own people held, and it was not a decision taken lightly, not during the Reformation and not in the colonies that thrived due to religious outcasts persecuted by State churches in the British Isles and on the continent.
Spend some time studying migratory patterns, or if you have ancestry who lived it as I do, study your own family. The people themselves moved in groups that associated due to religious belief more often than not, which frequently had roots in national origin prior to removal to the British North America colonies. This effect persisted all the way through the colonial era, into the Revolutionary era and beyond, with pushing the “frontier” over the Appalachians all the way to the other side of the continent.
As a result, if anyone believes that so-called “Protestant” religious belief and the strength thereof stems from a nineteenth century revival in Kentucky, all I have to say is that they’re completely outside their area of understanding.
What I was trying to point out was so many historical revisionists try to make the rather odd point that the Founders were fire-breathing revivalists, when they were not. Of course, our Constitution is rooted in English Common Law, which in and of itself is heavily influenced by Christianity, as well as Enlightenment Revisionism. Jefferson's Declaration, however, is clearly a product of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment and deism, rather than Calvinism or high Anglicanism.
As far as the mass of the population is concerned, you are forgetting a very important point about the migration to Appalachia and the interior: there was initially a severe lack of clergy to go along with the migrants, which created a void filled by the early 19th century revivalists. The Second Great Awakening did NOT happen in a vacuum, but, nevertheless, did arise in a period and region where organized churches were weak on the ground.
Clemenza:
I agree with your analysis, and the Vietnamese and Filipinos have done a better job fostering vocations than say the Hispanic immigrants. Again, the new Abp of Los Angeles, Gomez, is the kind of Bishop needed and is one types that I think will start to usher a reform and revitalized Catholicism, i.e. he continues an impressive group of Bishops being appointed by Pope Benedict and the ones appointed in the later half of Pope JPII’s papacy.
... and you’re forgetting a key Biblical precept, where ever people are gathered in His name is the Church. Over half the local churches historically associated with the people from whom I descend started out with lay preaching in a literal brush arbor. “Appalachia,” such a freighted term to outsiders, was and is no different, nor was the Cumberland Plateau, nor were the Great Plains or the Rockies.
You were raised Catholic, weren’t you?
I studied mine and came to the rather startling conclusion that I was of German Catholic stock in East Prussia, along a narrow belt that was controlled by Poland.
Completely unknown to me. The rest of my family is a mixture of Anglo-Irish Church of Ireland folks, Anglicans from England and Lutherans from Norway.
It was quite a surprise to me. I was 100 percent confident that my family were German protestants.
My Moravian bunch have historically Jewish surnames and just sort of materialize in Switzerland, Alsace, Pfalz, etcetera in the mid-late 1400’s. I’ve often wondered if they weren’t conversos driven out of Spain in the Inquisition or something.
I have a line of Carrolls from Maryland. Historically, they well could have been Catholic, but no evidence of it, all Protestant as far back as available records indicate on this continent.
Of course, go back far enough with nearly any Protestant line and they’re going to end up Catholic, that’s just the way things were prior.
I think David Golstein wrote about this more than 70 years ago in his book Campaigner for Christ.
Nothing like a jury of your peers.
Most people do not know that the targets of the KKK were Catholics, Jews and Blacks.
AntiCatholic bigotry has a long established history in the US.
Many states had laws that prevented Catholics from holding elected office, some from owning property.
... and the bias then was political as much as religious. As recently as 1960 there was a great deal of worry, as to whether Kennedy would have allegiance to the United States or to the Vatican. You hear it even today in the illegal immigration battle.
The early colonial exception was the Palatinate of Maryland, established by a convert to Catholicism with the permission of a king that most falsely assume to have been “Protestant.” Church of England and Anglican Communion types never did cotton much to being called “Protestant” and still don’t.
Maryland was indeed established as a Catholic Palitinate.
The remaining Catholics in England had some place to flee from persecution.
“However, during the protenstant expansion laws were written to strip Catholics of rights to hold office and own property.
Even in the supposedly tolerant Maryland, the tables had turned against Catholics by the 1700s. By this time the penal code against Catholics included test oaths administered to keep Catholics out of office, legislation that barred Catholics from entering certain professions (such as Law), and measures had been enacted to make them incapable of inheriting or purchasing land. By 1718 the ballot had been denied to Catholics in Maryland, following the example of the other colonies, and parents could even be fined for sending children abroad to be educated as Catholics.”
http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/B_001_Colonies.html
And that was in response to similar actions on the continent and in the British Isles themselves. The tables turned, so to speak, numerous times, with the persecution coming at the hands of Catholics, then Protestants, and in England and France, Catholic again then Protestant again.
It’s not as if either side had clean hands in the matter. The repercussions of corruption in the Catholic Church reverberate from the fourteenth century down to today. Early Protestants felt they had no choice but to break away, and it wasn’t a decision taken lightly. There was a great price to pay in blood and treasure. Leaders such as Luther had no desire for this break, but happen it did, due to incalcitrance on the part of the Vatican hierarchy.
To the shame of some of these Reformers, they turned around and behaved just as badly once they’d established themselves in their various nations as the State Church.
That’s why it was a very wise thing for our Founders to have disestablished State churches, and that is why the Catholic Church has been viewed with suspicion, since it’s a State Church by it’s very nature. What other church is literally a foreign nation? None.
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The Clan is still alive in southern Alabama..saw for myself. Mother Angelica and her sisters where shot at one night at their home.
And in the US Congress.
read later
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