America the irresistible force
It doesn’t make sense to claim that “Catholic Christianity” is something other than what the Pope proclaims … but if the Pope and the bishops he has appointed sound and act more like Mainline Protestants than magisterial Catholics as defined by the understanding of magisterial Catholicism that prevailed until Francis’s election, then what does “Catholic Christianity” mean?
…
Tocqueville … was wrong about America’s Catholic future. Catholicism didn’t conquer America. Through assimilation and the dynamic power of individualism and democratic capitalism, Protestant America, the essential nation of modernity, conquered Catholicism within its borders. Over the next decade or two, this post-Christian America will conquer most of the Evangelical holdouts (nationalist pageantry and idolatry will not be a protective totem).
I hope I’m proven wrong. I don’t think I will be, though.