Nuns from the Little Sisters of the Poor cross Madison Avenue. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
In 1960, John Courtney Murray, the noted Jesuit philosopher, wrote “We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition.” Among much else, the book was an attempt to refute the anti-Catholic atheist Paul Blanshard, whose “American Freedom and Catholic Power” had been a best seller in 1949. Channeling 19th-century nativists and Know-Nothings, Blanshard had depicted Catholic bishops as conspiring to erect “a state within a state” and insisted that Catholics were by definition “alien” citizens who endangered “the American way of life.”
Murray demonstrated that Catholicism is anchored in the same first principles that are the cornerstones of American constitutionalism and reminded Blanshard and his followers that American Catholics by the millions had shed blood in two world wars to preserve, protect and defend the American way of life. Murray, who died in 1967, was writing at a time when the distance between Catholic leaders and laity could be measured in inches. Even major Democratic Party figures like the 1972 vice-presidential nominee, Sargent Shriver, and the Senate’s liberal lion, Edward Kennedy, were then reliably pro-life in word and vote.
John Courtney Murray gets mentioned only once in Charles J. Chaput’s “Strangers in a Strange Land,” but the book is best understood as an erudite and eloquent attempt to update and apply Murray’s teachings to our time—to grasp what it means now to be “living the Catholic faith in a post-Christian world,” as the subtitle has it. The author, the head of the archdiocese of Philadelphia, addresses himself to “everyday Catholics” who “want to think . . . in a mature Catholic spirit of faith.” But his book should be read by serious-minded people of whatever religious, partisan or intellectual inclination.
Archbishop Chaput draws on a phrase from Exodus 2:22 to capture his core concern: that American Catholics who profess all that the Catechism preaches—whether the classic teachings on abortion and marriage, or the recent teachings on immigration and the death penalty, or “what the Church has always taught” about the divinity of Jesus Christ—are now like “foreigners in our own country.”
PHOTO: WSJ
STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
By Charles J. Chaput
Henry Holt, 271 pages, $26
Henry Holt, 271 pages, $26
It should be said that Archbishop Chaput’s sketch of the “post-Christian world” is not all doom and gloom. From Africa to Asia, he notes, Christian belief is surviving or thriving. By 2030, China may have the largest Christian population in the world. As for Catholicism itself, the Vatican announced in 2016 that church membership, world-wide, had increased by almost 18% in the previous nine years. The archbishop hints that while the media like to portray Pope Francis as a “sunny reformer dragging an ancient institution into the light of the twenty-first century,” the church’s 20% growth in Asia and 40% growth in Africa may stem in part from the fact that, nearly four years into his papacy, he has left intact the church’s doctrines on “sexuality, marriage, and family.” Despite Pope Francis’ progressive outlook, he has “the awkward habit of talking about the devil”—not as a metaphor but as a real and active presence in human affairs.
Still, as Archbishop Chaput is aware, about two-thirds of baptized or “cradle” Catholics in America have either left the faith entirely or are lapsed, a trend that would be even more pronounced were it not for Latino Catholic immigrants. But the soul sickness of our times, along with the falling away from observance, is broader than any one faith. These days, the archbishop writes, “instead of helping the poor, we go shopping. Instead of spending meaningful time with our families and friends, we look for videos on the Internet. We cocoon ourselves in a web of narcotics, from entertainment to self-help gurus to chemicals.”
The fault, he concludes, lies not in our times but in ourselves. The main culprit, for American Catholics, is “our failure to pass along our faith in a compelling way to the generation now taking our place.” He implies that many Catholics who support the church’s teachings are choosing to skirt popular disapproval rather than risk inconvenience or suffer in the slightest way to defend the faith.
A deep problem, Archbishop Chaput observes, is infidelity to the bedrock Catholic teaching that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Many middle-class, ex-urbanized Catholics, for example, complain bitterly when their old urban Catholic schools are closed for lack of funding, but few volunteer or donate to save the schools or join the fight for school choice. As documented in a recent University of Pennsylvania study, each year Philadelphia’s Catholic nonprofit organizations serve millions of people in need (e.g., with homeless shelters and anti-hunger programs) without regard to religion. But only a small fraction of local Catholics support these good works with their own time or money.
In the end, Archbishop Chaput, though often in agreement with John Courtney Murray, differs from him on a few essential points. He is less sanguine than Murray was that liberal democracies can foster respect for orthodox religious belief and protection for institutional religious freedom. “Democracy,” he writes, “tends to unmoor society from the idea of permanent truths. . . . On the one hand, truth becomes relative and contingent on popular whim. But on the other, it becomes radically privatized by the individual citizen.”
Part of the answer, he hopes and believes, is for the church to focus its efforts at renewal on Catholic millennials and other young adults who do not want to join the ranks of “self-absorbed consumers”—who do not want to use “noise and distractions” to contend with post-Christian society’s “lack of shared meaning.” Such hope takes real faith.
Mr. DiIulio directs the Program for Research on Religion and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania.
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pope francis teaches respect for the orthodox church?
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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