What Is America Today?

What Is America Today? | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Catholic World Report

America no longer has a coherent, common view of itself and what it stands for.

If we Americans listen to our own music, we hear that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. We have purple mountains and amber waves of grain. “God bless America.” But not everyone sees us this way, even among our own citizens. It is probably not wise to divide the world’s view of America into merely five or six different categories or descriptions. Still, it is helpful to reflect how differently the country is seen to be. We wonder if we are in a “decline and fall” situation. Or are we on the verge of a new breakthrough. Perhaps the barbarians are already in the gate. We just do not want to notice. They look like us. Our leadership seems vain and self-serving. Much depend on what we are willing to see rather than what is in fact there to see.

I.

The first view is that America is the cause of the world’s problems. Even though it was never really a “colonial” power, still the world is best seen as if it were the chief colonial power. As the wealthiest of the great powers, through its economic system, it has exploited the rest of the world. Its prosperity is unjust. It owes reparation to the rest of the world. The poor of the world are victims; their situation has little or nothing to do with them, their mores, governments, or religion. Were it not for America everyone would be rich. America must continually express sorrow for its actions. Its wealth must be given back to those to whom it rightly belongs. Moreover, America is morally decadent. It undermines marriage and family everywhere. It exports every dubious ethical aberration as if it were normal. The world needs to be protected from its moral decline and from its economic stranglehold. America is justly hated for what it is.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Comments

[Kemon]

You understand that not all of us enjoy the freeodm here. But many are going through difficult suffering in other parts of the world right now, and we do need to pray for them too.

[LJ]

Fascinating enumeration of views by Fr. Schall, each of which contains some truth, and each of which breaks down at some point. The comments given are fascinating as well, illustrating the very point of Fr. Schall's article, that there is no common view of America within America.
One comment pointed out that there never was a common view, and with respect to what we know of human nature, I think there is probably a great deal of truth in that.

"The trouble with Scotland is that it is full of Scots!" is the famous line we remember from Longshanks in the movie "Braveheart." To some degree we might say the same here, "the trouble with America is that it is full of Americans!"
In Longshanks view it was the territory he was aiming at, but we may say that in the American case, the prize to be captured is the structure, not the territory per se. In that sense, even the framers and founders had a pretty good idea that what they were proposing was an ideal to be achieved through the structure implemented.
In the beginning they were the elites of the new nation, building and forming the new structure under which the rest would all live. By their own words I think they believed that the structure was not the end in itself but the vehicle to allow the ideal to be achieved, and despite many arguments about the creeds and religious tendencies of those founders today, it was obvious from the writings of the day and from outsiders who viewed the new nation that its success would depend on the moral uprightness of the successors of the elites. And because those successors would be drawn from America at large, the general moral character of the nation would determine the success of the structure and the nation as a whole.

And make no mistake, every nation, at every time is ruled by elites, though libertarians may gnash their teeth. The only difference here was supposed to be the severe restrictions under the law of those elites. But that that should remain the case depended solely upon the moral character of the nation at every level. The great experiment has been undone, and is still being undone not by the failure of the structure. That has worked perfectly. It has been undone by what the framers and founders knew would undo it.

We Catholics understand, even more so than the Protestants who dominated America and its moral outlook for much its history, that our day to day morality compounds to our social morality which compounds to our political morality which ultimately makes or breaks the nation; and, if we are true to our faith, we will recognize our own human weakness and our need for constant conversion of heart, which left unattended will lead any one of us or in this case the majority of us into a place of decision making that produces vast injustices and a degraded moral character generally.

Those are the roots of the evils that every one of the points of view given by Fr. Schall lament, and in the end, the very idealistic goals of the framers and founders are not achieved, not because of the structure but because of human nature and the disintegration of both faith and the constant correction of repentance and forgiveness.

This loss of personal integrity through neglect I think is perhaps inherent in much of what we know of Protestant theology, but is accomplished just as effectively by the deliberate neglect of Catholic teaching at every level within the universe of baptized Catholics, in the homes of Catholics as well as the pulpits and the chanceries.

The navel gazing of Americans today (as opposed to examination of conscience) in this critical political time is severely misdirected in my opinion, but well beyond the reach of the truth without some collective major two-by-four blow to the head, metaphorically speaking, which will cause enough to look up beyond themselves to see the real lesson that history teaches. Many of us believed that 9/11 would be that awakening, but evidently it wasn't enough. Sad as that is, in the meanwhile, all that is accomplished is the steady see-saw of political power wars as the nation slides into the pages of the chronicles of the rise and fall of empires.