The American Catholic Church

Something some people truly wish to see--so sayeth the Anchoress.  Excerpts:

...Julie is on to something when she ties Americanism to Disobedience and finds something troubling in the mix. Our ingrained independence doesn’t understand the idea of something not being a democracy, subject to a campaign and a vote. Someone sent a rant to me the other day, written by a Catholic who was insisting that if “the Spirit of Vatican II” is not honored, then the Roman Church may no longer be considered as being influenced by the Holy Spirit.

This, of course, is an opening salvo in a move toward schism and the creation of an “American Catholic Church” that some would love to see.
But if the Holy Spirit is indeed moving the more enlightened toward schism, he is being awfully insular about it; outside of North America such a thing is not seriously being imagined. In Europe, people either leave the church or remain; in Africa and Asia the church is of course growing and determined in its orthodoxy. Only in America do you see this insistence that a “spirit of Vatican II” that arose in the early 1970′s — and that often has nothing to do with the actual documents of VCII — must flourish; it (and these proponents) must increase, while Rome must decrease.

A well-connected minority of these Catholics won’t be happy until they schism, and become everything the Church of England has become, although, for little while — energized by newness, and praised unto vomitous excess by the mainstream press — their pews will be fuller than hers; fuller ever, perhaps, than Rome’s.

I can see it happening, because American politics and religion is too closely entwined. As the government increasingly encroaches upon religious freedom in service to secular political agendas, there will be a point where these rising interests converge — everything that rises must converge — and the “American Catholic Church” will be only too glad to receive the bounty of government fines and levies against the Roman one, and to bring their new church into conformity with the government. In the “spirit,” of course, of Vatican II.

I love the Second Vatican Council; reading its documents helped me find my way back to church. But I somehow doubt that the Holy Spirit’s intention was to align the Bride of Christ, which is the Church, with secular governments, interests and perspectives. It never has been, before. Quite the opposite, in fact are we not supposed to be a sign of contradiction to the world?...

Every Catholic has an obligation these days to try to familiarize themselves with the teaching of Vatican II, and then to follow the call of Lumen Gentium to holiness.