Florian Michel, La pensée catholique en Amérique du Nord: Réseaux intellectuels et échanges culturels entre l'Europe, le Canada et les Etats-Unis (Desclée de Brouwer Paris, 2010).
Reviewed by Joseph Filipowicz
The book itself might be worth reading; the review is ok, though it does not talk much about De Koninck. But at the end the reviewer slips into the a rather extreme "traditionalism" in how he views the American founding:
And what is the response of the other Catholic leaders? It is to continue the project of Maritain, with the Hispanics of the 2010s playing the role that the Polish played in the 1930s-1970s. We are told that there are two traditions present in the United States, that of the Protestant Puritans and that of the Catholic Hispanics. Both of the traditions are good leading to the highest development of democratic freedom, and, in the end, the tradition of democratic freedom stems from the same font, the wisdom of Aquinas. Once both of them figure this out, American will become good and whole again.
This position, which descends from the thought of Maritain, should now be seen for what it truly is, namely, preposterous. The Protestant Puritans were radicals who were rebelling against a group of rebels that were rebelling against the Catholic Faith. The American Founding Fathers were a new set of rebels who had descended from the Puritan rebels. The American Protestants and Jewish elites that came together to form higher Judeo-Protestant American Culture at the end of the 20th Century were together forming a new form of subversive and revolutionary culture. The likes of Dewey, Wirth, Blanshard, and their leftist and neoconservative progeny do not see any possibility of compromise with Catholic culture unless the Catholics are willing to change their system of morals so that they would embrace birth control, war, individualism, capitalism or any other of the modern materialist ideologies stemming from the 18th Century.
I do think Maritain may have been too optimistic and misjudged how reconcilable liberalism and "modern liberal democracy" are with Catholicism. Part of this is probably due to erroneous assumptions concerning the modern nation-state and whether it is at the proper scale to bring about the common good, even if we abstract from historical considerations about how it came to be and the forces that were at work. He probably accepted the Yankee narrative and its understanding of the Constitution, too.
2 comments:
A traditional Catholic MUST reject all of America and Americanism. One of the Popes in the 19th century did condemn certain aspects of Americanism but did not go far enough.
America is a "Novus Ordo". It is about deconstructing and attacking the Old Order. America and the FFofA is/are nihilists. No Catholic can be a nihilist. Americanism must be rejected in toto.
Furthermore, there is NOTHING in America or at its conception that is in line with the real, original Natural Law.
Democracy also is tied to Socailism. On this regard, no Catholic can participate in democracy. Democracy as Plato stated is the worst form of government.
I totally concur with the reviewers remarks on America. I don't consider myself American anymore but a European living in the Northern Hemisphere. I'm Greek, not American.
America is Masonic; it is part of this Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik ideology that is the enemy of Catholicism.
When reading about the American Philippine war, when Philippinos tried to gain independence from America, one learns that the first thing that America did was to force the Philippino government to adopt Separation from Church and State thus destroying the unity of the Catholic Church in Philippino life.
And I should be loyal to America?
Woodrow Wilson at the end of WWI demanded the abdiction of the Habsburg Monarch and all the Monarchs and Princes of Germany! (The political scientist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn points to this as one of the reasons for the ability of Hitler to arise in Germany.) The Catholic Bavarian Monarchy stood for 800 years---destroyed by the American progressive Woodrow Wilson.
And I should hold any allegiance to America?
The first thing the supposed "Christian" and "conservative" George Bush ordered both the Iraqi and Afghanastan governments to give the vote to women. That is "conservative"? No, that is Marxist!
America is the seat of World Revolution. It is part of its Americanist ideology. It is Masonic, which is heavily influenced by the Kabbala and the Talmud.
We are particiating in the greatest evil on earth. America is Sodom and Gomorrah. After reading that article on how Jews worked to attack and undermine Catholicism, I am thoroughly disgusted and how our own clergy and Catholic leadership are clueless, panzies.
Ohh, how I hate this country now. It is not the country I grew up in and the filth and disgusting stuff on TV is just too much. America is thoroughly unrighteous. And more than not is all Jewish controlled from the media, to the law, to the halls of government.
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