And vice versa.
While church attendance figures are much higher in the US than in Western Europe, what does that prove? In itself, nothing at all. What is being inculcated, celebrated and even worshipped is very often a collection of economic, social, cultural and political prejudices that the participants have simply declared to be Christianity, despite their fanatically and even hysterically anti-Christian (and especially anti-Catholic) origins and content, which former is very often denied outright.
In Western Europe, by contrast, no country has on paper, and few have in practice, the American system of abortion on demand at every stage of pregnancy (for that, one has to look to America's new best friends in Eastern Europe).
There are 10 sacral monarchies (11 if one includes the Vatican), monarchy being an institution for which no purely secular argument can ever be constructed. National events are routinely conducted in the form and course of church services.
Church schools, maintained at public expense, are normal in many European countries, while at least broadly Christian Religious Education and (although this law is widely flouted) a daily collective act of Christian worship are compulsory in all British schools.
In Germany, the churches are actually the largest employers after the several tiers of government, with hardly anyone opting out of the church tax system, with the churches routinely providing numerous services of the kind that provoke uproar when suggested in the US under the rubric of "compassionate conservatism", and with three tiers of government funding an annual Kirchentag (Catholic and Protestant in alternate years) from which no major political figure from Left to Right would dare be absent.
Anglican bishops sit as of right in the British Parliament, and while the House of Lords might one day be abolished entirely, no one seriously suggests that it might ever remain with only the bishops removed.
So one could go on.
But there was never a pro-life majority under the Republicans. Yet there is now, under a President who owes his position to those who on the same day reaffirmed traditional marriage in California and Florida. Who on the same day voted not to liberalise gambling in Missouri or Ohio. Who keep the black and Catholic churches (especially) going from coast to coast. And who include a large and growing section of the white Evangelicals.
No wonder that he has called the Freedom of Choice Act "not a high priority" (and we all know what a politician means when he says that) while more than hinting at Notre Dame that his high priorities did include the Pregnant Women Support Act. A Democratic initiative. Of course. Indeed, one might even say a Christian Democratic initiative.
Truly, America is becoming more European.
Thanks be to God.
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I do not know what you mean about "sacral monarchies" since most monarchs have sworn in on secular ceremonies or reign in countries where there is no official church (notably Spain where the Church acting as a voice piece and buttress for Franco led to its disestablishment).
ReplyDeleteThe King of Sweden has now gone through a phase of being head of the national church to being obliged to being a member of the national church (after the governorship was stripped from him in the constitutional reforms of the 1970's) to having a free choice in his faith (after the disestablishment of the national church at the millenium).
Keep God out of it or you get bizarre situations like in Argentina where Carlos Menem was forced to convert from Islam to the Catholic church in an effort to climb the greasy pole. This was due to a ban on non-catholics being allowed to be President till a few years ago.
Interestingly in India the holder of the office of President has been at various times not only a Hindu but a Sikh and indeed a Muslim - like the previous incumbant. I am surprised you were not angry at the idea of a muslim being head of a nuclear power and supreme commander of its armed forces. And he helped personally to develop India's nuclear weapons. He should have been stopped!!!
Why did the Queen not launch a strike on this man?
Monarchy is sacral by definition. That is why we have one. And that is why America does not have one.
ReplyDeleteWhile the succession to the Throne can be altered by Parliament (and thus effectively by the elected House of Commons), nevertheless the ordinary operation of the monarchical system gives a direct constitutional role to God Who is active in His world, and that system is otherwise indefensible.
Thus is embodied both a check on any excessively high view of the capabilities of Originally Sinful human nature, and a check on any excessively low view of the capabilities of human nature redeemed in Christ, the God-Man.
It is no wonder that everywhere still having the Queen as Head of State has a Christian majority, and that the Great Council of Chiefs of Fiji (drawn from that country’s Melanesian, Christian population) continues to recognise Her Majesty as Paramount Chief long after Fiji (with its Indian, overwhelmingly non-Christian majority) bloodily removed Her Majesty as Head of State.
Of course, there is both explictly Catholic and explicitly Protestant republican thought, too, predating the Revolution. I assume that if it survives in practice anywhere, then it does so at cantonal level in Switzerland.
But since the American Republic predates the French Revolution, that Republic is in principle capable of conformity to those traditions.
We're not becoming more Christian, though.
ReplyDeleteSince 1990, those of us declaring that we have no religion have doubled our percentage of the population. We're up to 15% now. In some states, we're 1/3 of the population. And we're the only religious category whose percentage is currently growing in every state.
Christians, including nominal Christians, have declined to about 3/4 of the population. The American people are generally becoming less religious and more secular.
http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/2009/03/catholics_on_the_move_non-religious_on_the_rise.html
Whereas here in Christendom we still have all these things. And so many more besides.
ReplyDeleteFor example, Portugal re-affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman right when Connecticut didn't (despite already having a civil partnerships law).
On the sacral monarchy point, it is in Australia that they recently decided to keep the Lord's Prayer at the start of each day's parliamentary business, and in Quebec that they quite recently voted unanimously to retain the Crucifix between the Speaker's Chair and the Royal Coat of Arms.
God's Own Countries, indeed.