Something I Posted on Facebook Today

Apparently the late Canon Hayes, founder of Muintir na Tire, used to say: "This country is becoming so Catholic it forgets to be Christian".

Sometimes I'm depressed by the "soft sectarianism" I see in my Catholic Facebook bubble. I think if we are confident in the truths of Catholic doctrine we don't have to be asserting them all the time. As for the superiority of Catholic culture, Catholic aesthetics, etc., is this an article of faith? Is it even true? I'm struck by how many English converts of the nineteenth and early twentieth century happily affirmed that the Church of England was rather superior when it came to aesthetics. They didn't want to be suspected of being won over by smells and bells.

There's a whole current of historiography, to be met with in Belloc and Chesterton and Thomas Merton and Marshall McLuhan, whereby "Catholic cultures" are full of healthy human values while Protestant and post-Protestant cultures are dour and puritanical and narrow etc. etc. etc.

I can't really agree with this, being such an anglophile. When it comes to English poetry, for instance, all the great poets are Protestant or from a Protestant background.

It shouldn't matter, anyway. I think Edward Feser put it well, in a blog post on liquor: "Hilaire Belloc, it seems, recommended confining one’s drinking to beer and wine, or in any event to alcoholic beverages developed before the Reformation. One can easily see Chesterton heartily agreeing. What this shows is that for all their insights, the Chesterbelloc were capable of saying eye-rollingly stupid things -- something you already know if you’re familiar with Belloc’s views on the French Revolution (now there’s modernism for you) or Chesterton’s on jazz (now there’s Puritanism for you). Where culture is concerned, the “more Catholic than thou” card ought seldom if ever to be played -- Catholicism is universal and embraces what is of value in all cultures, not just the medieval. "

There are obviously crucial differences between Catholicism and other Christian denominations. But there are crucial areas of agreement too. Surely these are worth emphasizing in a time when all Christians are facing a great wave of secularism.