George Santayana on American Catholicism

(The philosopher Santayana asks, at the very heart of the “golden age” of American Catholicism, whether the American Catholics were Catholic at all. I leave to the reader’s consideration the relevance of Santayana’s analysis to the post-conciliar church in the US.)

Consider, for instance, the American Catholics, of whom there are nominally many millions, and who often seem to retain their ancestral faith sincerely and affectionately. This faith took shape during the decline of the Roman empire; it is full of large disillusions about this world and minute illusions about the other. It is ancient, metaphysical, poetic, elaborate, ascetic, autocratic and intolerant. It confronts the boastful natural man, such as the American is, with a thousand denials and menaces. Everything in American life is the antipodes of such a system, yet the American Catholic is entirely at peace. His tone in everything, even in religion, is cheerfully American. It is wonderful how silently, amicably and happily he lives in a community whose spirit is profoundly hostile to that of his religion. He seems to take stock in his church as he might in a gold mine – sure it is a grand, dazzling, unique thing; and perhaps he masks, even to himself, his purely imaginative ardour about it, with the pretext that it is sure to make his fortune both in this life and the next. His church, he will tell you, is a first-rate church to belong to; the priests are fine fellows, like the policemen; the sisters are dear noble women, like his own sisters; his parish is flourishing, and always rebuilding the church and founding new schools, orphan asylums, sodalities, confraternities, perpetual adoration societies. No parish can raise so much money for any object, or if there are temporary troubles, the fact remains that America has three Cardinals and that the Catholic religion is the biggest on earth. Attachment to his church in such a temper brings him into no serious conflict with his Protestant neighbors. They live and meet on common ground. Their respective religions pass among them for family matters, private and sacred, with no political implications.

From Character and Opinion in the United States (1920) (The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States 43-44; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009)