Catholic and American?

Last updated on: July 4, 2019 at 8:23 pm by Chase Padusniak

Catholic and American? 2019-07-04T20:23:14-04:00 Chase Padusniak

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

There is good reason to fear the nation’s becoming an idol. In fact, the idol of the American nation was often used against Catholics, who it was thought would hand the country over to the pope. We were also suspect on racial grounds:

It was never easy to separate the racial and religious components of anti-Catholic sentiment. Until the 1920s, America’s doors were open to European immigrants, as long as they qualified under a statute passed in 1790 that reserved naturalized citizenship for “free white persons.” Whether Southern and Eastern Europeans of darker hue—or all Catholics, whose presumed loyalty to Rome rendered them suspect candidates for democratic citizenship—qualified under the statute, seemed very much an open question.

As the immigrant landscape grew more complicated in the late 19th century, social scientists and politicians began attempting to classify Americans with greater precision. Whit[e]ness, it now seemed, was a matter of degree, and Europeans fell into categories like “Anglo Saxon,” “Celtic,” “Hebrew” and “Asiatic.” Importantly, this move toward racial classification drew heavily on the emerging fields of modern biology and chemistry. In this sense, modern science and social science were contemporaries—and close cousins—of modern racism.

In 1911 the famous Dillingham Commission on Immigration attempted to reduce the mass of new immigrant groups to a simple five-tier racial scheme (Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay and American). But it wasn’t always so simple. In Volume 9 of its lengthy report, otherwise entitled A Dictionary of Races or Peoples, the commission backtracked and acknowledged that the U.S. Bureau of Immigration “recognizes 45 races or peoples among immigrants coming to the United States, and of these 36 are indigenous to Europe.”

Critically, many scientists and social scientists (the Dillingham Commission experts among them) agreed that race was determinative of behavior, intelligence and physical endowment, and that racial groups could be arranged in a hierarchical fashion. The Dictionary of Races or Peoples, for instance, characterized Bohemians as “the most advanced of all” Slavic race groups. The Southern Italian, on the other hand, it deemed “an individualist having little adaptability to highly organized society.” (Politico)

The thing is we do owe loyalty to God (and the successors of His Apostles, the bishops) before we owe anything to our country. This does not, of course, mean there is no room to serve one’s country under any circumstances, but it does mean that, on the non-racial level, there is a sense in which we were subversives. Perhaps we could learn from this: American nationalism was turned against us, ought we not be suspicious of it? Ought we not be reticent to turn it against anyone else?

Some might say: “so what? We helped to expand the definition of religious freedom. That’s a good thing! We should appreciate the struggle and its fruits!” This may seem a convincing argument. It, however, relies on the idea that “religious freedom” is what we were striving for. On the one hand, one might cite Pope Pius IX’s “error has no rights” from his Syllabus of Errors (he did not use quite those words, but they have caught on regardless). We may put this aside, however, for it is complicated, perhaps too much so for this blog post. More importantly, there is a pragmatic sense in which “religious freedom” presents a problem.

This term implies a mediated pluralism: we live in a liberal democracy where the state must carve out the niches in which religion is free to act. The problem is the woeful inadequacy with which the concept has acquitted itself. Never mind the famous baker case: there is the issue of circumcision among Haredi Jews in Brooklyn, the banning of circumcision in Iceland, and the bevvy of problems religion has faced in places like Kemalist Turkey. Has the difficulty of negotiating along these lines not played some role in the recent Ahmari-French debate? Admittedly, not all of the issues I note took place in the US; many did not. That said, it is clear that the concept of “religious freedom” is far from a guarantee of Catholic survival in the US. I do not, of course, mean that I think we will face persecutions (nothing of the sort); I do, however, believe that too many too easily wave away the tension between our faith and our country with this magic formula.

Go back Continue Reading

Previous Post

July 3, 2019

Traditionalism, Fruit of Vatican II

Next Post

July 23, 2019 How I Came to be Christian (Full Essay)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Academia Culture Politics Reviews Theology Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 July 2021 December 2020 November 2020 July 2020 May 2020 April 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 August 2019 July 2019 April 2019 March 2019 December 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the first Judge of Israel?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Gideon Samson Othniel Deborah