As I noted in "From Luther to Clinton to Gore" some eighteen months ago now, there are a number of intellectual currents dating from the time of the Renaissance that have helped to shape the modern world (and the modern worldview held by so many of our bishops). The quintessence of these intellectual currents was expressed by Niccolo Machiavelli, who sought to undermine and overthrow the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as the basis for statecraft. It was the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ which restrained the tendency to absolutism in the Middle Ages; rulers and potentates understood that the Church had the right to interpose herself if they proposed to do things-or had indeed done things-inimical to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and/or the conditions in society conducive to the salvation of souls. As influential as Machiavelli was (Warren Carroll notes in The Cleaving of Christendom that Thomas Cromwell kept a copy of The Prince by his bed!), he could not have been successful ultimately had it not been for Martin Luther and King Henry VIII. Thus, the state of the American Church is directly influenced by the currents which began in the Renaissance and the spirit of Protestantism. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that many bishops and their "theological" advisers are post-Christians, men who really do not believe that the Incarnation and Redemption matter in the lives of men and their societies. Thus, it is important to review once more the nature of Protestantism, for it is in Protestantism that we find many of the roots of the problems facing the Church in the United States of America.

   The Protestant Revolt, launched by the then Father Martin Luther in 1517, set human history on a course which resulted in the rise of secularism and secular political ideologies as the foundation of social life. Why? Well, it is really quite simple. The revolution against the authority of the Church instituted by our Lord Himself upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, help to usher in the spirit of individualism as the basis of Christianity. Luther contended that individuals did not need any "guide" to help them understand Sacred Scripture, which he believed was the sole source of Divine revelation. The rejection of the authority of the true Church to be our mater and magistra turned the world of Christendom upside down. Luther helped to give rebirth to the old lie of Satan, first offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden, that we creatures are the equal of the Creator. A man of enormous pride, Luther did not want to submit himself to any authority, especially ecclesiastical authority, on the face of this earth. By asserting himself pridefully, however, Luther's pride was the exact opposite of the humility demonstrated by the Divine Redeemer, Who submitted Himself voluntarily to the authority of His own creatures, the Blessed Mother and His foster-father, Saint Joseph, in the Holy Family in Nazareth. Luther did not understand-and wound up rejecting-the fact that our Lord humbled Himself for thirty years at home in Nazareth in order to teach us that we must submit ourselves in humility to the authority of His Mystical Bride, Holy Mother Church, in all that pertains to our salvation individually and to the administration of justice founded in Divine Truth collectively in the institutions of civil governance.

   Protestant individualism went through many mutations over the course of 259 years between Luther's posting his ninety-five theses and the Declaration of Independence. Human pride being what it is, however, individualism of any strip leads people into thinking that all forms of authority, whether ecclesiastical or civil, are founded upon human consent. Certain Protestant sects, for example, believe in congregationalism, the belief which asserts that there exists a strict equality among the community of believers. Thus, individualism breeds the paradox of egalitarianism, which asserts that everyone is equal in authority to everyone else. This is the exact opposite of what Holy Mother Church had taught is the basis of personal sanctity and social order. While we are individuals who have free wills, we are supposed to surrender ourselves freely to the authority our Lord has placed over us for our sanctification and instruction, and that is based upon our recognition (certainly not consent) of the fact that our Lord established a hierarchy to sanctify us and to teach us. We are not automatons and we are not all equal in authority to each other (something that we are supposed to learn in the cradle of the family, where children learn that they are not the equal in authority to their parents). Protestantism denies all of this. Many American bishops believe that they are equal in authority to the Vicar of Christ, who they believe has no right to remove them or to question what they do in their own "local churches." They do not believe in the sacerdotal, hierarchical priesthood instituted by Our Lord at the Last Supper, and they do not believe that truth of its nature is unchanging. This is the fruit of failing to recognize the dangers posed to the Faith by a Protesant and Masonic culture.

   However, Protestantism contains within itself many paradoxes. It is founded upon the fallacious belief that mutually contradictory beliefs and interpretations can all be simultaneously true. Protestantism is an absurdity. As Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei in 1880:

"To hold therefore that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and in practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points, cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God."

   The Founders of this nation, for example, were influenced by many beliefs and ideas. But the enduring heritage of the Protestant Revolt-with its emphasis upon individualism, civil liberty, civil peace, religious indifferentism and egalitarianism-led them to believe that the only way for people of divergent religious beliefs to live together in peace was to pursue the Roman concept of "civic virtue." This is the prevailing spirit of ecumenism in this country, which, sadly, has the endorsement of the Holy Father himself. But it is not possible in the normal course of human events for people, whether acting individually or collectively in society, to pursue virtue successfully over the course of a long period of time without cooperating with the sacraments instituted by our Lord - and entrusted by Him to Holy Mother Church for their valid administration - to do so. It is difficult enough with sanctifying grace to pursue virtue, fallen human nature being what it is, subject to a varieties of temptations; it is next-to-impossible for an individual to do so without sanctifying grace, and absolutely impossible for a society to do so. Alas, this is one of the principal lies of the Americanist spirit that is the progeny of Protestantism: the recrudescence of Pelagianism, old heresy which contends that human beings are self-redemptive, that they can be good on their own power without any action by God working through His sacraments.

   Another aspect of Protestantism which influenced the Founding of this nation-and still influences its political and cultural life today-is its stress on Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) as the only source of Divine revelation. The Church teaches us that there are two sources of Divine revelation, Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. And she maintains that she has been entrusted by Christ Himself to use Sacred Tradition as the basis of interpreting applying Sacred Scripture. Protestantism relies only upon the written word, however, just as the Americanist spirit relies upon written documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) as the answer to all questions about civil governance. This has led to the triumph of the spirit of legal positivism, which asserts that there is no law above human law, that whatever a majority (be that majority popular or legislative or judicial in origin) deems to be legal is, ipso facto, moral. Even Catholic jurists such as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia believe that the U.S. Constitution must be interpreted only in light of the words it contains, not by using the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. He told a communion breakfast in 1997 that it is his duty as an American judge interpreting American law to use only the language of such law. Thus, since abortion is neither prohibited nor permitted by the Constitution, a state legislature is free to enact whatever legislation it considers appropriate on the matter. Such a positivistic view is the direct result of the Protestant reliance upon a written document, the Bible, as the only source of Divine revelation, denying the reality of Sacred Tradition and of the Church as the repository of that revelation. But isn't it the case that even "pro-life" candidates, such as Alan Keyes, assert that we oppose abortion because it is in opposition to our American principles, especially as they are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? A slavish attachment to a written document, especially those which do not mention the Divine Redeemer and which reject the authority of His true Church, reinforces the spirit of individualism and of egalitarianism, thus creating and reinforcing a vicious cycle of the delusion of human autonomy from Christ and His Church as the basis of electoral politics and public policy. That Archbishop John Carroll and one his most notorious Americanist successors, James Cardinal Gibbons, embraced this spirit of American secular constitutionalism speaks volumes about the substitution of the profane for the sacred. Even many "pro-life" bishops embrace the schema of the American Founding uncritically without realizing how it has contributed directly to the deterioration of both our civil and ecclesiastical situations.

   The time of Christendom during the Middle Ages was far from perfect. There were wars and scandals and heresies and periods of corruption within the highest quarters of the Church. Despite the problems, however, it was the period in which culture was informed by the true faith, a time when, as Pope Leo XIII noted,

"when States were governed by the principles of Gospel teaching. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people; permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or even obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is-beyond all question, in large measure, through religion; under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were broght to completion."

   The average person during the Middle Ages considered himself a Catholic first and a citizen of a particular kingdom second. He sought, albeit imperfectly, to please God, trying to do all that was entrusted to him in whatever state in life he found himself perfectly as befits a redeemed creature, making sure to do all things in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. He knew that there were limits which existed in the nature of things beyond which he could not legitimately go, that mere possession of a physical ability to perform a given act did not mean that he had the right to do so, that he was only free morally to choose the good, to choose that which redounded to the glory of the Blessed Trinity and the salvation of his own immortal soul. This is what provided the foundation for stable and happy marriages, which produced children who were taught from their earliest years to love God through His true Church, that human existence consisted not in the acquisition and retention of material wealth but of living in such a way so as to die a happy, holy death. And while Catholic home-schooling families are attempting to recapture the spirit of Christendom, most children, including those who are baptized Catholics, are being raised in a thorough secular, relativistic, individualistic and positivistic culture, which is not propitious to a true understanding of the purpose of human existence or of the nature of the State as being subordinate to the mind of Christ as He has expressed It through Holy Mother Church.

   The many brands of Protestantism differ from one another in many things. But each of them stems from the twin pillars of the Protestant Revolt: individualism and a reliance upon the written word alone. It is these twin pillars which, though highly secularized, have infected the mindset of many believing Catholics into thinking themselves as Americans and Catholics second. It is what has led Catholics into believing that we have to find some kind of secularist "common ground" by which to resolve our problems. However, the problems of modernity are the direct result of the Protestant Revolt and its many mutations (including Freemasonry). And the problems facing the Church in this country are in no small measure the result of the uncritical embrace of all that is modern and a rejection of all that is Catholic, including the Traditional Latin Mass (which served as the bulwark in this country to prevent things from getting worse than they became after the Mass was revolutionized in 1969).

See Section Two of this excellent essay by Thomas A. Droleskey, Ph.D.