US Catholicism and Protestantism

I increasingly believe that what many view as orthodoxy within the Catholic world of the church stems largely from Anglo-Protestant ethnic and cultural biases rather than from Catholicism itself.

Whereas globally, the Catholic mindset may have a large complex set of rules the average person views with prudence and discernment and discretion, Protestants usually have very few rules that are taken extremely seriously. I believe this results in a distinct Catholic conscience and a Protestant conscience.

The church in the United States has the unfortunate influence of the Protestant conscience and puritan culture as well as the intensely complex legal system of Catholicism.

It is my observation that the combination of these two as seen in the US results in a highly moralistic and legalistic culture in which people suffocate under the puritanical moralism. However at the same time this is likely to be viewed as a bizarre corruption of Catholicism by the rest of the church in the rest of the world, or outside of North America and Northern Europe.

I think much of what many ex Catholics dislike and complain about Catholicism may be misattributed to the Protestant influence on the US church and bishops. The latter of which is likely to be seen at odds with the Vatican and the church in the rest of the world, particularly in the global south.

I do want to acknowledge the influence of the French Canadian and Irish Catholic Jansenism on American Catholicism, which is largely influential as well to the above phenomenon I’ve described as existing in US Catholicism rather than to fully attribute it to Protestantism. It is entirely possible that these have worked in tandem throughout the centuries.

This is not a new observation. In 1899, Leo XIII addressed it directly in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, condemning what he called "Americanism" which he identified as the tendency of the American church to accommodate Catholic doctrine to Protestant culture. The problem Rome identified then is the same cultural fusion being described here.

My overarching point is that what many Catholics view as defending orthodoxy, is actually defending a culturally contaminated version of Catholicism that Rome has always been skeptical of. The practical consequence is visible in how certain teachings get enforced.

Moral rules that exist throughout global Catholicism become social weapons in the American context, wielded with a rigidity and punitive force that reflects the Puritan enforcement culture more than Catholic pastoral tradition.