AMERICANISM. - This term designates a religious doctrine and movement of liberal and naturalistic inspiration, which matured within Catholicism toward the end of the 19th century, in the United States of America.
It aimed to facilitate and intensify conversions to the faith, through a vast work of reconciliation and synthesis between the ancient Catholic tradition and the new thought and new aspirations of modern religiosity. This movement, of which the missionary Fr. Isaac Thomas Hecker (v.) had made himself the protagonist, founder of the religious Congregation of the Paulists, and already discussed in the very circles in which it had arisen, had wide resonance and aroused reactions of various kinds when it was brought to the attention of religious circles in Europe, especially French ones. The liveliest polemics in fact arose in France. The event that motivated them was the publication of a life of Fr. I. T. Hecker written by W. Elliott, translated into French (Paris 1897) by F. Klein, which in a few months went through five editions.
In effect the Americanists, although starting from the noble and praiseworthy intention of a more extensive and rapid spread of Catholicism, were jeopardizing the unity of the Roman Church. For this reason Leo XIII intervened with great timeliness, condemning the error with the letter Testem benevolentiae of 22 Jan. 1899, addressed to Cardinal Gibbons, an admirer and supporter of the Paulists. The good intentions and the perfect orthodoxy of the promoters of the new theories are demonstrated unequivocally by their prompt and unconditional submission to the words of the Supreme Pontiff.
DOCTRINE
Setting out, in a rapid synthesis, the doctrinal content of the pontifical document, Americanism may be considered under a threefold aspect: apologetic, ascetic and dogmatic.
Apologetic aspect. - Americanism came to light under the impulse of an apologetic concern, aiming to remove, as far as possible, all the obstacles that might hold the modern man back from embracing the Catholic faith. The needs of the times should induce the Church to raise up again the prestige of Catholicism before the whole of contemporary civilization, yielding to new demands whatever the Middle Ages transmitted to it that is transient, departing somewhat from the old rigorism, softening the old formulas, passing over in silence certain truths too adverse to the modern mentality. It will be the task of missionaries and preachers to show themselves more condescending toward non-Catholics, insisting more on the truths that draw them near than on the errors that separate them from the Church.
The teaching of the Gospel must be presented in a more sympathetic light and made more adherent to the soul's present aspirations, in such a way as to make it square better with human understanding. To obey this urgent need for adaptation, the Church must restrict the exercise of its authority and leave to each individual the possibility of developing his private initiatives to the full. All the more so since, after the definition of pontifical infallibility, the Pope is always in time to intervene effectively to correct any deviations in the thought of individual faithful, who are left freer.
Such a way of feeling is in contrast with Catholic doctrine. The Vatican Council teaches that the truths of faith are immutable and all derive from God. It is therefore intuitive that they must all be taught without attenuations or reservations, and without variations of meaning. Changes are possible only in the disciplinary order and belong exclusively to the religious authority. The Vatican definition, aiming rather to prevent than to correct error, has made the bond of dependence on the Roman Pontiff even tighter.
Ascetic aspect. - In the vain attempt to justify their singular claim to a broader freedom of thought and action, the Americanists appeal to the direct interior intervention of the Holy Spirit, whose influence, being today more fruitful than in the past, would render useless and superfluous the spiritual direction of the external magisterium. They maintain furthermore that, in order to attain Christian perfection, every effort must be placed in the practice of the natural virtues and in the exercise of a great external activity, directed to the good of society.
The natural virtues must be preferred to the supernatural ones and the active to the passive. The latter, such as obedience, humility, etc., were good and were necessary in the past, when circumstances obliged the Church to gather all its energies into a perfect cohesion of individual intellects and wills, with a view to a more complete triumph over schisms and heresies. But now that conditions have completely changed, the passive virtues prove more of a hindrance than a help to attaining perfection and contribute to forming weak and cowardly souls, rather than strong and manly ones. Hence the Americanists' contempt and disdain for the religious vows, which they declare little suited to the modern spirit.
It is easy to intuit the incompatibility of these opinions with the evangelical teaching. It suffices in fact to observe that all the virtues, being operative habits, deserve the name of active, those principally that demand a greater effort of will and a greater sacrifice, such as obedience, humility, etc. Their importance does not change with time, just as Jesus Christ does not change, who taught them by example and word, making himself "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" and exhorting us to be, like Him, "meek and humble of heart." That broader influence of the Holy Spirit, which Americanism affirms for the present age, while on the one hand it is in open contradiction with the contempt for the supernatural virtues and with the history of early Christianity, on the other hand would render spiritual direction even more necessary in order to discern divine inspirations from vain human illusions, which are all too easy in this field.
Dogmatic aspect. - Although Americanism remains principally on the practical ground of action, it is nevertheless not entirely foreign to the theoretical domain of ideas. There is, at the bottom of the attitudes and programs of these promoters of innovative opinions, a veiled naturalism, which is in truth the fundamental idea, the dominant motive of Americanism: a naturalism overvaluing man's possibilities, to the point of forgetting the intellectual, moral and above all passional imbalance caused in him by sin, as well as the consequent necessity of grace for the attainment of the supreme end. Besides this false conception, aiming to humanize Christianity, a strong current of liberalism must be pointed out, in which one may see a manifest return to the Protestant doctrines on private inspiration.
On the whole Americanism presents in germ many errors, which were later condemned by Pius X under the collective name of modernism.
Bibliography12 works
EMANUEL CHICETINI
AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION:
v. KNOW NOTHING.
AMERICAN WALDENSIAN AID SOCIETY:
v. VALDESI.