The visit of Pope Benedict to the United States and the United Nations is proving to be unexpectedly interesting from a range of different perspectives. His comments on the differences between the secular cultures of Europe and the United States in particular have generated considerable interest amongst those who have been following the lengthy discussion in recent years of the threat to religious values posed by secular culture. One of the most interesting observations I've come across was made by Sandro Magister yesterday with this brief comment and the following more lengthy comment from Pope Benedict which Magister has taken from a book Benedict wrote in 2004 when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger. "[T]o understand better why Benedict XVI considers the United States an example for the whole world – and above all for Europe – of a positive relationship between religion and politics, it is illuminating to read this page from a book he wrote and published as cardinal in 2004, entitled "Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam."

“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot”…

The idea of a civil Christian religion brings to my mind the work "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville. During his studies in the United States, the French scholar had noted – to put it briefly – that the system of rules seen from the outside as making up this democracy, while unstable and fragmentary on its own, worked only because within American society there was active a whole complex of religious and moral convictions of Christian-Protestant inspiration, which no one had prescribed or defined, but were simply presumed by all as an obvious spiritual foundation. The recognition of these basic religious and moral guidelines, which stretched beyond the individual confessions but determined society from within, strengthened its ordinances as a whole and defined the limits of individual freedom from within, offering precisely for this reason the conditions for shared and participatory freedom.

"Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot"

In this regard, I would like to cite a significant expression from Tocqueville: "Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot". John Adams was thinking along the same lines when he said that the American constitution "was made only for a moral and religious people". Although in America as well secularization is proceeding at a more rapid pace, and the confluence of many different cultures is shaking the basic Christian consensus, it can be seen there, rather more clearly than in Europe, that there is implicit recognition of the religious and moral foundations that stem from Christianity and reach beyond the individual confessions. Europe – unlike America – is on a collision course with its own history, and is often speaking out in favor of an almost visceral rejection of any possible public dimension for Christian values.

Why? Why in the world does Europe, which has a very ancient Christian tradition, no longer show such a consensus? A consensus that, independently of membership in a particular community of faith, would confer a public and essential value on the fundamental conceptions of Christianity? Since the historical bases of this difference are well known, it will be enough to mention them briefly.

American society was built in great part by groups that had fled from the system of state Churches in place in Europe, and had found their own religious accommodation in free communities of faith outside of the state Church. The foundation of American society is therefore constituted by the free Churches, for which – because of their religious approach – it is essential that they not be state Churches, but founded on a free union of individuals. In this sense, one can say that at the basis of American society there is a separation between state and Church that is determined, even demanded by religion; a separation, therefore, that is motivated and structured quite differently in comparison with the one imposed, under the banner of conflict, by the French Revolution and by the systems that followed it. The state in America is nothing other than the free space for different religious communities; it is in its nature to recognize these communities in their particularity and in their non-statal identity, and to let them live. It is a separation that intends to let religion be itself, that respects and protects its vital space distinguished from the state and from its ordinances, it is a separation conceived of positively.

This also involved a unique relationship between the state sphere and the "private" sphere, completely different from the one that we know in Europe: the "private" sphere has an absolutely public character, and what is not of the state is not at all excluded for this reason from the public dimension of social life. Most of the cultural institutions are not statal – we could take the example of the universities, or of the organizations for safeguarding the artistic disciplines, etc.; the entire legal and fiscal system favors this type of non-statal culture and makes it possible, while in Europe, for example, the private universities constitute a recent, and in fact marginal, phenomenon. Of course, it has also happened that the free Churches have considered themselves in a fairly relative manner, but they were aware nonetheless that they were united by a common factor that went beyond the institutions and was at the foundation of all.

Naturally, in this context there are also hidden dangers. Today there seem to be certain circles that are dusting off the ideology of the WASP: the true American is the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. This ideology emerged when the arrival of groups of Catholic immigrants, above all Italians, Poles, and people of color, seemed to threaten the established identity of America. This remained true until the 20th century, in this sense that in order to aspire to an important position in American public life, one had to be a WASP. But in reality, the Catholic community had already integrated into the American identity.

Catholics also recognized the positive character of the religiously motivated separation between state and Church, in addition to the importance of the religious freedom that it guarantees. It is in part thanks to their significant contribution that a Christian conscience has been maintained in society; and this is still a valid contribution, at a time when radical, profound changes are taking place within Protestantism. Insofar as they adapt themselves increasingly to secularized society, the mainline Protestant communities are losing their internal cohesion and their power of persuasion; the "evangelicals," until now the staunchest enemies of Catholicism, are not only gaining more and more ground against the mainline communities, but are also discovering a new closeness to Catholicism, which they recognize as a defender against the pressure exerted by secularization, and of the same great ethical values that they themselves uphold, values that they instead see declining among their Protestant brethren.

On the basis of the structure of Christianity in America, the American Catholic bishops made a specific contribution to Vatican Council II: the declaration "Dignitatis Humanae" on religious freedom was largely influenced [by this contribution], and brought into the Catholic tradition, in regard to freedom of faith, the experience of the "non-state" Church (which had demonstrated itself as a condition for preserving the public value of fundamental Christian principles) as a Christian form emerging from the very nature of the Church. Today American society, partly through the increasing pressure exercised by secularization, finds itself having to face serious new challenges. One can nonetheless say – at least it seems so to me – that there still exists in America a civil Christian religion, even if it is seriously threatened and has become unclear in its content.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The comment and quotation from Cardinal Ratziger has come from Sandro Magister's chiessa.com blog. You can read Mr Magister's full blog at: chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/197841?eng=y. The photo of Pope Benedict with US President, George W Bush comes from the LA Times website: www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-04/37899883.jpg.