Mario Rubio, Catholic identity, and nihilism
Communion and Liberation’s Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete has written an excellent piece on Rubio’s church hopping. Rubio, if you recall, claims to be a faithful Catholic and a southern baptist at the same time. Drawing out some key doctrinal distinctions, Albacete calls the southern baptists an “ecclesial community” rather than a church (the same words used by Pope Benedict in his new and excellent Light of the World book). Bottom line:
“It is impossible to be a Catholic in good standing and a Baptist in good standing at the same time. And so the question arises: what does Senator-elect Rubio believe?”
And the conclusion:
“This trend to reduce the meaning of a Catholic identity to folklore, to cultural traditions and to a content-free spirituality also threatens American Catholics in general. I am reminded of the observation of Curtis White in Harper’s Magazine (December 2007) already quoted in an earlier column here. We are dealing with the American kind of nihilism. For Nietzsche, European nihilism was the failure of any form of belief. “American nihilism is something different. Our nihilism is our capacity to believe in everything and anything all at once. It is all good!”
This American nihilism has a willing ally among that segment of the American Catholic right that wants to draw the Catholic Church closer and closer to the evangelicals, for purely political reasons. In the meantime, we are seeing the erosion of a distinct Catholic culture. We are seeing a relentless assault on the social teaching of the Catholic Church. What’s next, I wonder?
(Hat tip: Michael Sean Winters).
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Minion,
You really do misrepresent the piece if you think the author is talking about how this is a trend of Catholics who are Republican. In fact the piece says the Rubio example is very rare in general.
The piece also says this, which you quote:
“At the same time, this trend to reduce the meaning of a Catholic identity to folklore, to cultural traditions and to a content-free spirituality also threatens American Catholics in general.”
This more describes politically liberal Catholics who do not accept the totality of Catholic teaching on things like the all-male priesthood, contraception, abortion and much else.
The fact is that it is the political left in the Church which has a problem with Catholic identity rather than the political left in the Church. It has been the long-time project of the more conservative elements of the Church to restore Catholic identity, a project much derided by Catholic liberals.
Do you think that Rubio does this for political reasons? Or do you think he maybe wants to leave the Catholic Church, but something keeps him from just cutting all attachments? I suppose it could be either or. I would like to see his answer as to why he goes to both churches. I often wonder why our church has the U.S. flag off to the right and behind the alter? Sometimes the smallest decisions say a lot about our churches identity. In my view it’s not that am not patriotic, but I just think that the symbols that we place in our churches should have to do with worshiping God and no non religious symbols required. But that is just me I guess. I think there is a difference in worshiping God and Country. I just wonder maybe when the flag was introduced behind our alters? I mean I don’t really know, but I just think about that sometimes.
I recently attended mass in a small church on the north coast of California. The pastor is a former marine chaplain. The recessional was “God Bless America.” I enquired of him about this and he said that they sing it EVERY Sunday as a recessional.
Go figure.
Not to add fuel to the fire, but apparently Hugh Hewitt does the same thing. Tres bizarre.
“Americanism” is a REAL heresy, precisely and cogently defined by Pope Leo XIII, and Americans who insist on the “exceptionalism” of their country, as well as the perfectitude of American democracy, are, according to that very clear definition, HERETICS.
I beg to differ. Here is what Pope Leo XIII condemned as Americanism: “The underlying principle . . . is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them.”
Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae ( http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13teste.htm )
There is absolutely nothing in what you quoted that rebuts what I said.
Digby, I read over the document that Agellius linked to. The Pope defines Americanism as what we’d now call cafeteria Catholicism. He says that such thinking requires a person to set himself and his culture above any that previously existed and passed down the doctrines of the Church. I suppose you could call that a form of exceptionalism, but that’s the most generous reading I can give to your comment. A less generous reading would be that you distorted the meaning of a Church teaching in order to score a political point. I don’t know if you did that deliberately, but if you did, that’s really creepy.
Digby: You said that “Americanism” has been “precisely and cogently defined by Pope Leo XIII” as “[insisting on] the “exceptionalism” of [one's] country, as well as the perfectitude of American democracy”.
But since Pope Leo’s document condemning Americanism mentions neither of those things, I don’t see where you find the “precise definition” you refer to.
If what you meant is that people like Rubio advocate watering down Church teaching in order to create closer alliances with evangelicals, for political purposes, then I agree that they are in the wrong, and that such an attitude is, at least in part, what Pope Leo condemned.
But I don’t think one can brand someone a heretic for believing in “American exceptionalism” and “the perfectitude of American democracy”, when those beliefs have not been formally condemned by the Church.
In denouncing “Americanism,” I am not the “leftie” that some of you take me for; there is much in this rant that I actually believe is true:
http://www.christorchaos.com/AwashInAFloodofErrorsandLies.html
However, this is a more balanced view that both radical “traditionalists” and Catholic “progressives” in America do genuinely find themselves too often subscribing to “Americanism”:
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p22.htm
Every time I see “liberal Catholics” talk about a Catholic culture, I always feel like I am listening to whores talking about love. They don’t even like “Catholic culture”, and spend most of their time complaining that they have PTSD from nuns in heavy habits whacking them over the knuckles with a ruler, or how May Crownings were crypto-fascist parades performed to enforce dominant patriarchal paradigms.
On the other hand, conservative “neo-cons” don’t like Catholics, so it is no wonder that they hang out with Protestants so much. and want to think like them as much as possible. According to them, the vast Catholic unwashed are a bunch of ignorant, disobedient slobs who vote for baby-killers and socialists. That is why their accusations of “liberal elitism” are a bit quaint. One wants to carve “tu quoque” into their foreheads with a dull butter knife.
Where is the faction that loves the Church “just the way it is”, that does not mistake devotion to a particular political ideology for holiness? I don’t see it. All I see are people who want to make religion an instrument for practical agendas.
I think many Catholics were correctly scolded for perhaps being a tad too tough on Ann Rice as she was going through her struggles.
We don’t know exactly what is up with Rubio or his family here. However as the article points out this is not exactly new among Latinos and Hispanics and I don;t think American politics has one thing to do with this.
Tee fact that Millions of Latinos and Hispanics have left the Catholic Church is not to be blamed on the “RIGHT” but all of us Catholics.
As I keep saying all you have to do is go to the Budgets of this Churches. As a former Southern Baptist I follow the Southern Baptist Convention a great deal. Last year they budgeted a ton of money for Mission work in Miami. Never got noted by the Catholic Press or I guess the Bishops. They are not the only group. We as Catholics do nothing.
This is the cycle that has gone on for 20 years and sadly does not appear to be changing.
I have known Catholic priests who have handled with great pastoral adroitness the matter of a Lutheran, a Baptist and an Episcopalian who regularly attends his parish (and am also impresssed by the pastoral consideration the Church gives to members of the PNCC attending Roman Catholic parishes).
And I know individuals who consider themselves Catholic but who happen to attend a non-Catholic congregation.
It is a pastoral matter, and is best handled individually. It is not an insignificant number of people yet I see little writing on it in church publications.
That being said, I find it at least odd for a person in public life to, on his own initiative, widely proclaim himself Catholic while he is an active participant in a Baptist congregation.
There’s nothing in Msgr. Albacete’s article that calls for a generalization (and jump) from one political man’s religion to his culture’s politics. I note that the article doesn’t say that Rubio has stopped attending Mass. I’ve known several people who are active at more than one church.
Existence cannot exist. Not just us, but everything that ever was cannot be. Absolutely impossible. Not that life is just a dream, ’cause a dream is something, and there caint be notin, nowhere, nohow. Yet here it all is, spectacular in it’s many forms. Great, isn’t it? Protestants express a kind of nihilism when they elevate Calvinistic meritocracy into an operational philosophy of cold, pitiless materialism. Catholics are fuzzier and warmer than that, but your leaders would still be jockeying gay child molesters from diocese to diocese if the roof hadn’t fallen in. Your Sunday services are more mystical in form than Protestant services, and therefore find a spot in the heart of the person who is moved by that. But what about real mysticism? Jesus wanted us to emulate Him, and even exceed Him if we only would. He said we could be gods. Well, maybe so, but not without the level of investigation that Jesus apparently engaged in during his years of wandering that are not reported upon in the Bible. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” We seem to want to ascribe to our native lands and their political systems attributes that move us to take faith from our Creator, and put that faith upon the shoulders of Presidents and Generals. The Bronze and Iron Ages had God-Kings, and as our religions fail to instruct us in the mystic arts, we are tempted to worship our countries. Countries may come and go, but creation, put in place by a Creator who is not bound by the laws of physics and logic that forbid all of existence, creation just keeps on chuggin along. We punish ourselves over ‘original sin’! Morons! Original sin is Orwellian double-talk for ORIGINAL BLESSING! The pagans celebrated life, and now we sophisticates poison our minds with the disappointments of careers that didn’t go far enough and houses that aren’t big enough. Human evolution can move forward and backward at the same time. If we destroy our planet, it will perfectly illustrate how we hate ourselves for our shallowness.