Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States

Description

cited in Charles Coulombe, Puritan's Empire

Dr. John C. Rao is currently professor at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary (STAS), Virginia, 🇺🇸 (SSPX North American seminary)

Introduction

09/23/25Introduction : 1

subtle and effective transformation of the United States into a new religion

No, this isn't exactly the heresy.

I. Patriotism and the American Soul

09/23/25I. Patriotism and the American Soul : 12

glorification of the computer technician over the saint, media hype over substantive issues, and mass-produced hamburgers over the creations of the great composers

II. The Americanist Heresy

09/23/25II. The Americanist Heresy : 23

Americanism is a religion that adores the United States as the incarnation of the secularized Puritan vision of paradise.

09/23/25II. The Americanist Heresy : 30

the two-sided character of the error, secularized Puritan and Anglo-Saxon conservative, combined together ultimately in one, disguised, fideistic faith, works against a complete study of its essence and mode of operation

Just ∵ it may be fideist, doesn't mean its study need be.

IV. The Opposing Camps

09/23/25IV. The Opposing Camps : 47

he did not understand that they would be living off of the diminishing capital of the past as they stripped themselves of all reference to it.

09/24/25IV. The Opposing Camps : 53

parochial, practical necessity in the United States

V. The Blindness of a Conquered People

09/24/25V. The Blindness of a Conquered People : 58

Rome did not realize how “practical”, “pragmatic” Americanism could suck whole nations into what was effectively a nominalist, naturalist, modernist wind tunnel!

C.S. Peirce against this; cf. his pragmaticism (≠ pragmatism).