The Popes and Americanism

Good reader, I ask that you suspend some things you may have seen about Pope Leo XIII, as I would request of anyone, concerning what is sometimes called his liberal leanings. As always, I emphasize the teaching, not only the teacher necessarily. Could Leo XIII have been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, vacillating between strict adherence to Catholicism and a weepy move away from it? Absolutely. But we also don’t know that for sure, not as I’ve read him as a Catholic, while my distrust would certainly be heightened as a mere historian (even as a Catholic I still wonder). Still, in charity, his teachings are robust and paramount; moreover, and perhaps most applicably, history itself proves that truth has never waited for perfectly holy messengers. We would be waiting a long time if we depended on it coming only from saints without flaw.

The hidden American genius is not that it openly hates Christianity.

Its genius is that it smiles even as it slowly suffocates the authentic Christian mind.

The undisguised enemy—the cartoon devil, the red-and-black caricature that never actually governs civilizations—is loud, easy to name, and therefore easier to resist. But this version of evil is a myth. The true hidden enemy, the undeclared one, the quiet one, works the way St Paul described in 2 Corinthians 11:26, calling them “false brethren.”

These false brethren make excellent political heroes, operating comfortably inside a false red vs blue dialectic, training generations to believe that salvation comes from better candidates, better messaging, and harder voting. They often appear sincere—especially when they strike at real evils. Donald Trump did this a decade ago when he disrupted polite and curated silence around child trafficking, media manipulation, and elite dishonesty. Many of us hoped that disruption would awaken something deeper—that it might serve as a springboard not merely to political reform, but also to a springtime Vatican II never produced.

But this is precisely where the danger intensifies.

Scott McKay posted something a few days ago that helped inspire this piece. I invite you to think about it as context as you read today:

This goes well beyond an interesting take. It is something I’ve worked hard to get at as I’ve warned about false binary traps and cautioned on Trump even as I tried my hardest to hold on. I still firmly believe he needed to be elected, but not for the reason a political liberal might mock me. It is something no DeSantis or Haley and certainly no Harris or Biden could ever do as well: We get to see the truth with Trump, one way or another, and as I see it at this moment–through him.

Political saviors—including Obama for the political left—become most dangerous when they appear sympathetic to our concerns. That apparent alignment lowers the guard of one tribe while inflaming the passions of the other. The result is not clarity, but managed division inside said binary trap. Our rage, in other words, is cultivated, debilitating our discernment, while the system pulling the strings remains undiscovered. My most recent work delves into this in relation to psyops, traditional Catholic teaching, and what shines through our electronic screens; I invite you to read through some of it.

This all is choreographed specifically to deceive us.

Pre-Vatican II Popes on the Issue

I ask that my non-Catholic readers keep reading, as always. My use of papal encyclicals to teach is largely to show my Catholic readers the difference between pre- and post-Vatican II teaching, yes, but it can also be fruitful ground for you, particularly since the wealth of modern society’s understanding of Catholicism indeed, unfortunately, stems from the modern imitation.

Prophet personalities are all around us, both in the present and the past. And long before iPhones, Pope Leo XIII warned Catholics not to treat the American arrangement as the ideal model for the Church’s life in the modern world. In Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899), he cautioned that the “spirit of the age” would not merely pressure Christians to relax discipline, but to soften doctrine itself under the pretext of attracting modern man.

Indeed, simply reading the following—perhaps encountering its haunting relevance for the first time—will demonstrate that the most fundamental contention of Traditional Catholics in America is true—that there has indeed always been a concerted effort by enemies of the Church to render Catholicism unrecognizable:

The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind….

[We] are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some “Americanism.” …For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

Some in Leo’s time dismissed Americanism as a “phantom heresy.” That is the truth, and that is precisely the danger.

The physics of American politics feels like freedom, but is actually a slow sleeper-hold not unlike the fake and embarrassing move made popular in the wrestling ring. Self-propping good Christians don’t recognize the sleeper, because the State isn’t openly hostile, so we assume the terrain is safe and we can do our thing worship-wise and others can do theirs. We confuse the lack of persecution the very saints we honor endured with the presence of order, which directly contradicts what Christ said about the necessity of the Cross. We mistake peace, house, boats, trucks, and accolades for the only blessings worth posting.

Once upon a time, I was guilty of this. Perhaps I still am unwittingly to some degree.

That great deception has arrived as a punishment for the moral collapse of our ancestors—recent and beyond—inside the comforts of the American life. Over time, we internalized the seemingly innocuous blasphemy that claimed the State had no duty to Christ, no obligation to publicly honor him, no responsibility to make truth and error objective and not subject to the whims of the individual, and no right to restrain moral and religious chaos borne of an avalanche of erroneous opinions.

We thought it was neutrality—liberty—but we missed the part where Christ warned against lukewarmth.

And we are paying the price for that now.

Once a society’s public life is officially arranged as though Christ is optional, the private soul learns the same posture by imitation. Without getting afield here, this “arrangement,” or orientation as it is termed, is why ad orientem–in the Traditional Catholic Mass Rome is working so hard to diminish–more visibly illustrates right worship between creature and Creator. How we worship is how we believe, in other words. Prayer and posture train us, one way or another. Our arrangement sans Christ has trained us well, in the hidden hand’s mind. One cannot build a nation around “God is not King” and then act shocked when the people start living like absolute animals in public.

Religion is specifically given as a gift by God to tame our most base, animalistic, bafflingly disordered passions. Christ himself was the epitome of a religious man.

Here is more from Leo XIII in Immortale Dei:

33. To wish the Church to be subject to the civil power in the exercise of her duty is a great folly and a sheer injustice. Whenever this is the case, order is disturbed, for things natural are put above things supernatural; the many benefits which the Church, if free to act, would confer on society are either prevented or at least lessened in number; and a way is prepared for enmities and contentions between the two powers, with how evil result to both the issue of events has taught us only too frequently.

34. Doctrines such as these, which cannot be approved by human reason, and most seriously affect the whole civil order, Our predecessors the Roman Pontiffs (well aware of what their apostolic office required of them) have never allowed to pass uncondemned. Thus, Gregory XVI in his encyclical letter Mirari Vos… inveighed with weighty words against the sophisms which even at his time were being publicly inculcated-namely, that no preference should be shown for any particular form of worship; that it is right for individuals to form their own personal judgments about religion; that each man’s conscience is his sole and all-sufficing guide; and that it is lawful for every man to publish his own views, whatever they may be, and even to conspire against the State. On the question of the separation of Church and State the same Pontiff writes as follows: “Nor can We hope for happier results either for religion or for the civil government from the wishes of those who desire that the Church be separated from the State, and the concord between the secular and ecclesiastical authority be dissolved. It is clear that these men, who yearn for a shameless liberty, live in dread of an agreement which has always been fraught with good, and advantageous alike to sacred and civil interests.” To the like effect, also, as occasion presented itself, did Pius IX brand publicly many false opinions which were gaining ground, and afterwards ordered them to be condensed in summary form in order that in this sea of error Catholics might have a light which they might safely follow.

35. From these pronouncements of the Popes it is evident that the origin of public power is to be sought for in God Himself, and not in the multitude, and that it is repugnant to reason to allow free scope for sedition. Again, that it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties or to hold in equal favour different kinds of religion; that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favour and support.

For my former students reading, “in the multitude” is equivalent to “mob rule.”

Many other popes and documents warned against the American heresy, including Pius IX directly naming the error in his Syllabus of Errors:

55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. — Allocution “Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27, 1852

And Vehementor Nos by Pius X, who tragically is the namesake of many a church parish of so many unwitting Catholics:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.

Longinqua, another by Leo XIII:

It would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church.

These are just a few examples. Yet how many Catholics know all of this, that popes until John XXIII in the 1960s onward, regardless of their personal or political holiness, taught a severely different Catholic doctrine to the faithful? How many?

I didn’t for the majority of my life.

Again, as I frequently point out, I cannot help but think of 2 Thessalonians and the great operation of error so many well-meaning people are falling and will fall for. God himself will allow it–read it and you’ll see.

A “Phantom” Conclusion

The fact that the United States seems free and is not openly hostile to Christianity—not yet—is indeed the trap.

And don’t take my word for it. Just read the popes.

The “phantom” enemy doesn’t need to ban our faith—not yet—if he can revise it, which has already long, long, occurred. If he can train us to keep it personal and sentimental, non-judging and “loving”, we will never feel motivated to learn the true message of Christ’s Gospel.

This is why a physical chastisement on the heels of this spiritual one will be necessary. It is why “the Old Testament God is a God of wrath and justice” is mistaken, when in truth, those stories are simply the prototype of the Little Red Hen tale. People are stupid. We don’t take care of our business when the sun is shining, so God must send a storm in his mercy to correct us.

We as Americans think we are free, at least the still-sleeping ones. The truth is that we are just as much slaves—and more so in fact—than anything we’ve ever read in history books.

Once you see some of the things I’ve had the time to discover over the last few years, the question becomes painfully simple:

Are we living inside an orchestrated false system specifically designed to damn us?

Because if Christ is King, He is King of everything.

Everything.

Even America.

And that simply isn’t the case in 2026—and tragically, I’m afraid our reckoning is coming.