(Source: Southern Cross, 22 March 1992)
I lived in the United States for nearly two years and went there curious to know what was happening, because as Sean Kealy observes; "In American society . . . we can actually see with much greater clarity there what is happening or may well soon happen in other countries as no western country can claim to be immune from the trends" in the United States.
So powerful is the influence of Hollywood (our
television stations are saturated with it) which is situated in California,
that one wag referred to its influence as the ''Californication of the
world".
In an article entitled The Star Spangled Banner in the Saturday
Star of October 12, 1991, the distinguished Anglo-Amaerican broadcaster Alistair
Cooke says that as regards the causes of Amerciand decadence: ''Gibbon's
diagnosis of the symptoms are still the most persuasive '' (Gibbon being the
author of The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire) James Stenson in the National
Catholic Register of August 27, 1989 warns about American youth and their appalling
materialism and attributes it to two causes: The historically unprecedented
prosperity since 1945 and the rise of television and the electronic media which
have disrupted parent/child relationships dramatically
Leisure
class
This unprecedented rose of prosperity has made young
Americans into a kind of artificial leisure class who now suffer from the very
''danger of riches'' that Christ warned about. Young people hardly ever have to
wait for anything or earn it. The easy abundance of food, drink, amusements,
clothing and gadgets have broken in children's minds the natural relationships
between effort and results, between present self-denial and future enjoyment,
Stenson claims.
As regards the influence of television, Stenson says
that the natural relationships between parents and children in the home have
been complicated by "the seeming presence of strangers '' whose values are
at complete variance with Christ's -- these strangers are television heroes. American
television spreading round the globe is similar to the "bread and
circuses" so beloved by the Romans in their lust for entertainment in the last
days of Rome. American junk television and chat-shows with participants
screaming, filth and throwing chairs at one another would warm the bloodlust of
the ancient Roman gladiators and spectators.
No
discipline
I was asked to visit a state high school to speak to a
number of classes. Like so many, I was shocked by the lack of discipline of the
young people and the pandering to them by teachers. I asked a teacher what was
happening. He gave me the mnemonic “the two N's'' - that is no nucleus (many kids have no family
nucleus due to the notorious dysfunctional American family) and no proper
nutrition as family meals are a thing of the past, due to excessive television.
The burgeoning takeaways are symptomatic of the breakdown of American family meals
and communication which is customary at meal times in civilized society.
But do Americans churches not have something to say
about all this? Generally speaking the answer seems to be ''no'' as the
churches seem to have capitulated to the secular culture except for some
elements. Ca rdinal John O'Connor of New York warned of the current culture
that "eats into our being" and television that "eats into our
souls"
The sociologist Tony Campolo has said that if someone were
to construct a religion that would completely negate every premise in the Beatitudes,
they would end up with American Protestantism, as many Americans see blessings
in material possessions, good standing, a happy family and good health and to
equate the blessings of God with the American dream. But this interpretation
comes not from the truth. John Fisher maintains but from US culture – a world
that tells Americans what success is and then they assume God sees it the same way.
But Christ told us to take up our cross not our pillow.
God's
own country
The American intellectual Thomas Molnar says that
democracy has turned 250 million into robots. They share the conviction, he
argues, that ''America is God's own country, the final end of history''. This
is probably what Allen Bloom was referring to in his bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind.
Richard Niebuhr saw liberalism as accommodating
Christianity to the prevailing culture or spirit of the age. Liberals have been
characterized as being very optimistic concerning the possibilities of change
and have not infrequently seen evil as a product of ignorance rather than the
result of man's intrinsically evil nature. Many American churches closely identify
with liberalism and are naively over optimistic about everything and, as the
'psychologist Menninger pointed out in Whatever
Became of Sin, no longer believe in sin. You often hear American Christians
say: ''l don't want to lay a 'guilt trip on him’.'' Making people feel guilty
seems to be one of the most heinous crimes in the book even though Jesus instilled
the fear of punishment in his followers.
Catholic
fault
But though. American Protestantism seems to have
capitulated, Catholicism is not far behind, some critics maintain. An article
in Time magazine of August 26, 1991
observed that “in so many other areas, liberal American Catholics find themselves
playing catch-up with their Protestant soul mates, but their arguments arc
complicated by the fact that the Vatican, the ultimate source of authority in
their church, does not take its cues on matters of discipline from Gallup polls
or what it hears on television talk shows. Or from Protestants”.
So because Rom ewon’t compromise, many liberal
American Catholics are anti-Rome and wish to break away. But this is not a new
thing in American history as it was noticed by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 when he
issued his encyclical on Americanism. “ Americanism came close to the heresy of
modernism - a complete compromise of the
spiritual in the face of the secular.
"In America it had little to do with doctrinal orthodoxy
. . . those in the hierarchy identified with Americanism were entirely orthodox
in matters of faith. It was rather a form of cultural imperialism, an
unswerving belief that America and the American way of doing things, thinking
and acting was far superior to any other means.
Skewed
values
“It was anti-European and anti anything which was not
grounded in the American experience of freedom, tolerance and open debate. It
called not merely for the acceptance of the American way, but its canonization…
was American society to be judged by the standards of the church, or the church
by the standards of American society? The belief in Rome was that certain
members of the hierarchy had opted for the latter." (Our Sunday Visitor, November 19, 1989).
We in South Africa should not gloat at what is
happening in the United States as we seem to be headed in the same direction. Pride,
idleness and great wealth are not unknown on these shores, we watch the same
unedifying Hollywood television, have a complete preoccupation with sex if the
sex on television, radio and the immensely popular phone-in for maximized sex fulfillment,
of which there are a number, are anything to go by. Hedonism certainly must be a growth industry
in South Africa and so Aids and sexually transmitted diseases seem to be out of
control.
In a recent letter to the Sunday Star Edward Dowler wrote: “My experience of this aria (the white
suburbs of Johannesburg) was of a deep lack of any sense of community, an
American style, car -oriented, atomized society, preoccupied with personal
possessions and the myth of the
individual's self-sufficiency in all things."
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger says that we need to
rediscover the courage of non-conformism in the face of the trends of the
affluent world. Instead of following the trends of the times we ourselves must
witness the spirit of non-conformity with evangelical seriousness.
He says that we have lost the sense that Christians
cannot live like “everybody else”. Today, more than ever, he says, the
Christian must be aware that he belongs to a minority and that he is in
opposition to everything that appears good, obvious, logical to the “Spirit of
the world”, as the New Testament calls it.
