America’s Empress and Americanism

Empress of the one America is “La Morenita” (“the dark-skinned maiden”) who appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 as: expectant with new life; poor; modest and humble; patroness of the oppressed and little; victress over the powers of death; trans-national (at once Spanish and Indian); bearer of Glad Tidings; and reverent before our Holy God. As our Empress, she embodies and expresses all that is best in America: inclusion, faith, children, innocence, humility, catholicity, and love of the poor. Our loyalty to her and her reign position us to understand the wave of betrayals that can be grouped under the concept of “Americanism.”

“Americanism” was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae addressed to the bishops of the United States in 1899. He acknowledged the good apsects of America and was himself famously an advocate on behalf of the poor and a progressive social ethic. However, with this term “Americanism” he refered to an elusive complex of anti-Catholic values and beliefs that threatened the Church in the USA as well as Europe (esepcially France.) These beliefs were closely related to liberalism, secularism, modernism and individualism. Included were: preference for the active virtues over the contemplative; disparagement of authority and tradion in favor of personal experience; elevation of the natural over the supernatural; an excessive separation of church and state; and absolute freedom of speech and of the press. The denunciation seemed to have some effect since these tendencies diminshed in the American Church; but the teaching was also widely disparaged as targeting a “phantom heresy” which was not held or taught by anyone.

Over a hundred years later, however, we can clearly see that this “phantom” took flesh in the 1960s and erupted in a contagion of betrayal of the Catholic and American values embodied in the young maiden of Tepeyac Hill. We can identify several specific “Americanisms.”

Choice. The entire culture of choice (sexual license and the option to kill the unborn) is an exaggeration of an individualized liberty, disassociated from truth, family, authority, and love. If there is a specific devil in charge of Lucifer’s American operations, his name is surely Choice. The collaboration of our Catholic people in this culture is a betrayal of heartbreaking proportions. Our President-elect boasts a 100% NARAL rating and garnered 54% of the Catholic vote. Senator Bob Casey, poster boy for the “Pro-life Democrats,” boasts a 65% approval rate from the same group and has accepted over $300,000 from abortion groups. When I was in management at UPS, we were not allowed to accept a necktie from customers at Chrismas because of our code of integrity. If a necktie is problematic for integrity, what does $300,000 do to a man? Casey is a puppet of Chuck Schumer’s plan to coopt Catholics into collusion with the apparatus of death. The plan succeeded, in 2008 beyond the highest expectations. In his worst nightmares, Pope Leo XIII could not have conjured up ogres like Casey, Cuomo, Kennedy, Kerry, Biden and Pelosi…and treason by most Catholics. On behalf of freedom, they would use the immense resources of the state to facilitate the right to abort. Contemplate this crusade in the light of the expectant, hope-filled young maiden Empress!

Academic License. Fr. Hesburg, at the notorious Land O Lakes Conference of 1967, led the mutiny of Catholic Universities (prominently the more prestigious ones). Renouncing their fidelity to apostolic truth and authority, they pledged allegiance to the emergent Americanist religion of choice springing from the newly perfected contraceptive technology and leading immediately into abortion, divorce, gay sex, and genetic engineering. Again, consider these developments in light of the Star of the New Evangelization!

Irenic Bishops. Starting in the 1960s, Catholic bishops reflected their people’s inferiority complex and desperate need to be accepted by the larger culture. The prime value became peace, harmony and the avoidance of conflict. So, our bishops have become expert in pledging loyalty to the Vatican in a manner meek and mild, without ever giving real offense to the emergent powers in the USA. The clearest example is the warm welcome they extend at communion to even the most virulently abortionist Catholic politicians. Contrast this ambiguousness, indecision, and doublemindedness with the clarity and radiance of the icon left on the peasant’s Tilma.

Free Markets. Switching to the conservative side of the political spectrum, we can consider the classical economic liberalism of National Review conservatism as a constrasting expression of Americanist liberty, free-floating and uprooted from a moral compass. That magazine infamously rejected the papal social teahing (“Mater si; Magister no!”) Here we see the same individualistic liberty, but applied to the economic sphere. Here we have the impersonality of free markets, meaning the overall purposeless interplay of a million individual choices, elevated into a godhead. Such a cold, mechanical, efficient and heartless economy is hardly reflective of the Lady who came to comfort and heal the most sick and poor among us.

Isolationism. Otherwise solid American Catholic conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are overly threatened by illegal immigration and surrenderd to an ango-philic, zenophobic, isolationist paranoia. The very expression “America First” expresses a patriotism that is defensive rather than synergistic and internationist in the tradition of the Spanish-Indian Empress. The paleoconservative creed, fiercely reactive to secular moderntiy and expressive of so many Catholic values, fails to meet the standard on “catholicity” in the precise sense of universality and inclusivity.

Americanism is no longer a phantom; it is more like the Dragon of the Apocalypse, waiting to devour the offspring of the woman. She, however, flees into the desert where she is safe. May we join our Lady in that desert and absolutely reject Americanism in any of its virulent forms.