John Courtney Murray on America

There are a lot of political philosophers who swear that Fr. John Courtney Murray SJ was 'off the reservation' when writing the religious-freedom document of Vatican II.

Perhaps, but more likely he was not.  Murray knew exactly what the problem with America was, and still is:

 ...In 1940, he delivered a series of lectures that became an essay entitled “The Construction of a Christian Culture.”  And in it, he said the following about the country he loved:

 American culture, as it exists, is actually the quintessence of all that is decadent in the culture of the Western Christian world. It would seem to be erected on the triple denial that has corrupted Christian culture at its roots, the denial of metaphysical reality; [the denial of] the primacy of the spiritual over the material; [and the denial] of the social over the individual. . . .Its most striking characteristic is its profound materialism. . . .It has given citizens everything to live for and nothing to die for. And its achievement may be summed up thus: It has gained a continent and lost its own soul....

 In the same text, he added that, “in view of the fact that American culture is built on the negation of all that Christianity stands for, it would seem that our first step toward the construction of a Christian culture should be the destruction of the existing one. In the presence of a Frankenstein, one does not reach for baptismal water, but for a bludgeon.”...

 That was about 80 years ago, and the Kulturkampf, in its infancy then, has grown to include Critical Theory, pushed through Columbia University about when Murray wrote that essay.  The narcissism that Murray saw then is rampant, too.  His position is very close to that of Patrick Deneen, by the way.

ADDED:  from PowerLine, a bit of Angelo Codevilla:

...Western regimes have gone out of their way to deny their peoples’ and polities’ kinship with Christianity—the drafters of the European Union’s constitution rejected references to it vehemently and repeatedly. In America, arguing that America is a Christian country endangers careers. Spiritual emptiness, the proposition that human life is qualitatively indistinguishable from animal life and hence meaningless, holds monopoly status in the schools. More important, acceptance of it is de rigueur for interacting with those who count. Moreover, Western regimes have tried to engender ersatz sentiments of reverence for “the planet,” and for their own status as priests of the culture of liberating meaninglessness. Though this culture is entrenched in regimes, and though it has diminished or suppressed the West’s Christianity, it has not engendered enthusiasm, even among its priests....

Angelo must have been looking at the same America that Fr Murray was.

The time is coming, and coming soon.