Archbishop Lori decries ‘aggressive an...atholic schools



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Archbishop Lori Discusses Presidential Debates, Polls and the Beatitudes

And you wonder why the morality of this country is going downhill really fast. This is one reason why we need Obamacare repealed once and for all, or otherwise, goodbye America the way we knew it from the founding fathers.

The current trajectory of the United States with respect to social morality is actually in absolute harmony with the principles and ideals of the Enlightenment upon which it was founded in the first place.

Obviously I applaud our bishops for standing up for the Gospel, but to pretend that until now American principles and ideals have been geared toward the preservation of Bible-based morality and to lament that the United States is now, all of a sudden, losing her religion, so to speak, is a bit surreal. The fact of the matter is that the propagation of things like gay marriage shows that America is actually being faithful to her religion.

As it happens, the public sanctioning of same-sex marriage in this country is not any sort of a novelty at all, but rather a return to a tradition that began and endured long before the Europeans ever found this continent. Americans...the first Americans...were contracting marriages between men and "two spirit" men until the Europeans came along and put the kaibosh on it. But I digress.

The truth doesn't need fairy tales to buttress it. It can stand on it's own. Can't we just say, "yep, same-sex marriage...it was bound to happen in a country based upon the libertine principles of the Enlightenment and now here it is; surprised it took this long to get here." No need to act as if we had been living in the Holy Roman Empire until Obama came along.

Not at all true. You conflate the theoretical and radical continental Enlightenment of France and Germany with the essentially empiricist and conservative Enlightenment of England and Scotland, both of which upheld the essential role of religious faith and social institutions in maintaining the res public.

A cynical acknowledgement by America's founding agnostics and Protestants that religion is useful in maintaining good behavior amongst the populace hardly contradicts anything I've pointed out. The public sanctioning of same-sex marriages represents nothing more than the taking of the principles of a new secular order to their logical conclusion. If all men are truly created equal, and if there is no state religion, and if homosexuality is a disorder only insofar as some of the many, many religions represented in America insist that it is, then our secular government has to acknowledge that it has no grounds whatsoever (according to this nation's own avowed principles) to forbid two men or two women from marrying.

The United States is not a Catholic nation, or an Orthodox nation, or even a generically Christian nation. This country is, and always has been, a secular nation devoid of a state religion. Or, perhaps more accurately stated, this nation has always known secularism as her state religion.

I don't argue history with historical illiterates. Sorry.

Roman,

I would hasten to remind you that Christianity did not become a state religion for 300 years, and was arguably stronger at that point in history than at any time since.

The enlightenment was not.

Now Stuart, I was convinced you would argue with a fence post. LOL.

I do wonder, however, how the secular drift in the U.S. will play out in the future. As a recently retired teacher, I spent many hours listening to my students. Many of them don't see right and wrong through the same lens as people my age.

I think the secular drift has been exaggerated, in reaction to an overestimation about how formally religious the American people have been. In fact, through most of our history, formal church affiliation has been rather low, with periodic upticks (like the Great Awakenings) caused by political or economic upheavals. In between, people tend to be "irregular" in their beliefs and practices (which accounts for the myriad denominations, sects and cults that rise, prosper and vanish from the American landscape). We tend to think the situation of our childhood was normative, when everyone went to church on Sunday morning, but a lot of that was nominal belief not backed by any deep commitment, a kind of "secular" or "civil" religion maintained by social suasion. As soon as the sanctions were removed, people of weak belief just decided to do what they wanted.

Now, today, formal affiliation is lower than it was, but still much higher than in Europe--as is active participation. Even those who aren't active still tend to believe in God and a higher form of morality than their counterparts in Europe. And a lot of people who say they don't believe in "organized religion" really only do so because it's fashionable. Everybody lies about religion, even more than they lie about sex (and I could go on about how the sexual mores of our forebears were just as raunchy as our own). Put people under any sort of pressure, and the old religious habits emerge once more. Remove the pressure, and they slip back into lax ways. It's something that was noticed four centuries ago, in a little ditty attributed to Sarah Churchill, First Duchess of Marlborough:

God and the soldier both all men adore,
In time of danger, not before.
The danger past, both then are requited:
God is forgot, and the brave soldier slighted.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Roman,

So, are you telling me that if a family had one book, it was the Bible....is a fairy tale?

And that references to God in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution....all have no meaning?

Methinks that we just had a history rewrite.

I think he thinks if it wasn't Douay-Rheims, it was.

You've completely lost me.



The mere acknowledgement of the existence of a deity in a document is hardly tantamount to evidence of a Christian nation whose laws and culture is based upon Biblical morality. An Islamic nation or a Jewish nation or even a Freemasonically-inspired nation could all have produced the same text.



Yes. Agreed.

What on earth is that supposed to mean?

That if it isn't Catholic it isn't Christian. You were the one who placed Protestants on par with agnostics, and who labeled their belief in God "cynical" (scroll up). That Americans were profoundly religious (albeit in a uniquely American way) is demonstrated by the fact that most households in the colonial and early Republic had but one book, that being the Authorized Edition of the Holy Bible. They read it, they knew it, and they generally took it to heart. But it's not a Catholic Bible, so I guess it doesn't count.