Citizens of Rome

How the Culture of Death Challenged the Loyalties of American Catholics

Throughout the history of America, the following question has been one of great concern among Catholic intellectuals and theologians: Could allegiance to a higher authority, such as the Church, ever be compatible with total participation in a liberal democracy? This question seems to have been answered in the negative during the 1960s and 70s with America’s adoption of the contraceptive mentality. Despite the apparent, outward thriving of Catholicism in America during the rise of John F. Kennedy, American Catholics had been infected with the individualistic mentality for which their liberal culture so strongly advocated. The rise of the culture of death ushered in a new era of American ‘freedom’ which American Catholics could not support.

The Church knew the dangers of assimilation into American culture. Such skepticism was voiced in Pope Leo XIII’s Testem Benevolentiae, which condemned Americanism. Pope Pius X also wrote Pascendi in 1907, which urged the Catholic faithful to be wary of modernism and the dangerous effects it might have on the Church. Catholics in America received these encyclicals with mixed reviews. For the conservatives, “the age pulsated with these evil tendencies” of secularism, naturalism and rationalism.¹ The Americanists, or liberal Catholics, saw these tendencies too, but they claimed the tendencies were not intrinsic to the nature of the age but only accidents of it; there is no direct threat to Catholics in America, in fact, it is a pluralist country and tolerant of Catholicism. However, pluralism and toleration are a two-edged sword; accepting all religions is, in a sense, denying all religions. The separation of church and state does not directly attack the Church, but religion is sidelined giving secular humanism the power. As history shows, this didn’t work out too well for the Church.

With the nomination of John F. Kennedy to the presidency, it seemed that the marriage between Catholicism and America had been consummated. Catholics moved from the cities into the suburbs, a sign that they were succeeding financially. The film, Going My Way (1944), starring superstar, Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O’Malley, won several Academy awards. Catholics seemed to have finally made it. The assimilation of Catholics into American culture was due in large part to “common suffering during the Depression and shared patriotism during World War II and the subsequent Cold War.”² It seemed that America had accepted Catholicism. Will Herberg’s book, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, which was written in 1956, noted that to be Catholic was merely another way of being American.³

Underlying the outward appearance of Catholic energy and success was the fact that American ideals and way of life were conquering the hearts and minds of Catholics. As McCaffrey notes, “The Irish and other American Catholics respect the Holy Father, but 79 percent of them follow the guidance of their private consciences rather than the dictates of Rome. And 80 percent believe they can disobey the pope and remain good Catholics.”⁴ This sort of mentality is precisely what the Church feared. Catholics had finally assimilated fully into American culture, but many had broken their primary loyalty to Rome. American Catholics no longer felt obliged “to give a ‘religious submission of the will and of mind’⁵ to the authentic teachings of the pope.” They felt, in a sense, that such submission infringed on their individual rights as American citizens. As McCaffrey writes:

John Paul II, supported by a conservative Catholic minority, attributes cafeteria, pick-and-choose Catholicism to the spirit of American materialism that has corrupted rather than liberate consciences…. They could not forsake a religion that offered them consolation and psychological security in depressing times and situations and was symbolic of their cultural identity; and they could not turn their backs on political values essential to their nationalism, which in America provided them with opportunities to prosper.⁶

Catholics had gotten too close and the individualistic sentiments of freedom had affected their relationship with the authoritarian figure in Rome. However, they didn’t want to part with the psychological security that their religion provided them, so they tried to have it both ways. But with the emergence of the contraceptive mentality, Catholics would have to choose.

In 1968, Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae reaffirming traditional teaching on the immorality of contraception. The Catholic response to the encyclical was telling of just how pervasive the individualistic and materialistic mindset had been in the American Church. McCaffrey states, “Most American Catholics, including many in the clergy, took issue with Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, a reaffirmation of the church’s opposition to contraception. This initial challenge to papal authority expanded to include such issues as clerical celibacy, an all-male priesthood, and divorce.”⁷ This series of challenges isn’t surprising; once a person denies one tenet of the faith, such as papal authority, there’s no reason the doubting should stop there. A group of theologians in Washington DC went further and presented a statement containing 87 signatures, and later 600, justifying “dissent for Catholics from the birth control teaching.” Stats show that in 1965, 77% of American Catholic women under 45 used some method of birth control, and by 1970 those numbers had only gone up.⁸

The American Catholic adoption of the contraceptive mentality wasn’t particularly surprising. The reception of Humanae Vitae in America was, in a sense, the culmination of that question concerning whether Catholics could fully and authentically live out American ideals. Ultimately, there is no compatibility because Catholics cannot fully participate as American citizens unless they leave their dogma at the door. As Rice observes: “One reason for the decline in religious belief is the triumph in this country of the secularist dogma that religion (except for secularism itself) is a matter of private preference with no relevance to the public life of the nation.”⁹ In this regard, Kennedy’s election to the presidency signified America’s acceptance of a tamed and defeated sort of Catholicism. Kennedy was the epitome of the Catholic American attitude, that is, in the sense that his Catholicism didn’t affect his Americanism but his Americanism affected his Catholicism.

The American Church had become domesticated and lost important aspects of what made it uniquely Catholic. Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, Jew addresses the submission of the Church in America to liberal ideals. Observing in Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Vicchio writes,

The ‘triple melting pot’ absorbed the seasoning of each religious tradition while it flavored them in turn with its own distinctive American taste...The issue of the assimilation of Catholics into the mainstream American life would gradually yield to the larger issue of the secularization of American life, the drying up of the old Protestant ethos, and its replacement by Fundamentalism. Once digested and assimilated, what piquancy would Catholicism provide for American culture?¹⁰

In essence, there was a syncretism of religion in America. All that Catholicism had become was a psychological consolation and a tie to ethnic roots. Even in America today, this sort of “ethnic Catholic” mentality exists. Catholicism to these people is merely affirmation, or a feel-good kind of religion. In this case, one religion becomes just as good as the other.

Ultimately, whether under active persecution or accepted into a pluralistic and positivistic society, Catholicism can never be reconciled fully with any state. The Nativists weren’t wrong to fear the dual loyalties of Catholics and that they would impose papal rule over the United States, destroying liberal democracy.¹¹ As Brent Bozell states regarding Catholics, “it is not merely a matter of divided loyalties, it is a matter of first loyalties… [and] the Christian religion is necessarily expansionist, it aims to catch men.”¹² If truly loyal to Rome, which is a central tenet for the Catholic faith, American Catholics would have outright rejected the contraceptive mentality. Instead, many Catholics in the United States had switched their primary loyalty to the American way of life, which had given them freedom and success. However, with the legalization of abortion and other grotesque acts, contradictory to Church teaching, Catholics could no longer sit still. Where God is rejected in the public sphere, a usurper is placed on the throne.

The question of compatibility between Catholicism and American ideals comes down to loyalties. American Catholics have to decide where their loyalties ultimately lie. The modern world’s adoption of the culture of death tests such loyalties. Catholics cannot serve both a state, which promotes the contraceptive mentality, and God as well. Catholics must remember that they are, first and foremost, citizens of Rome.

“I die the king's good servant, but God's first” - St. Thomas More

1. Stephen J. Vicchio and Virginia Geiger, Perspectives on the American Catholic Church: 1789-1989 (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1989), 157.

2. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 175.

3. Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (University of Chicago Press, 1983), 285.

4. McCaffrey, 195.

5. Charles E. Rice, Beyond Abortion: The Theory and Practice of the Secular State. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1979.), 75.

6. McCaffrey, 196.

7. McCaffrey, 195.

8. Vicchio, 247.

9. Rice, 25.

10. Vicchio, 285.

11. McCaffrey, 99.

12. Brent L. Bozell. Mustard Seeds: A Conservative Becomes a Catholic (Front Royal, VA:

Christendom Press, 2001), 195.