More symptoms of insanity on the American right

[fpb]

In yesterday's American Thinker, a man with the Italian name of Bonelli wrote the following, extremely offensive statement:

The United States is different from most other countries in many ways. One unique aspect of our country is that our elected officials, officers of the court, and the military, all pledge their allegiance to the Constitution and not to an office, individual or party. This assures continuity of the ideals set forth by the founders.

As an Italian citizen, I have personally sworn to defend the Constitution of my country when I served in the Italian army. The presumption involved in this ignorant display of insular arrogance is an insult to every constitutional government in the world.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Belgium and the Netherlands suffer from various pathologies that originate in Calvinism, Jansenism and the mercantile spirit. They also number, counted together, less than half the inhabitants of Italy.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I will say that (with the obvious disclaimer that I am not Italian), from everything I've read, while the Church's political influence in Italy is considerable, the state of catechesis is rather poor.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Catechesis is never as good as it should be, but I must say that Italy has escaped the kind of thing that you and marielapin have so eloquently described. Priests may teach badly, but very few of them teach outright heresy or replace politics for religion.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

What sort of influence does the Church have then over the people if it is not that of adherence to doctrinal teaching?

Here in America roughly 25-30% (can't remember the exact number) of Americans self-identify as Catholics. Only 35% or so of them attend Mass weekly. 25% of total Catholics go to confession at least once a year. Of those 25% of self-identified Catholics you can have a good idea what their doctrinal beliefs are. They are the ones that are going to be more inclined to follow Church teaching and listen to the bishops. The rest could really care less. How is it there?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I would say one third of the population is definitely and committedly Catholic - weekly Mass attendance, etc; one third is in various shades of compromise; and one third secularist. Which is a difficult position for them to be, because most of them are not in fact agnostic or atheist, and even the majority of secularists will want to be married and sent off by a priest and buried in consecrated ground.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

Do you not consider the loss of those 60% or so as a symptom of a loss of faith?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As compared to what? Let me tell you something for which, as a historian, I can vouch: there has never been a golden age of faith. There has never been a time in all Christian history in which the Church has not felt itself to be fighting with its back to the wall and against overwhelming enemies. There has never been a time when the majority of Christians in Christian countries were more or less nominal. Speaking as a historian, I see no great difference between now and the fifth, twelfth, or seventeenth century.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

My questions were asked to gauge if you agreed with the writings of the current and past Pope (especially the article I posted earlier). The only difference I see is in the nature of the heresy: one that is trying to completely dissolve religion altogether and the idea of God rather than alter it, as other heresies have attempted to do.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am not even speaking of heresy; I am speaking of simple brute ignorance, instinctive materialism, contempt for the spiritual, or base superstition. These things were just as widespread in the Middle Ages or in the baroque age as they are now. You should read the inquiries into popular religion carried out by certain governments, or the records of episcopal courts. Churches are empty now? They were empty, except for little old ladies, in the thirteenth century. Ignorant, heretical clerks, malpractice, worldliness? Why do you think that almost every century of church history has featured powerful reforming movements? Lay ignorance of religious doctrine? That was what St. Dominic and St. Francis founded their preaching orders to fight. The old Adam is always rising again, and always having to be fought on every front.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

How exactly could great cathedrals be built if only little old ladies attended them?

I always considered the adherence to the faith to be like a sine curve, with us currently starting to come out of a trench. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine and St. Dominic arrived at other bottoms of trenches. The heresies only helped hasten the decline into them. If we just scraped ignorance, materialism, contempt and superstition off the top (since they are universal) what else are we left with to affect such change but some particular heresy or flavor mishmash of heresies?