Lux Mundi
An ongoing Ethika Politika editorial symposium.
The ‘harmony’ between the goals and practices of American culture and those of the Catholic Church was superficial. Now the worth of secular principles is becoming visible, and we must face them for what they are.
Reflective Christians might feel politically homeless in America right now. But if they do, they might finally be in a place to ask the more substantial question that Christians have always asked, not republican or democrat, but “Catholic instead of what?”
The current system will not work, and the crises we see are merely the working out of its internal contradictions. Obama will not make it work and Romney would only have made it worse. Change will come, whether we will it or not. The only real question is whether the change will come from collapse, or whether we will direct the change to better ends through peaceful means. But the only romantic impossibility is the status quo.
Tocqueville would conclude that what’s changed the most since the America he wrote about is the breakdown of the religious-based American consensus on the limits of self-obsessive individualism. His America was all about chastity, marital fidelity, what’s best for children, and common moral duties. This consensus has broken down, and the resulting devolution of marriage into a contractual entitlement devoid of real duties or even duration is the real cause of the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage.
After the election of 2012, we have two choices: to pursue a Catholic culture that is both traditional and dynamic, or to place our hope even more in a conservatism that promises only increasingly short-lived victories and ultimate confusion.
