To be Catholic anno Domini 2002 is to place oneself radically at odds with with the public order as understood by its most authoritative interpreters. After all, Roe v. Wade is no fluke. It’s been law for almost 30 years, and mainstream authorities are united in viewing it as fundamental to right public order. Attempts are afoot at the highest and most respectable levels to make its principles compulsory for the whole world through international human rights treaties. And it’s given rise to additional “personal autonomy” rights—most recently, same-sex “marriage”—that likewise override all previous understandings of personal and public morality.
Other symptoms of the current situation are familiar. It’s accepted that only yahoos and crackpots want to put prayer back in the schools. Those who think that truth has any bearing on the validity of “religious expression,” or that a distinction should be made between marriage and any sort of sexual partnership, or who even wish people “Merry Christmas” in a public setting are chastised for exclusivity and intolerance. And with the entry of women into the workforce, the effective socialization of childrearing, and the omnipresence of electronic communications there is less and less of life that does not take place in a “public setting” in which the authorities feel entitled to demand at least outward support for the official standards.
Under such circumstances, what does one do? Catholicism is nothing if not a publicly authoritative statement of how things are. To those who accept it, it defines what the world really is. As such, it directly conflicts with the order currently established, which has its own authoritative view of things upon which it increasingly insists in all aspects of life. In the long run, the ostensible neutrality of liberalism is not at all neutral. Despite all the heroic efforts by the Church over the past 40 years to find common ground with those who disagree with her, it seems to me that common action, which after all eventually requires common purposes and understandings, is going to become increasingly difficult.
I don’t have a snappy solution to the problem. It seems to me though that we should all be thinking about it. With that in mind, here’s a (slightly edited) note I just sent to a friend who asked about my current attitude toward America and whether I still felt that I love it:
To be pessimistic is not the same as not to care for something. You once proposed that America has died. I take the notion more to heart than you do. It seems to me that the flaws that have led to the death of America—understood as a overarching concept that is also a concrete political order tied to a particular people, place, and culture—were intrinsic. That doesn’t mean there was never anything good about America or that I feel no attachment to her. It’s just that she is not the highest standard. In particular, the public aspects of America—the Constitution and Federal Government—are not earthly absolutes. All men and institutions are flawed after all, and none of them last forever. Also, the formal political order doesn’t outrank utterly the society it governs.
I admire the Founding Fathers greatly. I do find them—and the Constitution—more admirable than lovable. Even so, there is a great deal of genuine good in ideals like liberty and equality when taken as they took them in a limited sense and with a background understanding of objective Christian and classical moral order. Those ideals call each of us to think about what he should do and pursue it actively, and to respect others and cooperate with them in pursuit of what all recognize as good. They inspired many good men including my ancestors to do many good things. They are what we have had. Still there was something missing, an explicit recognition of some concrete authoritative standard of truth and goodness. With that thing the system would not have been at all what it was but without it we’ve gotten—quite naturally I think—what we have now.
So what now? Your proposal that America has died could of course be wrong, as could my notion that America as a formally particularist—confessional or ethnic—state would not be America (in addition to being utterly unrealistic). Also, there’s nothing at hand to replace “America” as a political ideal, standard and object of loyalty. So to me it makes sense politically to assume things can be turned around, that maybe the Republic or the real America or whatever can be restored with some reforms that supply or make up for what has been missing. I think though that one should also take seriously the possibility that’s not so and think about where to go in that event.