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Showing posts with label Liberal Catholics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberal Catholics. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2015
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Rendering unto Caesar - the Kulturkampf Returns.
During at least the period of 1870 to 1945 in Germany, an attentive reader of history can see in stark detail a tension - and then split - in the loyalties of the German Catholic community. With the establishment of the German empire in 1870, Catholics were presented with the question of whether there primary loyalty lay with the Reich or with the Church, and, particularly, its Italian leader "over the mountains."
Catholics who found that their primary loyalty lay with the church were identified as "ultramontane."
Those who found that their primary loyalty lay in their German identity tended toward a departure from the Catholic church. The first way that this departure expressed itself in the wake of Vatican I was the foundation of the "Old Catholic Church," which rejected the dogma of papal infallibility. We shouldn't lose sight of the political dimension of this event. The creation of a German national "Catholic" church played into the contemporary issues of German nationalism which had achieved a particular resonance at the time: both Vatican I's declaration of papal infallibility and the establishment of the German Reich happened in 1870.
The creation of the German Reich in 1870 also inaugurated the anti-clerical, anti-Catholic Kulturkampf. The Kulturkampf was a liberal project. German liberals throught that their philosophy required them to inveigh against Catholicism as superstition and alien. A thread that ran through liberal Kulturkampf arguments were attacks on multi-national Catholic institutions such as monastaries and the Jesuits.
The same conflict between ultramontane Catholicism and German national identity existed in the Nazi movement. Although the late Christopher Hitchens like to sneer that "Fascism was right wing Catholicism," in German the opposite was true. Nazis who had once been Catholic were invariably - virtually always - apostate Catholic, but, moreover, arch-anti-Catholics. Himmler echoed the Kulturkampf in his fear of Jesuits and his anti-clerical plan to dismantle the Catholic Church. Both Hitler and Goebbels demonstrated in their conduct their apostasy by their marriage of divorced Protestants; the key to seeing their apostasy - strategically ignored by Hitchens - was not that the women were Protestant, but that they were divorced. Anyone with a dime-store knowledge of Catholicism has some inkling of the problems that Catholics have in marrying divorcees without an anullment.
Protestant Nazis, in contrast, were able to remain Protestants in good standing because German Protestantism didn't present the choice between loyalty to a German identity and loyalty to a transnational identity. Goring remained a church-going Lutheran - and in fact the head of the Prussian Lutheran Church - duing his time in state leadership. Hitler was recorded as saying that only a good Protestant could be a good German and vice versa, and that he felt more akin to Protestantism than to Catholicism, albeit he never formally apostasized.
We see the same dynamics in America today. The recent contraception kerfuffle, for example, was clearly a "wedge issue," but a wedger for whom? One thing that the issue was intended to "wedge" was Catholics and non-Catholics, but, probably, the more important target was liberal and Democrat Catholics from "ultramontane" or "conservative" Catholics. Another thing the issue was intended to "wedge" or promote was anti-clericalism.
There has been a conflict of loyalties in the liberal Catholic community for years because particular Catholic teachings conflict with liberal "dogma," such as teachings on bioethics, sexuality and abortion. Democrat Catholics have been "apostasizing" in fact if not in name insofar as they have been required to make a choice as to where their primary loyalty lies.
The following story from Reuters points out that things are probably going to get worse as the Catholic Church may start forcing the issue of "primary loyalty" as much as "liberalism" has through pressure to conform to its particularist and jealous ideology.
During at least the period of 1870 to 1945 in Germany, an attentive reader of history can see in stark detail a tension - and then split - in the loyalties of the German Catholic community. With the establishment of the German empire in 1870, Catholics were presented with the question of whether there primary loyalty lay with the Reich or with the Church, and, particularly, its Italian leader "over the mountains."
Catholics who found that their primary loyalty lay with the church were identified as "ultramontane."
Those who found that their primary loyalty lay in their German identity tended toward a departure from the Catholic church. The first way that this departure expressed itself in the wake of Vatican I was the foundation of the "Old Catholic Church," which rejected the dogma of papal infallibility. We shouldn't lose sight of the political dimension of this event. The creation of a German national "Catholic" church played into the contemporary issues of German nationalism which had achieved a particular resonance at the time: both Vatican I's declaration of papal infallibility and the establishment of the German Reich happened in 1870.
The creation of the German Reich in 1870 also inaugurated the anti-clerical, anti-Catholic Kulturkampf. The Kulturkampf was a liberal project. German liberals throught that their philosophy required them to inveigh against Catholicism as superstition and alien. A thread that ran through liberal Kulturkampf arguments were attacks on multi-national Catholic institutions such as monastaries and the Jesuits.
The same conflict between ultramontane Catholicism and German national identity existed in the Nazi movement. Although the late Christopher Hitchens like to sneer that "Fascism was right wing Catholicism," in German the opposite was true. Nazis who had once been Catholic were invariably - virtually always - apostate Catholic, but, moreover, arch-anti-Catholics. Himmler echoed the Kulturkampf in his fear of Jesuits and his anti-clerical plan to dismantle the Catholic Church. Both Hitler and Goebbels demonstrated in their conduct their apostasy by their marriage of divorced Protestants; the key to seeing their apostasy - strategically ignored by Hitchens - was not that the women were Protestant, but that they were divorced. Anyone with a dime-store knowledge of Catholicism has some inkling of the problems that Catholics have in marrying divorcees without an anullment.
Protestant Nazis, in contrast, were able to remain Protestants in good standing because German Protestantism didn't present the choice between loyalty to a German identity and loyalty to a transnational identity. Goring remained a church-going Lutheran - and in fact the head of the Prussian Lutheran Church - duing his time in state leadership. Hitler was recorded as saying that only a good Protestant could be a good German and vice versa, and that he felt more akin to Protestantism than to Catholicism, albeit he never formally apostasized.
We see the same dynamics in America today. The recent contraception kerfuffle, for example, was clearly a "wedge issue," but a wedger for whom? One thing that the issue was intended to "wedge" was Catholics and non-Catholics, but, probably, the more important target was liberal and Democrat Catholics from "ultramontane" or "conservative" Catholics. Another thing the issue was intended to "wedge" or promote was anti-clericalism.
There has been a conflict of loyalties in the liberal Catholic community for years because particular Catholic teachings conflict with liberal "dogma," such as teachings on bioethics, sexuality and abortion. Democrat Catholics have been "apostasizing" in fact if not in name insofar as they have been required to make a choice as to where their primary loyalty lies.
The following story from Reuters points out that things are probably going to get worse as the Catholic Church may start forcing the issue of "primary loyalty" as much as "liberalism" has through pressure to conform to its particularist and jealous ideology.
Vatican officials seldom single out political leaders who differ with the Church on issues like abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research. But now that the Vatican’s highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City — at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.
Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.
He said Biden and Pelosi, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.”
Pelosi drew U.S. bishops’ scorn for saying in a television interview last month that the Church itself had long debated when human life begins. Biden is a practicing Catholic who also supports abortion rights and analysts have said he could help woo wavering Catholics into Obama’s fold. Both argue that they cannot impose their religious views on others.
Burke said pro-life Democrats were “rare” and that it saddened him that the party that helped “our immigrant parents and grandparents” prosper in America had changed so much over the years.
Burke made headlines as archbishop of St. Louis for his public attacks on public figures who strayed from Catholic teaching. He suggested during the 2004 presidential campaign that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic, should be denied communion because of his views on abortion. Several bishops said at the time they would not give him communion and the media staked out churches where he attended Mass to see if he received it.
“Lately, I’ve noticed that other bishops are coming to this position,” Burke told Avvenire, which is owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.
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