I’m not comfortable with the way today’s America works, but I think this is a good time to be an American and a Catholic. That’s because part of my job is easier now, than it would have been in my youth.
Granted, experiencing “increasing opposition” from The Establishment1 isn’t comfortable. But honestly: why would I want their approval?
- Vatican II and Making Sense
- “…The End of Christendom … Not a Gloomy Picture….”
- “…Great and Wonderful Days in Which to be Alive….”
- Justice, Charity, Respect: Sounds Good to Me
Vatican II and Making Sense
“Time for
‘Another Wake-Up Call‘”
Mary Ann Glendon, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See,
Address upon receiving the Gaudium et Spes Award,
States Dinner, August 5 2025;
Columbia Magazine
(October 2025)“Recently, I was somewhat surprised to read in a Catholic magazine that Vatican II is old history for most Catholics today — something like the Council of Trent. But I’m sure at least some of you recall what a wake-up call Vatican II was for many of us who grew up at a time when it was all too easy to get the idea that the role of the laity was to ‘pray, pay and obey.‘ Then, all of a sudden, we found out that, whatever else we’re doing in our lives, we’re also supposed to be transforming the whole political, economic and cultural arena in a Christian spirit! The temporal sphere is so much the responsibility of the laity, they said, that no one else can do the job….
…
“…Now, some of you are probably thinking that if we had paid more attention in catechism class, we would have known that’s always been the mission of the laity. That’s the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples…
…
“…The mission was the same, but the challenges were new. And most of us, frankly, weren’t quite ready for those challenges. We weren’t ready for what Fulton Sheen called ‘the end of Christendom’ — not the end of Christianity, not the end of the Church, but the end of a society where economic, political and social life was permeated to a great extent by Christian principles. So, it really was time for the laity to wake up….
…
“…Building the civilization of life and love is first and foremost a matter of reaching hearts and minds. And that work will never end.…”
[emphasis mine]
The Second Vatican Council met each year, from 1962 to 1965. I wasn’t a Catholic at the time, so the Second Vatican Council didn’t make all that much of an impression on me.
Now and then I ran across slapstick in the news with the catchphrase “in the spirit of Vatican Two”. And sometimes I’d read something slightly more substantial about what the documents actually said. Very slightly.
By the time I became a Catholic, decades later, a few folks said they were the only real Catholics left. Mainly because they didn’t like what they’d heard about Vatican II, and that if the Pope wasn’t denouncing it, he wasn’t really Catholic.
You can’t argue with logic like that.
Me? I became a Catholic because I think Jesus hadn’t been lying to the Apostles. And I finally realized who currently holds the authority Jesus gave Peter. (Matthew 16:13–19; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 882-889)
Besides, I’ve read some of the Vatican II documents. They make sense. So does “Humanae Vitae”, written after Vatican II by Pope St. Paul VI. And that’s another topic.2
As for taking Jesus seriously, I agree with Simon Peter:
“Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?’
Simon Peter answered him, ‘Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.'”
(John 6:67–69)
“…The End of Christendom … Not a Gloomy Picture….”
I’ve tried tracking down that Archbishop Fulton Sheen quote. What I’ve found agrees that he said it in 1974: at a conference, on a television show, or maybe both. This is the closest I’ve found to an extended version of the quote, giving some context:
“In 1974, Archbishop Fulton Sheen said in a conference, ‘We are at the end of Christendom. Not of Christianity, not of the Church, but of Christendom. Now what is meant by Christendom? Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is ending — we’ve seen it die.’ But he went on to say, ‘These are great and wonderful days in which to be alive. … It is not a gloomy picture — it is a picture of the Church in the midst of increasing opposition from the world. And therefore live your lives in the full consciousness of this hour of testing, and rally close to the heart of Christ.”
(“From Christendom to Apostolic Mission Quotes” , From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age by University of Mary; via GoodReads) [emphasis mine]
I’m about 56 years younger than Archbishop Sheen, but I remember what passed for “Christendom” in America.
Although living in today’s world doesn’t consistently feel good, I emphatically and sincerely do NOT yearn for ‘the good old days’.
It wasn’t just Bible Epics preaching the Gospel According to Cecil B. DeMille.3
It was the impression that Christians were, or should be, upwardly-mobile folks with English-sounding names who went to the right church — who, intentionally or not, helped launch the Sixties counter-culture.
I will admit to a bias. I’m one of ‘those crazy kids’ who thought that buying stuff I don’t need with money I don’t have to impress people I don’t like made no sense. At all.
An Assumption and “The Apotheosis of Washington”
“Train the young in the way they should go;
even when old, they will not swerve from it.”
(Proverbs 22:6)
One of my daughters suggested that the current mess came partly from misplaced trust.
I think she’s got a point.
Folks who believed that America was a “Christian” country might have felt that delegating responsibility for teaching their kids about our faith made sense. Particularly if they hadn’t learned all that much about it themselves.
Why more didn’t balk at goofy conflations of American folklore and Christian belief like “The Apotheosis of Washington”:4 that, I don’t know. I do think that there was, at best, an appalling lack of quality control when it came to passing on the faith.
“…Great and Wonderful Days in Which to be Alive….”
“We are at the end of Christendom. Not of Christianity, not of the Church, but of Christendom. … These are great and wonderful days in which to be alive. … It is not a gloomy picture — it is a picture of the Church in the midst of increasing opposition from the world.…”
(Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1974)) [emphasis mine]
I’m not sure about the extent to which Christian principles actually inspired “economic, political, [and] social life” in the generations before 1974.
Christian-sounding slogans, yes; husbands and fathers joining the ‘right’ church in their quest for career success, yes. But actually putting ideas like “love your neighbor” into practice? Well, maybe. What I remember is a society with seriously disordered priorities.
So yes, I think this is a good time to be alive.
This is certainly not a comfortable era, for anyone.
But the more that I don’t have to explain why being a Christian doesn’t necessarily mean being a particular sort of American, the better I like it.
Goals, and the Best News Humanity’s Ever Had
Udo Keppler, Puck. (1902)
“Uncle Sam — It’s all right! There’s no fighting!
The noise you hear is just my family celebrating!”
On the other hand, being an American doesn’t, or shouldn’t, get in the way of being a Christian and a Catholic. And I shouldn’t put off ‘love of country’ until the country I live in is perfect.
“… ‘Our true native land is heaven, where the kingdom of God is in full bloom,’ the supreme chaplain (Archbishop Lori) affirmed. Nonetheless, he added, ‘We must love our country as it is, not as we may wish it to be … This doesn’t mean we should be complacent or settle for the status quo. It only means we can’t defer love of country until everything is shipshape’….”
(“125 Years of Patriotic Service” , Columbia staff, Columbia Magazine (April 2025)) [emphasis mine]
Now I’d better get back to what I should be doing.
I’m one of the Catholic laity: folks who are Catholic, but not priests, deacons, or members of a religious order. Part of my job is “transforming the whole political, economic and cultural arena in a Christian spirit”.
Okay, so what does that mean? What should a transformed society look like?
For starters, it would be a society where all people matter, and each person matters: every person, no matter how young, old, sick, or healthy the person is. (Catechism, 2258-2317)
That’s a pretty tall order. I’m working on learning to act that way, myself. It’s not easy.
Backing up a bit, another part of my job as a Catholic is sharing the best news humanity’s ever had, with anyone willing to listen.
God loves us, and wants to adopt us. All of us. (Matthew 5:44–5; John 1:12–14, 3:17; Romans 8:14–17; ; Ephesians 1:3–5; Peter 2:3–4; Catechism, 1-3, 27-30, 52, 1825, 1996)
That’s very good news indeed, because we “…all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ….” (Catechism, 389, 405, 407-412, 1701-1707, 1811, 1949)
I’ve said that before, and expect that I will again.
Justice, Charity, Respect: Sounds Good to Me
It’s probably obvious, but the status quo isn’t acceptable. Even stalwart defenders of today’s Establishment seem aware that we need change.
We can’t go back to some imagined ‘good old days’. Even if we could, I’d argue against repeating mistakes that landed us in today’s pickle barrel.
That leaves us one direction: forward, building a society that’s better than what we’ve got. I’m convinced that this is possible. Easy, no. Possible, yes.
As for what that society would look like, some of the basics —
Justice and acts of charity, along with respecting humanity’s “transcendent dignity”, are all good ideas. So is building a society where justice, charity and respect are the norm. Here’s where it gets difficult. It starts in me, with an ongoing “inner conversion”. (Catechism, 1886-1889, 1928-1942, 2419-2442)
Like I said, not at all easy. But I think the effort is worthwhile.
More of the same, with a (very) little more detail:
- “Remembering a Favorite Fourth, Looking Ahead” (July 5, 2025)
- “The Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and the Big Picture” (March 22, 2025)
- “Principles, Priorities, Politics: and Being Catholic” (September 21, 2024)
- “Advent 2021: Another Year of Our Long Watch” (December 4, 2021)
1 Their quirks and preferences change, but every era has them:
- Wikipedia
2 A little background, personal and otherwise:
- Who I am, why I think being Catholic makes sense
- My take on popes, politics, and two millennia of wildly improbable survival; briefly
- “Principles, Priorities, Politics: and Being Catholic” (September 21, 2024)
- “Infallibility?” (July 30, 2017)
- Wikipedia
- Vatican
- Documents of the Second Vatican Council
- “Humanae Vitae”
Pope St. Paul VI Encyclical Letter (July 25, 1968)
- Wikipedia
4 Excessive enthusiasm, putting it mildly, for a remarkable American:
- Wikipedia
- “‘Not a Man but a God’”
The Apotheosis of Gilbert Stuart’s Athenaeum Portrait of George Washington
Adam Greenhalgh, Abrstract, Winterthur Portfolio; Volume 41, Number 4; University of Chicago (Winter 2007)
Like This? Share It:
Discover more from A Catholic Citizen in America
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
