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]

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?