by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on November 17, 2010 · 18 comments
. . . Fortunately for Squanto, and later for our Pilgrims, Spain was a Catholic country. Seventy-seven years earlier, envisioning injustices visited upon the indigenous peoples Of the New World, Pope Paul III issued “Sublimis Dei,” a papal bull forbidding Catholic governments from enslaving or mistreating Indians from the Americas. The Pope declared that Indians are “true men” who could not lawfully be deprived of liberty. “Sublimis Dei” instructed that European intervention into the lives of Indians had to be motivated by benefit to the Indians themselves. It would take America another 300 years to catch up with the Catholic Church and abolish slavery. As a result of the papal decree, the Catholic Church in Spain was opposed to the mistreatment of Indians, and opposed to bringing them to Europe against their will. Of course, the Catholic ideal did not always prevent slave trade on the black market. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on November 10, 2010 · 9 comments
. . . It’s time for a revolution, and it should be a revolution of real faith in a modern world that values it not. It isn’t going to be easy. But before we all sign up for remedial CCD classes, the bad news was offset just a bit by the reality that the United States as a whole flunked the test, and Catholics came out just three percentage points behind the national score of 50% – a solid “F.” Other Christian denominations fared just slightly better than Catholics – but still flunked. Jews and Mormons both passed, though just barely, with scores slightly under the atheists. Weighing everything, my own conclusion is that the problem with religion in America isn’t religion – it’s America. Catholics should remember the value of being counter-cultural. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on November 25, 2009 · 11 comments
. . . G.K. Chesterton once famously remarked, “In America, they have a feast to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. Here in England, we should have a feast to celebrate their departure.” Despite their disdain for Catholicism, it is one of the great ironies of American history that the Mayflower’s Puritan Pilgrims owe their very survival in the New World – indirectly at least – to the Catholic Church. It’s a reality that would have made the pilgrims wince, but there would have been no Thanksgiving without Pope Paul III and a group of Spanish Jesuit priests. It’s a complicated story, but it’s worth telling. . . .
At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming: The Fate of Religion in America
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on November 10, 2010 · 9 comments
. . . It’s time for a revolution, and it should be a revolution of real faith in a modern world that values it not. It isn’t going to be easy. But before we all sign up for remedial CCD classes, the bad news was offset just a bit by the reality that the United States as a whole flunked the test, and Catholics came out just three percentage points behind the national score of 50% – a solid “F.” Other Christian denominations fared just slightly better than Catholics – but still flunked. Jews and Mormons both passed, though just barely, with scores slightly under the atheists. Weighing everything, my own conclusion is that the problem with religion in America isn’t religion – it’s America. Catholics should remember the value of being counter-cultural. . . .
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