I do not believe this articulaiton of the question lends itself to an intelligible answer. To wit: “Christianity” is really another word for the heresy of Protestantism—Catholicism, not “Christianity” is the religion of Christ. As Belloc says, there is no such thing as Christianity, it is the Catholic Church.

Protestantism is amorphous because it is invisible, and because of its fatal errors degenerates necessarily into secularism and practical atheism. To have a “Christain” state, therefore, is eventually to have a non-Christian, secularized state with a kind of invisible, gnostic doctrine of personal salvation floating around but having no visible effect on the culture. Witness the history of “Christian” America.

If it were assumed that the overwhelming majority of the populous were to match the official religious designation, then America should be an officially Catholic, not Christain, country, as should all countries. This is the objective will of God as taught by the Catholic Magisterium, that all men and thus nations should become officially Catholic, not “Christian,” that is, heretical.

There is really no such thing as an officially “Christian” nation unless it be an offically Catholic nation. The only way a state can be truly Christian is if it submits to the Catholic Church’s authority in interpreting the moral law and sees its ultimate goal as disposing citizens through its lawmaking to the grace and truth that comes through the sacraments and the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Any other setup is bound to fail.

We tried “Christian nation” before. The answer to our problems is not to “get back to the Founders,” for this will lead us right back to where we statrted, but to get back to a new form of the Medieval city of Church and State union, properly updated for our time. In the meantime, we seek conversions, so that the official structure can be put into place justly.

The question is not whether the United States should declare itself a “Christian nation” but whether it should be an officially Christian country. One reason I put it that way was to avoid TK’s problem. If the United States officially submitted to the Catholic Magisterium it would certainly be officially Christian, since the Catholic Magisterium is Christian.

Point taken. But, in lieu of such a submission to the Catholic Magisterium, I would still argue that the term “officially Christian country” would be problematic for a Catholic. Christians are those who believe and practice what Christ taught, and He did not teach, for example, private interpretation of Scripture, but he did teach the sine qua non of the Holy Eucharist. In any event, it would be interesting to discuss what the necessary preconditions and the overall implications of America being declared an officially Christian country.

I voted no because, first, it is only with great reluctance that any of us should go against the collective wisdom of our forefathers who specifically didn’t want there to be an official religion, and second, during the decade I lived in an officially Catholic country (Belgium), I believe I observed that Christianity/Catholicism had become weakened (compared to Christianity in this country) through a mechanism perhaps of the official, tax-supported religion being taken for granted by the Belgian population (who are virtually one hundred percent Catholic). I think I’ve seen this mechanism alluded to by writers and commentators who say our system of separation of church and state in this country actually bolsters religion compared to certain European countries where a particular religion is the official one, because people here don’t take religion for granted, as they do over there too often.

That being said, the people of this country do need some sort of help — perhaps some sort of yet-to-be-stated written legal or moral principle that they can invoke — in defending themselves and their country against the forcible assault on their traditions, including their traditional religion, by snobbish, aloof, arrogant élites through excessive incompatible immigration and other means. Every non-rigged public-opinion poll without exception has shown that wide-to-overwhelming majorities of the public don’t want this assault, but the élites, some of whom are filled with nothing but snobbish hatred of their own upbringing and culture and general hatred of this nation’s traditional common people, just keep on ramming these assaults down people’s throats, knowing there is nothing the victims can do about it.

The people need some remedy against this egregious injustice.

But when founded the United States was in many ways an officially Christian country. All that requires is that the country’s institutions officially recognize the truth of Christianity in some way. It doesn’t require an established church any more than recognizing the truth of the laws of physics requires a state-funded research institute or laws against selling perpetual motion machines.

Under the 1787 constitution the United States had a Federal government with very limited responsibilities that did not include religion, and it left most government concerns up to the states. In general the states had established churches or otherwise (e.g., through requirements for public office) recognized Christianity as normative. Leading jurists asserted that Christianity was part of the common law (which was the basis of state law). And when religious matters came up in the course of the Federal government’s other activities they acted in ways that presumed the authority of Christianity (e.g., public prayer, sending missionaries to the Indians, and providing for religious instruction in the Northwest Ordinance).

It’s true the Federal Constitution itself did not appeal to Christianity, and in the long run the conception of a political order based solely on secular concerns proved dominant. I think it’s a mistake though to view anything like the current situation as intended by the collective wisdom of our forefathers. It turned out to be impossible to limit government as they intended. As a result provisions intended to keep the Federal government out of religion except when required by its legitimate responsibilites were used by the Federal government to drive all religion out of public life.

But Jim, the whole problem rests on the ambiguity of the word “Christian.” When you say, “All that is required is that the country’s institutions officially recognize the truth of Christianity in some way,” you assume that this “truth” can somehow be made clear and recognized in abstraction from its Teacher, the Catholic Church, and in lieu of the Catholic Church being officially recognized as the mystical body of Christ and the sole custodian, teacher, and interpreter of this truth. It sounds like the “mere Christianity” of C.S. Lewis, which doesn’t exist.

The problem is that there is no self-standing, truths of the Christain faith. The dogmas of the Faith are taught by the Church and received by its members. Outside of this relationship, I would argue, there is no authentic Christianity, just cadaverous churches and abstract propositions with no reality. The truth of Christianity is Christ, and Christ is the Catholic Church.

The Founders may not have consciously intended the present practical atheism and rampant secularism, but their ideas inevitably led to these evils. When the Catholic Church is not obeyed by both individuals and states and set up as the locus of the transcendent, the state must take its place (there can be no religious vacuum, as experience tells us—as you have have taught me, liberalism is impossible) and we get the worship of man.

In virtue of their Protestantism, The Founders, especially Madison and Jefferson, made “religious freedom” the religion of the state, and thereby precluded the possibility, ab initio, of a Christian country. See Kenneth Craycraft’s book, “The American Myth of Religious Freedom” (Spence Publishing) on this. The state religions were from the beginning on their way to dissolution because there can not be a state religion of Protestantism. Protestantism, like Christianity and liberalism, doesn’t really exist. It is a constant flux, not an essence.

Well, as a quibble, Jefferson was no Protestant. He was overtly anti-Christian in his private correspondence and attempted to say as little as possible about his own religious beliefs in public.

I didn’t claim that America was religiously well-constituted in 1787. If anything I suggested that the conception implicit in the Federal Constitution of a political order based solely on secular concerns was a fundamental problem. All I said is that in many ways it was an officially Christian country.

Yes, Jim, I see what you are saying now. Let me summarize what I am getting at if I may. Yes, there was a defacto and dejure, official recognition of the Christian nature of the country of America both before and after 1787. But what I am saying is that this recognition was the recognition of ann illusion, and that there really can not be, de facto, an offically Christian nation unless the official Christian religion is Catholicism. Why? because Christianity doesn’t exist in a visible form that can be made official outside the Catholic Church. American Protestantism leads to outright gnosticism, and is, already, a form of gnosticism. Gnosticism can not be the official religion of a country.

Although there can be and has been a de jure recogntion of Christianity as the offical religion of a country, such a recognition is an empty designation unless the Catholic Church is designated by the citizens, the leaders, and the Church members to be the official locus of this Christianity.

I am sorry if I am missing your point. I am trying. I am dense sometimes.

TK wrote:
“The problem is that there is no self-standing, truths of the Christain faith. The dogmas of the Faith are taught by the Church and received by its members. Outside of this relationship, I would argue, there is no authentic Christianity, just cadaverous churches and abstract propositions with no reality. The truth of Christianity is Christ, and Christ is the Catholic Church.”

That is more narrow than what the Church Herself teaches, although the loaded word “authentic” leaves plenty of room for argument. As a concrete example, rather than a philosophical analysis of “authentic”: a baptised Christian is already a Christian and need not be re-baptised in order to become a Confirmed Catholic.

“If it were assumed that the overwhelming majority of the populace were to match the official religious designation, then America should be an officially Catholic, not Christian, country, as should all countries. This is the objective will of God as taught by the Catholic Magisterium, that all men and thus nations should become officially Catholic, not ‘Christian,’ that is, heretical. … There is really no such thing as an officially ‘Christian’ nation unless it be an offically Catholic nation. The only way a state can be truly Christian is if it submits to the Catholic Church’s authority in interpreting the moral law and sees its ultimate goal as disposing citizens through its lawmaking to the grace and truth that comes through the sacraments and the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Any other setup is bound to fail.” — TK

“The problem is that there are no self-standing truths of the Christain faith. The dogmas of the Faith are taught by the Church and received by its members. Outside of this relationship, I would argue, there is no authentic Christianity, just cadaverous churches and abstract propositions with no reality. The truth of Christianity is Christ, and Christ is the Catholic Church. … Protestantism, like Christianity and liberalism, doesn’t really exist. It is a constant flux, not an essence.” — TK

“But what I am saying is that [the de facto and de jure official] recognition [of the Christian nature of the United States before and after 1787] was the recognition of an illusion, and that there really cannot be, de facto, an offically Christian nation unless the official Christian religion is Catholicism. Why? because Christianity doesn’t exist in a visible form that can be made official outside the Catholic Church. … Although there can be and has been a de jure recognition of Christianity as the offical religion of a country, such a recognition is an empty designation unless the Catholic Church is designated by the citizens, the leaders, and the Church members to be the official locus of this Christianity.” — TK

To me, TK’s comments represent religious bigotry. Perhaps it is naïve religious bigotry — innocent and well-meaning, perhaps. But it seems bigotry nevertheless. Frankly, it’s scary to read — whereas when Matt, Mr. Kalb, Mr. Auster, Mr. Murgos, and others here talk about Catholic orthodoxy it’s never scary to read.

Reading TK’s comments leaves me wondering how to demonstrate that one need not be a religious bigot in order to wholeheartedly embrace the aims of traditionalism and “restoration.” But I can’t even come close to beginning to show this, because I lack all education in the philosophy of religion in general and of the Catholic religion in particular. Without knowing the vocabulary and basic concepts, one can’t debate. So, I’ll remain mute on the subjects TK discusses here, while I continue to feel there’s something wrong with what he says.

I suggest that any interested readers seek another source about what the Catholic Church professes and how it professes. One source that I often enjoy is The Journey Home, a weekly program (rebroadcast twice) on the Catholic EWTN television network at 8:00 p.m. ET, on Mondays. It is hosted by Marcus Grodi, a soft-spoken former Protestant minister who interviews mostly former Protestants that have converted. The weblink is http://www.ewtn.com/journeyhome/. (This is not an attempt at conversion.)

Unadorned:

If you really are as ignorant as you say you are of philosophy and theology, then why do you presume not only to judge my philosophy and theology as “wrong” but judge my character by calling me a bigot? I will answer that for you: It is because untutored presumption about another’s character is the tell-tale sign of a bigot. Notice how I have not once made any judgments about another’s character, just his ideas. For you this is the unforgivable sin, for which presumption and character criticism is perfectly justified on your part. If I were presumptious enough to make a character judgment, I would say that you were a bigoted liberal. But that’s not for me to say.

Secondly, since when do feelings dictate the truth? If your “scared” of what I am saying, it is either a sign of something wrong with you, or something wrong with me. Your being scared doesn’t simply settle the matter for your side. Furthermore, neither I nor anyone else cares how you “feel.” ; we care if you can make rational arguments pertaining to this issue, which you admit you can not do. If you want to express your feelings, go on the Oprah show. Be a man and address my points, not your own feelings.

Matt:

You are right that there is only “one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” and that Protestant Baptism is certainly valid. Yet, this Baptism makes them members of, not “Christianity,” but the Catholic Church, even if they are only partial members in virtue of their heresy (either material or formal). Baptism does not make them part of “Christianity,” since this is a non-idea, as Belloc points out in his work (I think either “Europe and the Faith” or “The Crisis of Civilization.”) There is no “History of Christianity,” only the History of the Catholic Church and the causes and consequences of people’s acceptance and rejection of it.

As Catherine Pickstock points out in her book, “After Writing: The Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy,” the locus of true community is in the Eucharist alone, which is only found in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (with the latter sabotaging this communion, however, in virtue of its schism with Rome; thus it and the nations that profess it confessionally have been made incapable of true societal unity). In a country where the Eucharist is not the center of the communal life, like in a “Christian” (but not predominantly Catholic) country, there is no possibility of real goodness and therefore of real community. And the Eucharist can only be the center if it is offically recognized to be so, else something else (like the satanic sacrament of abortion and the paradoy of charity that is sodomy) will take its place as the official locus of true community, as is evidenced today.

Catholics can work together with Protestants, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims insofar as these are allies against the truly satantic evil of atheistic materialism. Yet, this does change the fact that religious pluralism is an evil, and that societal unity in the Catholic Church, not in “Christianity” is the ideal for all men, even if they don’t know it.

By the way, Jim, I don’t see anything I have been saying, now that I look at it, as being against what you have said. I agree it would be better to have an established religion of “Christianity” in America (in lieu of a mass conversion to Catholicism), even though it would be more of a paper establishment of a illusory religion. For, simply the admittance on the part of our country that there was an actual establishment (even if the wrong one) is already a grave threat to liberalisms secret establishment of religious indifferentism, which is a much greater evil than a non-existent Christianity being established as the offical religion.

In short, I think your poll question was very wise, now that I have dialectically “come around.”

“In a country where the Eucharist is not the center of the communal life, such as in a ‘Christian’ but not predominantly Catholic country, there is no possibility of real goodness or, therefore, of real community.” — TK

I rest my case.

(And I will comment no more on this little side-disagreement which I myself have — doubtless foolishly — brought about, since I lack, I have always freely admitted, sufficient understanding of these issues.)

TK, one of the weaknesses of the way you present things is that the emphasis becomes one of religious truths inhering within the Church. Therefore, the “spiritual life” could be fully lived by upholding the orthodoxies of the Church and participating in the sacraments, even if the Church were to continue to exist as a kind of an ark in a sea of materialistic disbelief. Hence the quietism of the Catholic Church and its (false) confidence that it could weather hostile changes in lay society.

TK, a Church cannot exist for itself. It is charged with the defence of spiritual truth within a community of men. Spiritual truth is experienced outside the formal confines of a church, for instance, in marital love, or the higher consciousness of manhood, or what God’s creation in Nature inspires in us and so on. If spiritual truth is abandoned within the community, then the Church has failed and will itself wither.

I am concerned when you argue that “the locus of true community is in the Eucharist alone”. I think you misunderstand the nature of the task: a living, active Church would seek to uphold all the foundations of a traditional community, because in so doing it would be defending an aspect of the divine order.

I voted no. Our Founding Fathers rightly saw that a degree of seperation between church and state was right and good. It is also good for the church because it allows her to work freely without hindrance from the state. Of course modern liberalism/cultural marxism is a threat to this, but the classical liberalism of the Founding Fathers is a not. I do beleive that groups like the ACLU interpret the constitution in a way that is extreme and anti-Christian, and I see no problem with prayer in public schools or lists of the Ten Commandments in court houses. But the basic principle that the state should not submit to nor choose a particular denomination is right and good. The truth is that as as a result of this seperation America is a far more Christian country than any European country, Catholic or otherwise. Christianity is alive and vibrant here, it is dead in Europe. The union of church and state in medieval Catholic Europe did nothing but allow the Catholic beurocracy to opress the people and tax them into poverty. And as a patriotic American Protestant Christian, the day the state submits to the authority of the Vatican, an unelected and undemocratic foreign power, is the day I take up arms against the Vatican. I have a great deal of respect for Catholics, but I don’t accept their heresies anymore than they accept what they believe to be mine, and the point of what the Founding Fathers created is to allow us to live together in peace. And I have no wish to throw away the freedom bought for us by the blood of thousands of American patriots from the War of Independence on by submmitting to any foriegn potentate.

I would also point out that in my opinion it has been the Protestant/Evangelical Americans, the rural heartland people who still believe in hard work, honesty, thrift and free enterprise, the last remenant of believers in God, Country and Family, that have made America what Reagan called, “the shining city on a hill”.

It has been quite some time since I read _After Writing_, and I don’t claim to have understood more than a small fraction of it even then, but it is not clear to me that Pickstock would endorse the statement “the locus of true community is in the Eucharist alone” as a political statement about an immanent nation or people; and even if she did endorse that statement on a highly technical understanding of “true community” I think this one:

“…a country where the Eucharist is not the center of the communal life, like in a ‘Christian’ (but not predominantly Catholic) country, there is no possibility of real goodness and therefore of real community…” —TK

would be unlikely to get her endorsment. Indeed the idea that there is no possibility of real goodness in a non-Catholic community strikes me as materially heretical, in direct contradiction of the de fide doctrine of invincible ignorance.

Pickstock is a profound thinker (as is her mentor Milbank), always several steps ahead of you; and usually when you start to think she is nuts it is because you haven’t understood her. Her basic thesis in _After Writing_ is something like the notion that philosophy ultimately undoes itself into meaninglessness unless consummated in the Incarnation and its ongoing ontic reinstantiation in the Eucharist. Suffice it to say that it isn’t as easy to refute this idea in an intellectually honest way as common sense screams that it should be. But again, applying her thesis in a way that says it is impossible for an immanent community to have any good content whatsoever without Eucharistic celebration at its center seems not only like a misconstrual of Pickstock, but as materially heretical.

Also, TK’s invocation of Pickstock strikes me as a little odd, given that she is Anglican. It is true that she sees worship as the foundation of good community, but it would be wrong to imply that her thesis, nontrivial to understand to say the least, provides direct support to TK’s post. On a simple reading she observes like Jim Kalb that the political order cannot be separated from the transcendent, and in any case in _After Writing_ she seems to have more to say about the possibility of meaning than about politics.

I respectfully disagree with Shawn’s perspective although I acknowledge that it is predominant; in fact I think the Protestant order did degenerate into secular liberalism and that one natural consequence of the post-Wars-of-religion notion of separation of church and state is the current attempt to set up the UN as a secular papacy. The need for a central moral authority (with highly attenuated secular power of its own, but respected by the secular powers as morally authoritative) is a natural part of the human condition. The Founders’ response to the Wars of Religion is understandable as a practical matter, though, even if unstable in the long run.

“in fact I think the Protestant order did degenerate into secular liberalism and that one natural consequence of the post-Wars-of-religion notion of separation of church and state is the current attempt to set up the UN as a secular papacy.” — Matt

I would like to make two points in response. The first is that I do not agree that the Protestant Order specifically degenerated into secular liberalism, but would say rather that the whole of the Christian West, Catholicism included, did so. Also I think it is possible to trace the decline of the West further back than the Protestant Reformation, as far back in fact as the failure of the West to stand up to Islam in it’s original war against the Christian East. Of course much of how one is likely to interpret history depends on the ideological framework that an individual is using. I should point out that I do not consider myself to be a traditionalist conservative so my interpretaion of history is likeley to be different than others on this forum. Some time ago I decided that I did not fit easily into any of the standard conservative labels (traditionalist, paleo, neo, mainstream)and so I have taken to simply identifying myself as a conservative nationalist, as nationalism, and specifically American nationalism, is at the core of most of my political, cultural and ideological concerns. And as an American nationalist, I see the political framework that the Founding Fathers set up as an improvement, and a far more stable one over the European practice of identifying the state with a specific church organisation. America has remained a far more deeply religious and Christian country than any of the European Catholic ones, or indeed than any of those Protestant countries, such as Britain and the Scandanavian nations, that have state churches. The second point is that I am not entirely convinced that the creation of the U.N is a result of the seperation of church and state, but more an extreme and unecessary response to the two world wars, motivated in large part by the influence of Communists in Europe and within the Truman administration. It could perhaps be said that the creation of the EU, and the centralisation of power in Brussels, is a result of the decline of Christian faith in Europe. But the answer to this, in my opinion, is not to reconstitute religious authority in Rome or any other fallible human institution, but to re-awaken faith in the heart of European man.

“The need for a central moral authority (with highly attenuated secular power of its own, but respected by the secular powers as morally authoritative) is a natural part of the human condition. The Founders’ response to the Wars of Religion is understandable as a practical matter, though, even if unstable in the long run.”

The problem with a centralised moral authority, especially one with secular powers, is that the fallen nature of man means that sooner or later the authority will be brought into disrepute. This is what happened with Rome prior to the Reformation, and it can be seen today still in the recent troubles concerning the Catholic hierarchy. In this respect, I believe that the reliance on Rome, or on any centralised authority that alone claims to rpresent the Divine Order is unsustainable in the long run.

Wow, Shawn, good post. I would dispute a couple of things, however. One, that the decline of the West can be traced to the failure of the West to defend their Christian brothers in the East against Islam: I don’t see how a spiritual problem can be traced to a material one. That is to say, what Islam has conquered it has conquered by force of arms and not by force of argument, such that it can’t fairly be said that the West failed to resist or to help others to resist due to a lack of will. How, then, would the lack of will to defend the faith today have its roots in the *possession* of such will in the past?

Second, you say you think of yourself as a nationalist, but “nationalist” has a very specific meaning in the American context: a nationalist is one who is in favor of a single national government and not supportive of the idea of federalism: the division of power between the national government and state governments. Yet the whole complaint you make in your post is in opposition to centralized authorities of various kinds. I can’t see the consistency there (unless you’re not American, in which case you’re forgiven).

“Indeed the idea that there is no possibility of real goodness in a non- Catholic community strikes me as materially heretical, in direct contradiction of the de fide doctrine of invincible ignorance.” — Matt

It is not. She’s talking about supernatural goodness or “blessedness.” Such supernatural goodness is not available to the invincibly ignorant man, since he lacks the grace-giving Sacraments. All the natural man can do is be naturally good, which is not as truly good as being supernaturally good. “Invincible ignorance” describes the covering over of a privation, not the elevation of a positive virtue.

“I see the political framework that the Founding Fathers set up as an improvement, and a far more stable one over the European practice of identifying the state with a specific church organisation.”

There are several possibilities:

1. Church and state as mutually rather autonomous authorities inclined to recognize and support each other where appropriate (a bit on the lines of “morality and state,” “science and state” or “aesthetics and state”). This arrangement was decisively rejected in America only in the mid-20th c., although current mythology attributes the rejection to the founding era. To me this seems the only arrangement that is not implicitly totalitarian because it’s the arrangement that does not recognize any institution of government as absolute. However, there’s always tension in it with no final solution, and it’s always vulnerable to overreaching. Like other good things it may fall apart.

2. A state that is an arm of the church (theocracy). People say that’s what the popes of the High Middle Ages were aiming at.

3. A church that is a department of state. Characteristic of the post-1648 European order, and maybe of the Byzantine order. This is what the First Amendment was aimed against.

4. A church that is a strictly private association within a state founded on wholly secular principles. The Lockean solution. This solution was implied by the 1787 constitution, because that constitution founded the U.S. Federal government on wholly secular principles and made it a true government with supremacy within its (self-defined) jurisdiction, a monopoly of military force, the power of taxation, and the ability to enforce its decisions directly against individuals. A problem with this solution is that man is social. If the church is strictly private then its principles have no public relevance and in the long run that means they can’t have much private relevance either. Instead, the principles on which the state is based, the principles of liberalism, spread from the public realm to the private.

The secular orthodoxy today is that if you reject 4 you must want 2 or 3, ignoring the possibility of 1. The basic reason I think is that people today can’t imagine a non-totalitarian solution — a solution that accepts human finitude — to anything. For every issue there must be a solution that consists of some principle we fully understand and possess and righteousness consists in comprehensive implementation of that principle.

Mr. Kalb sums it up superbly.

I agree with Shawn that the failure of Christendom to defend iteself from Islam was a contributor. I think the big break was the Reformation, though, which itself is traceable to corruption and rebellion both within and without the Church; but I also think that the Protestants made war with the Church on the back of Islamic philosophy, so Shawn’s and my interpretations of history are perhaps closer than it first appeared.

On Mr. Newman’s interpretation of Pickstock, that is all well and good but TK said “no possibility of goodness”. That is in fact material heresy and (at least in my opinion, though we might be able to ask her) would not be endorsed by Pickstock.

Matt:

You misquoted me. I did not write, “no possibility of goodness.” Here is what I wrote:

“In a country where the Eucharist is not the center of the communal life, like in a “Christian” (but not predominantly Catholic) country, there is no possibility of real goodness and therefore of real community.”

It all depends on what is meant by “real.” This is an extremely complicated question. What I meant by “real” as an adjective to goodness is “pleasing to God.” Only supernatural goodness prompted by grace is pleasing to God. Pagans, of course, can have community and goodness in the metaphysically real sense, but only on a natural plain. If the criterial is “pleasing to God,” then natural and metaphysically real goodness and community are unreal. Protestants, in virtue of their Baptism, can have supernatural goodness and community, but insofar as they hold on to Protestant beliefs, it will inevitably wane. Protestantism can not keep one out of mortal sin for long. Baptism is not enough; the Eucharist is essential.

The point is that because of the Incarnation society or community itself, in its ultimate purpose, has been supernaturalized, not simply the individual person, being called to a new vocation; society exists now not merely as a helpful milieu for the practice of virtue or as a necessary condition for the establishment of order, as in the classical and modern models, but to help dispose citizens to the life of grace mediated by the perfect society of the Catholic Church. Its natural purpose must bow down to the supernatural purpose of the Church, while still retaining its nature (grace perfects nature, not destroys it. Cristopher Dawson is good on this idea:

“The Christian faith goes much further than this. It and it alone shows how this higher reality has entered human history and changed its course. It shows how a seed of new life was implanted in humanity by the setting apart of a particular people as a channel of revelation which found its fulfillment in the Divine Word in a particular person at a particular moment of history. It shows how this new life was communicated to a spiritual society which became the organ of the divine action in history, so that the human race may be progressively spiritualized and raised to a higher spiritual plane.”

A state or culture that does not orient itself to an end higher than itself, as Kalb notes, destroys itself. That is what I am saying, but I am also saying more. The “transcendent” that Kalb and others speak about has its primary locus in the Catholic Church (not is some Platonic idea or in an ideal Liturgy—this is where Pickstock’s Anglicanism hurts her), so that states, like individuals, must orient themselves to serve Her and obey Her. If they do not, they self-destruct.

I agree that TK said “no possibility of real goodness” rather than “no possibility of goodness”, so I misquoted him. I acknowledge that he uses or intends to use the word “real” to mean something entirely other than what it usually means, i.e. “existing”. However, I maintain that when one uses the word “real” to mean what it usually means, the following statement is in fact material heresy:

“In a country where the Eucharist is not the center of the communal life, like in a ‘Christian’ (but not predominantly Catholic) country, there is no possibility of real goodness and therefore of real community.”

I would not even begin to suggest that there is *formal* heresy here, since it is not my place to do so.

“Real” does not even usually mean “existing.” When I ask how good do you feel, and you say, “real good.” It does not mean “existing good.” It means that the goodness is so good as to be, perhaps, on a higher plain than just plain “good.” The analogy suffices.

But, the point is taken. I should have written what I was thinking in a less ambiguous way.

Not to belabor the point; but when someone says “real [sic] good,” or with more grammatical accuracy “really good,” they tend to mean partaking of a large measure of goodness.

On the other hand when someone says “no possibility of real goodness” he is prima facie talking about categories of real-unreal, not intensity.

“Real goodness” in the phrase “no possibility of real goodness” doesn’t address degrees but rather sets up two categories: a category of ontically false (unreal) good juxtaposed to an ontically true (real) good. To say that a Eucharistically-centered community participates thereby in a new category of transcendent goodness that one cannot participate in without the Eucharist is a true positive assertion; but the negative assertion that there is no ontically real good whatsoever in other communities, that other communities partake of no real but only illusory good, is false and indeed contradicts Catholic teaching (not to mention the minor matter that “God saw that it was Good”).

So I think there is or may be more to it than just ambiguity. Ideally everyone would participate in the profound and ontically unique good that is the Eucharist (and indeed everything is ontically dependent upon the Incarnate Logos); but one cannot from that ideal say that there is no ontically real good whatsoever in a community lacking universal Eucharistic participation. If that were true then there would be no ontically real good in the human community taken as a whole. If there is no real good in non-Catholic communities then why try to convert them? Why are they worth redemption? Once again an immanent idealism results in the embrace of death.

By the way, my intention was not to pick on grammar above (since I am the last person to call that kettle black). The point to my first sentence is to show that by “real” TK’s analogy actually invoked the word “really” as adjective rather than “real” as category.

Matt writes: “but the negative assertion that there is no ontically real good whatsoever in other communities, that other communities partake of no real but only illusory good, is false and indeed contradicts Catholic teaching”

The distinction being made, I think, is between sacramental grace which perfects the soul, and ordinary grace which perfects the soul sufficiently for ordinary conduct.

Ordinary grace is not illusory, but neither does it perfect the soul in a way which is necessary for christian life.

“Second, you say you think of yourself as a nationalist, but “nationalist” has a very specific meaning in the American context: a nationalist is one who is in favor of a single national government and not supportive of the idea of federalism: the division of power between the national government and state governments. Yet the whole complaint you make in your post is in opposition to centralized authorities of various kinds. I can’t see the consistency there (unless you’re not American, in which case you’re forgiven).”

Yes I am American, but oddly I have not come across this definition of the term before. For clarification, I use the term “nationalist” as interchangeable with “patriot”, and in much the same way that the European nationalist right, embodied in such political parties as the French National Front, the British National Party, The Italian National Alliance, and other such parties, use the term. All of these parties are in favour of soveriegn and free national states and opposed to the centralisation of power in Brussels and the U.N, because this represents a transnational system and therefore a threat to the freedom of their respective nations. A nationalist wishes to keep his nation strong and free, and therefore opposes the post-nationalist and pro-internationalist ideology of the liberal elites, with their love for mass immigration, multiculturalism and the U.N. I do not see any contradiction between nationalism and federalism within the U.S. I do believe we need a strong central government, but I would also devolve much of what the federal government currently does, in terms of welfare and education especially, back to state governments. In my view nationalism recognises that Americans comprise a single national community, and seeks to protect that community from the current attack by the liberal left, globalists, seperatists, and those who seek to undermine our sense of ourselves as Americans through mass immigration, internationalism and the ideology of multiculturalism. I also see no contradiction between a strong central government and my opposition to a centralised religious authority. I am not opposed to centralism per se, so long as it remains within recognisable national communities, but to religious centralism, specifically for the reasons I mentioned above, because it is inherently unstable and ultimately destructive to attempt to anchor the Transcendent Order within a single human institution.

Matt:

I admit that there is real, ontological goodness in people simply in virtue of their existence, and that there can be real friendship and community between anyone, regardless of their religious belief and practice. This is Thomistic realism and Aristotelean ethics. I misled you on these points by not speaking clearly enough and not using my words carefully. I am sorry.

But my point is simply this: Charity is the end of all our actions, being love of God for His own sake and love of men for their potentiality of being children of God and partakers of the Beatific Vision. Community should be ordered, then, not just to the natural good of friendship (Aristotle) but to the supernatural good of frienship with God and with other men in charity. My argument is that this can only occur with the help of Sanctifying Grace, which comes into our soul through Baptism, and is preserved by a Catholic sacramental life. This sacramental life must be fostered by society.

The controversial part of my argument is that I maintain that the sine qua non of this fostering must be the state’s recognition, protection, and promotion of Catholicism exclusively (as long as Catholics make up the overwhelming majority of citizens)as the locus of the transcedent in this world and the authority in matters of faith and morals. Any societal arrangement other than the social reign of Christ the King is deficient and is not willed directly by God, only permitted. We can never affirm as good anything but this arrangement, though we can tolerate other arrangements for the sake of a greater good, or if there is not yet the overwhelming Catholic majority. In the mean time, we seek conversions, not a permanent truce with a deficient pluralism that offends Christ and dishonors the Catholic Church.

The American regime is fatally flawed because there is built in to its ethos and governmental structure an apriori acceptance of a permament religious pluralism. To wit: The First Amendment would have to be abolished, in justice, in the event of a mass conversion to Catholicism. This would, of course, be seen as anti-American, but it would be the only just thing to do. The social reign of Christ the King comes before the reign of the American Founding’s religious indifferfentism (cloaked as political prudence).

Two interesting (at least to me!) points:

TK wrote:
“We can never affirm as good anything but this arrangement, though we can tolerate other arrangements for the sake of a greater good, or if there is not yet the overwhelming Catholic majority.”

I think the usage of the word “good” is what gets this discussion into trouble. Someone can easily interpret “We can never affirm as good anything but this arrangement” to mean that there is (categorically) nothing good in a polity that is not subject to that arrangement. A better way to say it is that the arrangement described is an immanent ideal, and that all other immanent actual arrangements are flawed in a way in which the described arrangement is not.

Two presumably erroneous interpretations of TK’s thesis are:

1) That there is nothing good whatsoever about any community not subject to the arrangement described; and

2) That the arrangement described, though an immanent arrangement in a fallen world, achieves a form of social perfection.

An issue with TK’s presentation is that it leads most people immediately to one or both of these (presumably false) interpretations, and a language of describing the arrangement as an ideal rather than as an exclusive precondition for the existence of any good whatsoever might be helpful. Another issue, which has more to do with our culture than with TK’s presentation, is that there is a tendency to presume a means of achieving an ideal once an ideal has been articulated, particularly, and this *is* TK’s issue, when it is not expressly articulated as an ideal but rather as a sole conceptual possibility. In times past it was not assumed that “take whatever unprincipled action is necessary to bring this change about” was a deductively certain corrollary to “this teleological state of affairs is good and anything less is not good”, but these days that presumption does underly political discourse and is all the more exacerbated when language to the effect that we can affirm nothing good in the status quo is used. Our discursive circumstance reflects among other things how utterly the “progressives” have won; but we do have to deal with the world (including the discursive world) as it is without at the same time surrendering to evil.

I assume that rather than (1) what TK means is that any other arrangement is lacking an important (even critical) good that it does not recognize as lacking, and rather than (2) TK means that the arrangement described is perfected in a teleological sense of alignment with transcendent ends but not perfect in some general sense; and in any case it represents a moral-social ideal, in the same sense that a putative economic system that aligns with charity and against greed represents a moral ideal. The issue of dealing with what we actually have in our fallen state is nontrivial though and cannot be lost sight of in the articulation of any ideal, since losing sight of it leads to immanentize-the-eschaton errors like the Communism that runs around disguised as “liberation theology.”

I got so caught up in my first point I forgot to mention my second. TK writes:

“The American regime is fatally flawed because there is built in to its ethos and governmental structure an apriori acceptance of a permament religious pluralism.”

Well, it was more like a bait-and-switch. The original notion was that the States were sovereign and the feds wouldn’t pick the official religion of one and raise it over the others, thus neatly avoiding a replay of the protestant Wars of Religion on this continent. We all know the details of how federalism was smashed in the 1860’s, though we no doubt would view them through different ideological lenses; but there was nothing that intrinsically prevented each of the States adopting Catholicism as its official religion and then ultimately amending away the 1st. (Whether that was ever likely to happen in a Protestant country is another matter, of course, but we are talking ideals).

America has been a bundle of contradictions from day one, but “fatally” implies the impossibility of repentence and redemption. With that I disagree.

Matt:

Very good points, both.

About your second point, fatally flawed means, in my mind, that the repentance and redemption of the American society as a whole is impossible unless there is a mass rejection of the underlying principles of the American regime ab initio. Repentance and redemption would be precisely those signs that the populous had rejected those principles. As long as one accepts the American principle that a nation can please God without that country’s instituing an official, public recognition of His Church’s authority as part of the permament governing apparatus and cultural ritual, then he will serve as an immovable obstacle in the repentance and redemption of that country as a whole. The problem with the American Regime is that it habituates one into an intellectual custom and enforces moral habits that make it all but impossible to see what the God-pleasing order of Church and state should be. I say “all-but” because it is not impossible to overcome the dangerous habituating influence. If it were impossible, I would not be saying what I am saying right not.

A Catholic American state was impossible, then, even back when there were states with established religions, unless the Catholics who formed it decided to be “anti-American,” meaning that they loved their country as good patriots, but hated its errors regarding pluralism and Church and state. Bishop Carroll did not, and we see where we Catholics are today. Most do not even know that Leo XIII condemned the separation of Church and state (and this was not simply a condemnation of the French style separation; his condemnation applies to the 1st Amendment, I would argue).

One way out is to read the social Encyclicals of Leo XIII, especially Immortale Dei. Have you read this? It would be interesting to see what you would think about them.

Matt, I respect your intellectual acumen and your desire to penetrate through all fuzzy thinking. It is good to debate with you.

If the enforced religion of religious indifferentism that goes by the name “separation of Church and State,” as ideology rather than pragmatic strategy, were American substance rather than accident then it might make sense to say that pre-civil-war American Catholics were EITHER patriotic anti-Catholics OR anti-American Catholics. On the other hand I don’t particularly like my Aunt’s ancient dentures or the halitosis they engender; but that hardly makes me anti-Auntie.

“Separation of Church and State” isn’t uncontroversial and it isn’t all there is to say about America. In my view every human institution has limited legitimate authority, scope and jurisdiction; so a federalist strategic organizational choice (understandable given recent-to-the-founders history) to leave political-religious jurisdiction to sovereign states doesn’t ipso facto imply either a rejection or an affirmation of Catholic social doctrine. Later incorporation of the First Amendment into all jurisdictions does, and one can argue that this was ultimately inevitable to the extent separation of church and state was ideological rather than strategic. But it might be more accurate to characterize America (up to the 20th century incorporation cases) as accidentally anti-Christian (and by proxy anti-Catholic) rather than substantively so.

I don’t remember specifically reading Immortale Dei although it is possible that I have. I have of course read the Syllabus of Errors and a bunch of stuff put out by the Pius’s, and I am halfway through _The Great Facade_ by Ferrara and Woods right now (good in substance but a bit discursively combative, which to my mind isn’t helpful). I’ve paid a bit more attention to things like Dignitatis Humanae since my rather integrist tendencies make that sort of document more directly problemmatic (or potentially so) for my own view.

I’ll have to think about your distinction between accidentally Anti-Christain and substantially anti-Christian with regard to the Founding. It is a good one.

I think that Fr. Brian Harrison’s work on Dignitatis Humane is the best I have seen, better than Davies or Ferrara. See this link if interested in Harrison’s work.

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt33.html

By embracing a system that is ideal for the Protestant/Reformed Churches America has, without having to officially proclaim it, become the most deeply Christian country on earth. Submission to the Vatican would mean a rejection of true Christian faith in favour of Roman paganism and the Cult of Isis.

Is Shawn contending that America started out less Christian and became more so over time because of the first amendment? That strikes me as an odd view. It is true that some of the founders, e.g. Thomas Jefferson, were overtly anti-Christian at least in private correspondence; but the notion that America started out as not very Christian and because of a liberal political structure became more so over time seems ahistorical.

“A Catholic American state was impossible, then, even back when there were states with established religions, unless the Catholics who formed it decided to be ‘anti-American,’ meaning that they loved their country as good patriots, but hated its errors regarding pluralism and Church and state.” — TK

I don’t see this at all, TK. The original scheme was that the states were completely independent, except in those few limited areas where they agreed to delegate, or lend, their sovereign authority to the federal government. There were only a couple of limitations on the states authorized by and in the Constitution, and the restrictions in the Bill or Rights weren’t among those. In essence, the states were independent nations, although nations nevertheless joined together for purposes of defense and mutual commerce.

Given that, I can’t see how a Catholic state was an impossibility under the original Constitutional order. Even if a State wanted to go further than mere establishment and make Catholicism (or whatever) mandatory, I don’t see anything preventing that in the Constitution. True, people might have revolted at such an imposition, but that wouldn’t be a comment on the government or on the laws; that would be a comment on the people.

The “separation of Church and state,” even if it actually existed as liberals claim, was, legally, only a restriction on the federal government. The Anti-federalists responsible for the Bill of Rights did not want a central authority to be able to dictate to the States, which were in truth the central authorities in their respective jurisdicitons, anything regarding their internal affairs. This was why they insisted on a Bill of Rights as a condition of ratification: it was to protect themselves in their states from the encroachment of a central authority above and beyond the one they already had—not different in substance from the opposition many Americans have today to the encroachments of the UN. It was the people of *the States* who were to decide what was good for themselves through their *state* legislatures. Thus, if the people decided they wanted a Catholic State, a Catholic State they could, theoretically, have had.

“Is Shawn contending that America started out less Christian and became more so over time because of the first amendment? That strikes me as an odd view.” — Matt

No, what I am suggesting is that America has remained a more deeply Christian country in part at least as a result of the first amendment, and the lack of a state church. I also believe America’s highly diverse Protestant pluralism has played a part, a pluralism which would have been far less likely under a state church scenario, and even less so under the subjugation of Rome.

So at least Shawn has not adopted the view shared by many, including many modern Catholics, that an expressly a-theistic liberal State actually fosters Christianity. Rather he has adopted the more moderate notion that an expressly a-theistic liberal State has degenerated into leftism less rapidly than the post-reformation European States that had adopted the Protestant divine right model in which a specific religious denomination is a department of the State under the King. Presumably the fact that the secular organ was in some ways prevented from directly interfering in the lives of religious citizenry made some contribution to America’s resistence to advanced forms of the liberal disease, much as certain drug spectra can interfere with the advancement of AIDS but in no way make the patient more healthy. I agree that there may be something to that, but it in no way addresses the older model, which lasted for a millenium or more, of primarily independent Church and State wherein the Church has its own attenuated secular powers and the State recognized the Church not as absolute monarchy but as the legitimate keeper and arbiter of the moral law. (As an aside, continuing developments indicate that we will see a revival of this model in a sense, but with a liberal a-theistic United Nations as the supreme arbiter of the moral law over and above individually sovereign States: so it may be that this sort of structural arrangement is inevitable in any highly connected world, and in that we will see the consequences of Shawn’s world-view writ large).

In general it is difficult to make the comparisons though given that the American experiment upon which Shawn bases his analysis lasted at most four score and seven years. But when compared to millenia of Christendom in which the current breakdown of the moral law is unprecedented the hypothesis seems somewhat untenable on its face.

“So at least Shawn has not adopted the view shared by many, including many modern Catholics, that an expressly a-theistic liberal State actually fosters Christianity. Rather he has adopted the more moderate notion that an expressly a-theistic liberal State has degenerated into leftism less rapidly than the post-reformation European States” — Matt.

I disagree that that is my position. The American Republic at it’s founding was not an atheistic “liberal” state. It was, simply, a republic. The Decleration of Independence specifically mentions God, as do many other documents related to America’s founding, and the influence of Protestant thought both at it’s founding and over the ensuing decades was, and is profound. When we say the Pledge, we say “One nation, under God”. America was, and largely still is, a Christian nation. Merely because the state is not under the yoke of Rome, or has not mandated a state church, does not make the republic either liberal or atheistic. To my mind that is simplistic reductionism. It was not inevitable that the Republic would come under attack from the liberal-left, but it has, largely because of the infiltration of cultural Marxism from the 1930’s under the New Deal, and the 1960’s through the so-called “counter-culture” and the New Left. This can be fought and reversed, and the original Protestant/Christian Republic restored, without resorting to a state church.

” but it in no way addresses the older model, which lasted for a millenium or more, of primarily independent Church and State wherein the Church has its own attenuated secular powers and the State recognized the Church not as absolute monarchy but as the legitimate keeper and arbiter of the moral law.” — Matt

The problem with this from my point of view, is that the “keeper and arbiter of the moral law” had become immoral and fallen into heresy. I would also argue that the roots of that fall lie as far back as the churche’s accomadation with the Roman Imperial state, and so I do not see this as any kind of successful model that lasted a “mellenium”. The moral law began breaking down from 400 AD onwards, and by the time of the Reformation, had become all-pervasive. The selling of indulgences being the most obvious and one of the most obsecene examples. Not to mention the general moral behaviour and atheism of many Renessiance Popes. The Roman Catholic model was not a success, it was in fact a total failure.

I dispute that the United Nations is the inevitable outcome of my world view. It is the inevitable outcome only of internationalist Marxism, which is certainly not my world view. Humanity does not need a central earthly authority as any kind of arbiter of the moral law and faith. I disagree that if we do not have Rome, we must therefore have the U.N. On the contrary, the existence of both of these institutions is indicitave of a lack of true Christian faith. When Christians no longer hold Christ alone as their Lord, they will seek other masters such as Constantine, the Popes, and the U.N. The answer therefore is not to restore Roman rule over all states, but to restore the rule of Christ in the hearts of men. America can, and I believe will, return to Christ alone as our Lord. When that revival happens across the nation, we will need no earthly kings, secular or religious, and we will then have the moral foundation to restore the Republic.

Shawn writes:
“I disagree that that is my position. The American Republic at it’s founding was not an atheistic “liberal” state. It was, simply, a republic. The Decleration of Independence specifically mentions God, …”

In my experience those who want to believe that America’s liberalism, including the enforced religious indifferentism of the First Amendment, provides the perfect fertile ground for the thriving of Christianity will never be persuaded otherwise by the facts. (How could they possibly, given that the objective facts of history scream otherwise but the conviction remains?) In any case, Jefferson’s use of the word “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence can’t have meant the Christian Trinity, at least not for Jefferson:

“The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible.” - Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks, 1820

“But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted fro artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object.” - Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819

“The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” - Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823

The view of things like indulgences that comes from fundamentalist Protestant pamphlets I’ll leave to others to address; anyone with Net access can find a wide variety of facts and views, and my own is that the Church ought to be looking to a return to indulgences and tithing as opposed to taxation by the secular State as a way of helping the poor. But it seems unlikely that Shawn wants to discuss that objectively.

Also, as anyone on the 9th Circuit Court in California can tell you, the “under God” in the Pledge was added in the 1950’s, not the 1700’s. It is true that there was a brief religious resurgence in America following the enormous loss of life of two world wars, but I think attributing that resurgence to the First Amendment is more than a little bit of a stretch.

Finally, on whether enforced religious indifferentism at the highest levels of government in a connected world leads inevitably to a secular a-theistic United Nations as the global keeper of moral authority, the beauty of that hypothesis is that we and our children can just wait and find out; so there is really no need to argue it.

I happen to find this poll question an extremely interesting one, and have for nearly two decades now, since coming home from Europe where I lived a little over ten years. Could the people who vote “Other” in this poll please explain in clear, simple terms what alternative proposal they have in mind which they could support? I’d like to hear it, and perhaps it would interest other readers as well.

“The view of things like indulgences that comes from fundamentalist Protestant pamphlets I’ll leave to others to address; anyone with Net access can find a wide variety of facts and views, and my own is that the Church ought to be looking to a return to indulgences and tithing as opposed to taxation by the secular State as a way of helping the poor. But it seems unlikely that Shawn wants to discuss that objectively.”

I should point out that I was a conservative practicing Catholic for ten years, and am well versed in Catholic doctrine and theology. My view of such things as indulgences therefore does not come from “fundamentalist Protestant pamphlets”, but from experience and my own knowledge of Catholic theology and history. I am prepared to discuss anything you like, objectively. But that does not mean I will agree with you. And if I disagree with you do not assume that a: I am in any way ignorant of the subject, or b: that I am being subjective. I came by my views through research and an objective look at the facts regarding Catholicism.

“In my experience those who want to believe that America’s liberalism, including the enforced religious indifferentism of the First Amendment, provides the perfect fertile ground for the thriving of Christianity will never be persuaded otherwise by the facts. (How could they possibly, given that the objective facts of history scream otherwise but the conviction remains?)”

What “facts”? It would be more honest to say that I am not persuaded by your opinions. The success that Christianity has had in America by comparison to Europe is fact enough. And I repeat my argument that the American Republic was not “liberal” at it’s founding, and that it did not set up a system of religious “indifferentism”.

A republic is not automatically either conservative or liberal, it is only made such by it’s citizens through the faith and moral values they hold, or don’t hold as the case may be.

And America was, and still is a Christian nation. It was in fact a far more true Christian nation than any medieval state, because it was a nation built upon the true faith of Christ alone as Lord. Again, merely because it was not under the yoke of Rome, and did not mandate a state church, does not mean that it was religiously indifferent, but simply that it recognised that it was not the legitimate place of the state to command mens hearts as their choice of denomination. But with this recognition was also the understanding that Protestant Christian values were the bedrock of the republic.

Shawn asserts that he is interested in an objective discussion, but I am not convinced. Specifically he says:

“What ‘facts’? It would be more honest to say that I am not persuaded by your opinions.”

Apparently Shawn missed the facts that I provided in response to his last post; for example the Thomas Jefferson quotes providing context for the mention of “Creator” in the Declaration and the fact that “under God” in the Pledge is an artifact of the postwar 1950’s; both of which he ignored. Those are of course merely the tip of the iceberg on that specific topic, but if Shawn’s “acceptance” of those facts involves ignoring them and saying that I am dishonestly representing my opinions as fact that is hardly an indication that credible discussion is to follow. Shawn then asserts his own personal authority on the question of indulgences without providing any content, and again asserts, this time without the points that he brought up and I refuted, the “America is a Christian nation” and “formal enforced indifferentism allows Christianity to thrive” Protestant-American party lines. It is difficult to say for sure, but he seems to think that some relative comparison of the U.S. and Europe in the last 50 years ought to be a relevant comparison that stands up to a thousand years or more of Christendom.

I don’t suggest that Shawn is dishonest, as he claims of me, but rather that he is apparently a Protestant-American idealogue who has mastered the capacity to ignore things that are inconvenient for his world view. I unfortunately lack that skill, and in any case see no point in continuing this discussion with him.

Shawn says:
“The success that Christianity has had in America by comparison to Europe is fact enough.”

If we stipulate that America has degenerated less rapidly than Europe in the last fifty years that does not constitute a positive endorsement.

Shawn also says:
“I repeat my argument that the American Republic was not “liberal” at it’s founding, and that it did not set up a system of religious ‘indifferentism’.”

Shawn apparently does not know the distinction between an assertion and an argument.

I’ll leave him the last word here, since the productivity of further discussion is limited by the fact that he thinks that his bare assertions constitute arguments and that calling an actual counterargument with facts something other than “mere opinion” is dishonest.