"Sacraments" of Liberalism, Religion of the SELF

"Liberalism," or what I prefer to call "Expressive Individualism," is developed by Patrick Dineen as an ideology, but it is that and more: it is a metaphysics, as explanation of reality, and a religion, as a comprehensive way of life organized around beliefs and practices that honor what is most valuable and sacred...in this case, the Imperial, Autonomous Self. Considering it as a religion, let us look at the founding practices, or "sacraments," that structure the religion. As Catholicism is centered in seven sacraments, so the Liberalism of our current society is structured around a system of co-inhering, concrete practices. They are best understood as "diabolic" in the etymological sense: in contrast with the "symbolic" which "joins together," the diabolic tears apart, sunders, separates.  First among these is contraception. As the contrary of baptism which issues us into new, eternal life, contraception literally acts "against conception" or against life. As such, it sunders sexual union from it's meaning as union, in one flesh of complementing male and female, and from it's inherent fruitful purpose, according to nature and our Creator. It separates the most intimate of engagements from its spousal destiny and thus isolates the Self into a compartment of loneliness and meaninglessness. As such, it leads to other rituals of death and despair. First of these, of course, is abortion which is back-up contraception as it eliminates the child, the natural fruit that had already been deliberately "decided against." It is no accident that Roe v. Wade came in 1971 almost immediately after contraception conquered our culture. A third "sacrament" would be cohabitation whereby man and woman live and sleep together but remain separated, without the mutual giving and receiving of self that sexual union expresses and seals. A forth "sacrament" would be all the "reproductive technology" which replaces the mystery, the miracle of conception with impersonal processes of control, power and manipulation. This is a most vivid expression of the other side of liberalism as the elevation of technology as the defining paradigm by which the human person takes control of life and manipulates it for utilitarian purposes. A fifth, follow up to abortion and reproductive technique, would be other Frankensteinian methods such as euthanasia and embryonic stem cell destruction, by which technology is allowed to destroy human life on behalf of some subjective preference. A sixth "sacrament" would be sanctification of homosexual marriage as the inevitable extension of contraceptive, which is to say sterile and non-unitive, sex. This practice galloped to popular approval in breakneck speed because it logically supports more widespread, almost universal (even among Catholics) practice of contraception. The seventh and highly significant "sacrament" is the deconstruction of masculinity and female in favor of the neutered, unbounded, unbonded, naked Self. As a metaphysics, Liberalism denies "form" or "essence" ("formal causality") and purpose ("final causality") and leaves only instrumental and material causality. Perhaps the most catastrophic loss is of the form of "masculinity" as son/brother/groom/father and "femininity" as "daughter/sister/bride/mother. In its place is the naked, self-determining self, stripped of bonds or internal, pre-existing relations to parents, family, faith, tradition and community. Femininity, however, proves to be far more resilient and we see many of our young women flourishing if over-achieving and over-stressed as they perform admirably in career as well as in the family as mother, daughter, sister and wife. But our young men are deep in crisis as they have been stripped of all complex cultural itinerary whereby a society educates boys into men. So, we live in a world that is increasingly FATHERLESS as our young men are systemically emasculated. After identifying seven primal foundations, like our Catholic sacraments, we can also view a vast network of "quasi-sacramentals" which Liberalism practices to support its faith in the self. Among these are: the trust that romance (separate from family and children) is the path to the deepest happiness; belief in career and its accompaniments (good school, connections) as the gateway to identity and social status; glorification of the expansive state (by the left) or globalized capitalism (on the right)  as rising currents that lift all boats; and a presumption that technology and engineering can remove all suffering and evil (e.g. if it weren't for the NRA, legislation would prevent school shooings!). Religion, etymologically from "religio" meaning bonds or connections, indicates the beliefs and practices that unite us with each other, God, the past and future, and the cosmos. Liberalism then can be understood as the "Anti-Religion" in that is exults the isolated Self and ruthlessly dissolves all inherent bonds or connections. The Liberal Self is isolated in a compartment of loneliness, cut off from tradition and past as well as future, in a sterile, purposeless present. Relentlessly if covertly it operates through our major institutions (state, market, law, entertainment, education) to isolate each person in loneliness and dissolve all abiding, hopeful, rooted connection and communion. In that sense it is surely erroneous to refer to liberal practices as sacraments since that expression indicates practices which unite us...with God, each other, the Communion of Saints and even the Eternity of the Trinity! More accurately, they may be described as "dia-ments" in that they tear us apart...from each other, from reality, and from God...into the despairing, lonely universe of the Imperial Self!