In a burgeoning ongoing discussion with Fr Joseph Fessio, S.J., Carol reiterates her view that

the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution arise from strains other than Roman Catholicism per se, more from the Reformation and the Enlightenment, although of course they build on the whole structure of European thought, including the Christian/Catholic Middle Ages. (They do also build to some extent on the ancient world as well, I think, particularly Rome.)

Fessio responds:

I don’t think we disagree here. I was responding to the criticism that Catholic social thought is “European.” There is no question that both the Reformation and Enlightenment built on “the whole structure of European thought, including the Christian/Catholic Middle Ages.” The relationship is complex: to some extent parasitic; to some extent a reaction to excesses or distortions; to some extent they themselves were excesses or distortions. But the dignity of the individual wasn’t an invention of the Reformation. Nor was the exaltation of reason an invention of the Enlightenment. (Pope Benedict has spoken powerfully on this, particularly in his Regensburg address.) These are human goods rooted in creation, but only understood clearly, without distortion, and in their organic context through divine Revelation, the latter transmitted and explicated through the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Carol:

It is true that Roman Catholic social thought opposed socialism but it inspired the Christian Democrats of Europe to create semi—socialized states. Not pure socialism of course, because there is private property, corporate enterprise, etc., but there are also heavy taxation, redistribution of income, and cradle to grave entitlement programs.

Fessio:

That is probably true historically. But it doesn’t follow that this form of socialism is a necessary consequence or the only consequence of Catholic social thought. Catholic social thought can offer a continual corrective to the characteristic defects of a more socialized state as well as to the characteristic defects of liberal democracy and free market economics.

Carol:

When the French students rioted some time ago in objection to proposed changes in employment law, they did so in the name of a whole ethos different from ours in America. A young man on NPR explained that they objected to our kind of more competitive, individualistic society and wanted to preserve the more secure, more comfortable, less driven kind of society produced by European economic thought. That’s what I was thinking when I made the distinction between “Europe” and “America.”

Fessio:

And that’s where I think we most agree. There are good features to both forms of society. I wish, with all our wealth, we could build churches that could bear comparison with those of France. I also wish they could fill those churches as well as we fill ours.

Carol:

I believe Samuel Huntington is correct when he writes that the United States would not be the country it is today if it had been settled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants, but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics. If that had been the case, it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.

Fessio:

That’s true and perhaps a truism. Although, interestingly, The United States was settled in the 16th century by Spanish Catholics. There were 42 missions and 30,000 Catholics (mostly Indian converts) in the Floridas before Jamestown. The British armed hostile tribes who then destroyed the settlements.