You Might Not Think This Is Important For You But You'd Be Wrong

THE RECENT LETTER OF POPE FRANCIS openly, though diplomatically, opposing Trumpism and the pseudo-Catholic "trad-Catholic" looking out for #1 presentation of charity by VD Vance has led to an interesting piece by Michael Sean Winters comparing Pope Francis's letter which tells American Catholics to remember what is good about the American tradition to the infamous letter of Pope Leo XIII that condemned "Americanism" as heresy.  The history is interesting in that it presents how a polemical French translation of an American biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulists, and especially the polemical introduction to it by the French progressive Abbé Félix Klein and the false claims of French reactionaries using that distorted view of Hecker found in a ractionary diatribe using the already somewhat distorted translation and introduction .   You might say that late 19th century "trad-Catholics" were the basis of Leo XIII's conception of "Americanism."  That despite the fact that just about everything in the "trad-Catholics'" case was false if not a fabric of lies.   I think that one of the most salient features of today's "traditional Catholicism" is that it is similarly riddled with blatant lies, many of them told by Bishops and Cardinals of the USCCB. 

It's interesting in itself, showing, I'd assert, how damaging the self-imposed sealing in of the papacy in the wake of the loss of the Papal States was to Catholicism for generations.  Another is the damage that the Euro-centrism of the Vatican has been and how until very recently the Vatican has been at the mercy of often dishonest ideological parties - generally conservative - in its understanding of the world.   If you intentionally cut yourself off, you only have yourself to blame when you don't understand things outside of your chosen sphere of influence.

The Unfortunate Consequences Of Calling Very Different Things By The Same Word

I would disagree with the article by Michael Sean Winters about one important thing, American liberalism - WHICH MUST ALWAYS BE DISTINGUISHED FROM EUROPEAN LIBERALISM - isn't a product of Madisonian theory, it's a product of People who took the radical egalitarianism of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus seriously.  American liberalism can't be divorced from the major issues that comprise it, abolitionism, Womens' suffrage, the rights of minorities, the rights of workers and none of those are the product of either the thinking of Jefferson or Madison, they certainly are not derived from the Constitution which is the very thing against which those movements have had to struggle and still do, today.  

Marilynne Robinson's theory that American liberalism is a product of People who took the commentary on economic and social justice in the Geneva Bible seriously may be a bit exaggerated - I think the very early non-Calvinist anabaptist calls for the abolition of slavery are a major part of that history - but she is much closer to what really happened than the common received POV that American liberalism  was an "enlightenment" product.   And I think that really is a major and important issue in the continuation of the American tradition of liberalism and its possible prospering into the future.  And it is an issue in the repeated failure of "liberalism" of the European kind in its failure to deliver economic and social equality. 

The 18th century European, largely French construction of "liberalism" in laissez-faire economics and libertarian liberty - as opposed to morally responsible freedom in the traditional American meaning of the word - is something that really is very  important to whether or not those issues that comprise that American liberal tradition succeed.  I think one of the major failures in American politics of the past 45 years is the European style liberalism of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as opposed to a more traditional American style liberalism of Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter.  That Clinton and Biden were a product of the Ivys and, in Clinton's case Oxford is, in fact, important.   Biden and Carter aren't a product of those training grounds so congenial to oligarchy and its precursor supposed "meritocracy." That the corporate media went far harder against Carter and Biden - which resulted in them having single terms - is, I hold a product of their far different and humane liberalism, though, of course, other issues impinge on that as well.  I think the role of Biden's disastrous and, in the end, morally indefensible support for the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the State of Israeli are one such major issue that is unrelated to what I'm talking about here.   I think that the role that foreign entanglements, largely encouraged by economic elites and Euro-style "liberals" in the failures of Democratic presidents radically egalitarian domestic programs going back to LBJ is a major and woefully understudied phenomenon.   The role of the Republican-fascist abandonment of Ukraine is another issue, altogether, due to the Republicans' benefiting from the patronage and aid of Putin, as the Roberts Court opened up our politics USING CLASSICAL 18TH CENTURY NOTIONS OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH-PRESS to that in major ways after they were warned about the consequences of doing so.   Those "justices" who voted for Citizens United have the blood of the Ukrainan People on them.   Several of them including Roberts "trad-Catholics."

I think American academic habits which Winters demonstrates in the article share something of the late 19th century Vatican in the conventional thinking about America, in that they accept too readily that European definition of "liberalism" when the distinction between that amoral and ultimately anti-egalitarian and so anti-democratic ideology - the ideology of most of the media "liberals" - is destructive of the egalitarian-democratic basis of traditional American liberalism.   That a number of neo-fascists in American have styled themselves as "classical liberals" is an important thing to understand.  

I do think this is important for non-Catholics as well as Catholics to understand.   

If, as I fear is likely, the papacy of Francis is about to end, it's especially important who replaces him.   You might not think it does but it is of major importance in the world.  Any future Pope who is on the side of the Gospel, the Law and the Prophets will have to deal with the heresy of American style "traditional Catholicism" a major force in American fascism and the spread of fascism around Europe and countries in the Americas.  But I can't go into that much right now.