I'm coming at this more from a position of ignorance than hostility, so this is a genuine question and not just snark. In what way is "traditional conservative American Catholic nationalism" anything other than a massive oxy-moron? In other words, what is the ultimate goal of this ideology, and how does it not end up being a mess of contradictions?
America has never been a Catholic country. You can argue that it has traditionally been a Christian country, but its Christianity was always Protestant, and often specifically anti-Catholic. What is the "tradition" that we'd be returning to?
In America, Catholic=Mexican. If I'm walking through a neighborhood and I see shrines to the Virgin Mary or Saint Francis in people's yards, I know that this is (shall we say) a rough neighborhood. Do John Senior and his "conservative" followers want the whole country to be like this?
OK, so maybe that's unfair. Catholicism isn't some ethnic club, it's the One True Faith. So, American Catholics find themselves in the position of the missionaries in 100-500 AD trying to convert pagans to Christianity. We'll just need to cut down all their sacred trees, tear down their temples, burn their heathen books, and turn families against each other (Luke 14:26). Once we've radically reinvented America from the ground up, then we can finally have the traditional, conservative society that we always wanted.
"Traditionalist Catholicism" is still decidedly schismatic (see the recent incident with the consecration of new SSPX bishops a few weeks ago) and strongly protests against Vatican II and therefore the authority of the Church and the Pope. Don't we have a word for such people...?
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I'm coming at this more from a position of ignorance than hostility, so this is a genuine question and not just snark. In what way is "traditional conservative American Catholic nationalism" anything other than a massive oxy-moron? In other words, what is the ultimate goal of this ideology, and how does it not end up being a mess of contradictions?
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