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If Americans are ever hostile to religion in general, or to the Catholic Church in particular, they are poor specimens of what America stands for. If Catholics living in this country are ever apathetic, or even secretly hostile, to American ideals, they are poor specimens of Catholicism. The clashes between non-representative cliques such as these ought never to be confused with the normal relations existing between the Catholic Church and the American Republic. The American national genius has much in common with the Catholic religious spirit, which, in its turn, is uniquely useful in supporting certain American ideals. These things will be apparent to the thoughtful and fair-minded who are at pains to discover the relevant facts. In a study of Americanism and Catholicism, it might seem normal to reverse the order here followed, to consider the universal religion first, and then proceed to the particular nation. Abstractly, and in many concrete instances, that would be plainly right. The present writer, however, was an American fifty years before he became a Catholic, and has written along lines of his own experience, having chiefly in mind as possible readers those whose point of view and natural mode of approach would be similar to his own. He has also wished to interpret the typical American temper to those who have had scant opportunities to experience its fairness and kindliness. The book has been written under handicaps of a hermit, dependent for many things in the outer world on the assistance of friends. And here is an important point: There are two assumptions commonly made which Catholicism does not share and seeks to dispel, namely, that religious certitude is impossible, and that one religion is as good as another. The prevalent temper and tendency is agnostic, and claims the right to dominate the age by calling itself moderism. Catholicism is opposed to modernism in all its forms and aspects, proclaiming the authenticity and authority of a Divine revelation. Moreover, it proclaims one faith as absolutely true, against the common notion of many religions, all partially true and relatively useful. It postulates the existence of positive truth and error in opposition to the common conception of trutli in fragments, and error as mere misnomer for partial apprehension. Analogous to its intellectual are its moral assumptions; that there is a positive Divine law for man, that obedience to this is possible, and that disobedience is sin, entailing punishment.

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9781489591586

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