Any student of American history will recognize that some our nation’s most significant changes have come about as the fruit of religious revival, and that these “awakenings,” which erupted every few decades or so, play a key role in renewing and sustaining our national life. In this vein, the current head of the Knights of Columbus recently issued an interesting summons:
At the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on April 19, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson called for “a new Great Awakening in America,” in which Catholics “play a greater role than ever before.”
[...]
Although the struggle will be difficult, we have a “reason for hope” based on past successes, even “in the face of established power structures,” he added.
“Every great religious renewal in America has led to an advance in civil rights,” he said, recalling the contribution of religious efforts to the founding of America, the abolition of slavery and the push for racial equality.
Now, Anderson said, Catholics must come together and make their voices heard in order “to keep open the doors of religious liberty.”
It’s not clear what (if anything) will come out of Anderson’s call, but at the very least the rhetoric is interesting, appropriating what was once a heavily Reformist theme but calling for a Catholic continuation of it. Given the withering of mainline Protestantism and the growing incursions of the state into religious affairs, might we be finally approaching the “Catholic moment” Fr. Neuhaus (and others like Tocqueville) imagined would eventually become inevitable in the United States?
April 20th, 2012 | 1:56 pm
There should be a campaign to get a Catholic on the Supreme Court! :P
April 20th, 2012 | 5:14 pm
“Great Awakenings,” “New Evangelizations…” I’m afraid it all sounds a bit like the “New Frontier,” “Great Society,” “New Deal,” “Hope & Change,” “Big Society” (UK version), etc. Does all this really add up to much in a post-Christian, post-morality, “post-judgmental” America (well, not really on the latter as any conservative Catholic knows…)?
Mr. Anderson believes and promotes as well the “Civilization of Love.” Which sounds a bit too familiar and doomed-to-disappointment to this babyboomer.
Faith, orthodoxy, fidelity, prayer, forgiveness, being forgiven, consideration for our fellow immortals — these are daily struggles, daily re-committments, daily failures. Here in Southeastern Michigan I see a Church so dispersed, so confused, so unfocussed. And so desirous of simple and quick fixes to the Church’s problems. Married priests, women priests, elected bishops, the Mass in hipster doofus vernacular that dates quicker than this morning’s Today Show. And to quote the old Firesign Theatre, devotion to the Political Solutions for Political Solutions Committee world view. Some want tor rebuild the Church on Faith; others on Justice. And yet schools, hospitals (if there are any left), and parishes are shuttered and merged every year. And when was the last time a convent opened?
Yet in this heavily-monitored and near-airless politicized environment, the Holy Spirit continues to work. Perhaps if He were more welcome… This may be too personal a view. I never cared much for stadium rock and have even less enthusiasm for stadium Christianity. After Confession I don’t feel “immediately forgiven,” and forgiving is an even greater and long-term struggle. I’ve also been to actual, authentic, real-live, below-the-Mason Dixon Line, Southern Baptist tent revivals on hot summer nights. The effect just doesn’t last…
April 20th, 2012 | 5:17 pm
We may be coming to a moment totally unexpected by Father Neuhaus or any of us. When he wrote his book, I believe he expected the Church to simply step in the public square that had been ‘denuded’ of serious religious and moral dialogue. We have gone way beyond that now.
In the Supreme Court ruling in the 1990′s (Casey) happiness was defined as basically whatever the individual believed and sought, instituting a radical form of individualism as well as an official espousal of ‘relativity’. In the time that has passed since both the book and the Court’s ruling, both the institution of radical individualism and the tyranny of relativism has now developed into a radical form of secularism, and the growth of ‘the state’ beyond any imagined limits of our Founding Fathers or even our grandparents.
With the close collaboration of Evangelicals [itself something never imagined by generations past of Americans] the Catholic Church just might be placed in defending the principles of our country’s founding documents and the spirit of the Founders.
This is a far cry from the fears that the pope was going to come and set up shop in the White Hourse
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