Leading politicians of both the left and the right have made headlines over the past few weeks for what might charitably be described as their creative reinterpretations of Catholic teaching. But beyond what must be acknowledged as the sheer error of their statements vis-à-vis church positions on life issues may lie a deeper impulse, one which has plagued the Catholic Church in the United States for much of its existence.
It is difficult to get a precise definition of “Americanism,” in large part because it refers more to a collection of mistaken beliefs than to a single, avowed school of heretical thought (as in the case of the Gnostics or the Cathars). Nevertheless, this “phantom heresy” has a few readily identifiable characteristics. Testem Benevolentiae, the 1899 letter from Pope Leo XIII to the Archbishop of Baltimore, referred to American Catholics’ propensity towards: “the confounding of license with liberty … the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth … to the world.” In other words, American Catholics tend to muddle political principles (especially the cherished freedoms of the First Amendment) with religious life, which places a far greater emphasis on patient obedience and humble understanding.
But there’s more to the Americanist impulse than the mere assertion of the supremacy of the individual’s conscience. Newt Gingrich, in the interview in which he claimed that human life began at implantation, not conception, did not merely assert his own (divergent) opinion. He went farther, actually characterizing those who hold that human life begins at conception in a manner that suggested a certain strangeness or irrationality to their belief: “my friends who have ideological positions that sound good don’t then follow through on the logic” was how he phrased it. In a way, painting his fellow Catholics as driven solely by an irrational “ideology” — in contrast, of course, to his position, grounded in a more reasonable and commonsensical approach.
Faring no better than her former House peer (and faring far worse in terms of nuance), Nancy Pelosi mocked “this conscience thing” that marks members of her own faith—while, ironically, extolling the virtues of her own conscience to rise above any long-held teachings or carefully-considered doctrines. But here, again, a Catholic put distance between their own religious life and their fellow Catholics, depicting them with a sort of foreignness or exoticism for their strange outlook in life.
This is another key element of Americanism: the transposition of a hardcore (and misunderstood) ‘American exceptionalism’ out of the political realm and into theology and, more specifically, ecclesiology. Americanist Catholics, Pope Leo noted in his encyclical on the subject (Longinqua Oceana) have a tendency to believe that the American church itself is somehow a ‘purer’ or ‘better’ version of the Catholic Church, that it has received a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit unavailable to the benighted churchmen in the Old World. The American church represents progress, for it has shorn itself of old superstitions and transcended trifles over mere “doctrine.” It is easy to see how this belief can pair with the elevation of an American Catholics’ conscience above all else to form the basis of a quite imaginative and dangerous distortion of the Catholic faith as a whole.
Of course, in many ways, the recent statements by Gingrich and Pelosi are utterly unremarkable, if only because they represent well-publicized instances of statements and modes of thought that are ubiquitous at the lay or local levels. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for all Catholic politicans to read Pope Leo’s encyclical, urging as it does every American Catholic to rein in their self-assured sloppiness and carefully:
examine closely every part of the Catholic doctrine, and to free themselves from preconceived notions. In this matter, if the first place belongs to the bishops and clergy, the second belongs to the laity, who have it in their power to aid the apostolic efforts of the clergy by the probity of their morals and the integrity of their lives.
December 6th, 2011 | 6:18 pm
I’m not sure that the complaints that you have with Gingrich and Pelosi fall under a consideration of Americanism.
In Testem Benevolentiae, Leo XIII differentiated between various understandings of the term: “From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some “Americanism.” But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name.”
He went on to point out that the Church has always adapted herself to the spirit of each nation: “But in regard to ways of living she has been accustomed to so yield that, the divine principle of morals being kept intact, she has never neglected to accommodate herself to the character and genius of the nations which she embraces.”
In Longinqua Oceani, he noted—as the American Founders had—the role of Providence in the founding of the nation: ““Nor, perchance did the fact which We now recall take place without some design of divine Providence. Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic, the first bishop was set by apostolic authority over the American Church. The well-known friendship and familiar intercourse which subsisted between these two men seems to be an evidence that the United States ought to be conjoined in concord and amity with the Catholic Church.”
December 7th, 2011 | 12:02 am
[...] Faring no better than her former House peer (and faring far worse in terms of nuance), Nancy Pelosi mocked “this conscience thing” that marks members of her own faith—while, ironically, extolling the virtues of her own conscience to rise above any long-held teachings or carefully-considered doctrines. But here, again, a Catholic put distance between their own religious life and their fellow Catholics, depicting them with a sort of foreignness or exoticism for their strange outlook in life. [more] [...]
December 7th, 2011 | 1:04 am
[...] Haunted by a Phantom Heresy – Matthew Cantirino, First Things/First Thoughts [...]
December 7th, 2011 | 10:13 am
I always thought “Americanism” matched more the concept of “American Exceptionalism” which, the GOP especially, politicians falling all overthemselves to paint America as even more exceptional than their competitors would say, ends up veering very close to the idea that the US is somehow sanctioned by God to lead the world. A few have even gone as far as to try to assert that documents like the DoI and the Constitution are divinely inspired making them rank almost on a par or even equal to scripture itself.
December 7th, 2011 | 10:16 am
Your examples of Gingrich and Pelosi disagreeing w/the Church about life beginning at implantation v. conception doesn’t seem to have anything to do with ‘Americanism’. I could just as easily imagine an alternate reality where Gingrich and Pelosi are British, Italian or French politicians holding that view in opposition to the Church’s view. That’s not ‘Americanism’ unless you think ‘Americanism’ is the idea that Americans are free to disagree with the Catholic Church. I think Henry the VII beat America to that.
December 7th, 2011 | 11:52 am
I would agree that Pelosi is way out of line and has been as long as she has been in Congress. However I wonder if we are not rashgudgeing Newt. It sounds to me more like he may be just confused. Implantation is not all that far separated from conception. I am not sure myself just how much time separates the two. And one last point, I do not think the Church has ever said definitely when life begins. I think the precise language is “… what is human has always been human…” What I know the Church is that we must allow God to determine whether or not a human will be created and we may never interfer with the process, we must always assume He intends to create a human until it is manifestly clear that He does not intend to do so. Of course I am open to correction.
December 7th, 2011 | 11:59 am
@Boonton: Henry the 7th? :-)
It’s really hard to be original in heretical thinking — more difficult, in fact, than it is to be original in orthodoxy. If this seems surprising, consider how much original research is done in science, whereas pretty much all science fiction consists of old stories given new names and background scenery; when we do research, we are always surprised, because the universe is outside ourselves, but fiction can only come from within. So yes, other nations are entirely capable of making the same errors that here are called Americanism.
Incidentally, when I was in high school in Florida, we were required to take a class called “Americanism vs. Communism”. Americanism was pretty vaguely defined there, too.
December 7th, 2011 | 1:58 pm
The problem we have in this and other nations where the Gospel is not elevated and luxuriated in is our disordered minds and souls legislate, either in the real, de jure, codified, sense, or in the p.c., de facto, sense, and then what becomes legal becomes acceptable, what becomes acceptable becomes “moral”, what becomes “moral” becomes how disordered sheep are expected to think and behave, or, abstaining from those thoughts and acts, at least to acknowledge them as legitimate. All anti-Gospel and all meant to distract and dissuade our weak souls from the alternative, which is Him: “for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
December 7th, 2011 | 2:05 pm
Upon receipt of Pope Leo’s letter, Cardinal James Gibbons replied: “I thank you with my whole heart for having cast light on all these questions…[such as watering down the faith so as to get more adherents]This doctrine which I deliberately call extravagant and absurd, this Americanism as it has been called, has nothing in common with the views, aspirations, doctrine and conduct of Americans. I do not think that there can be found in the entire country, a bishop, priest or a layman…who has ever uttered such enormities. No, that is not – it never has been and never will be – our Americanism.”
Three years later, Leo wrote Cardinal Gibbons: “while changes and tendencies of nearly all the nations which were Catholic for many centuries give cause for sorrow, the state of your churches…cheers our heart and fills it with delight.”
In February, 1897, Msgr. Denis O’Connell speaking at an International Catholic Congress said that Americanism involved no conflict with Catholic faith or morals and it means loyal devotion of Catholics to their government and opportunities for promoting the glory of God, the growth of the Church and the salvation of souls.
So indeed that “Americanism”was a phantom heresy. But today some who claim to be Catholic do not accept the teachings of the Magisterium but go their own way. Maybe such “heresy” is not “phantom.”
December 7th, 2011 | 4:24 pm
Linus,
The Roman Catholic Church has in fact defined when life begins (at least in the RC view) — in answer to the question “When does life begin?” the Catechsim states “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”(CCC, paragraph #2270)
December 8th, 2011 | 12:37 am
Mary – Just because American clerics denied that there was any such thing as Americanism does not necessarily make it so.
Do you remember when the encyclical “The Splendor of Truth” came out, showing how proportionalism was incompatible with Catholic moral teaching? Several very famous proportionalists were at pains to explain why they were not in fact, and had never been, proportionalists. Plus ca change, as they say.
December 8th, 2011 | 4:34 am
Sallyr
An excellent example of this is to be found in Pascal’s Provincial Letters, when, writing to Fr Annat after the papal condemnation of Jansenism, he declared, “It is matter of thankfulness to God, then, father, that there is in reality no heresy in the Church.”
As Macaulay says, “We know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical.”
December 8th, 2011 | 8:56 am
If there is such a thing as Americanism it has to be something particular to America. Simply disagreeing about a matter such as abortion has nothing in particular to do with America. There’s nothing special about any given pro-choicer that would make him or her American. Anything Gingrich or Pelosi said about abortion could just as easily be said by a politician from Ireland, Russia or Germany.
IMO then ‘Americanism’ would almost certainly have to capture the idea that US founding documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were ‘inspired by God’, if by that a person means they have a quasi-scriptural status.
On the other hand, the quote above from the Pope is ““the confounding of license with liberty … the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth … to the world.” If that’s the case it would sound like the former Pope was at odds with the basic set up of the US system of government and political philosophy. This is no longer ‘Americanism’, though, and even back then its not clear that the concept was unique to America. I’m sure an Englishman felt he had a right to hold ‘any opinion he pleased’….but then perhaps back then the Pope had more or less written England off over that whole Henry VIII (yes 8th) fiasco.
December 8th, 2011 | 1:54 pm
In Longinqua Oceani, Leo XIII took the view that the Church “would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority,” a rebuke to some American Catholics who were indiscriminate eulogists of the separation of Church and State.
Whist acknowledging the right of a people to choose their own form of government, he also rejected the view that democracy was especially congenial to the Christian spirit.
December 9th, 2011 | 9:27 am
Assuming Boonton meant Henry VIII, the irony there is that Henry didn’t actually disagree with the church on any point of doctrine.
There’s reason to believe that he genuinely believed that his marriage to Catherine was legally invalid — convenient as that was for him to believe. He actually disagreed with the church’s judicial decision but NOT with any point of doctrine or morals. When he separated from the church, his intent was to maintain a fully Catholic autonomous church within England, not a new church, and DEFINITELY not a Protestant church.
I’m not defending Henry’s shenanigans, but the thought process behind them is not precisely what the popular account leads you to believe.
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