The Catholic Advantage

Between Time Toward Home and his last book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile , Neuhaus converted to Catholicism. Whether as cause or result or some of each, the latter book gives ecclesiology a much higher and more satisfying profile. Neuhaus’s final work is marked by a recurring concern over the American tendency to substitute America for the church.

And along the way, he notes the advantage that Catholics have in resisting this temptation: “the fundamental complaint of anti-Catholics in American history is that Catholicism requires a ‘dual loyalty’ – an allegiance to America and a prior allegiance to the Church. That was and is exactly right.” Neuhaus, following John Courtney Murray’s lead, insists that these are not “necessarily” conflicting allegiances, and says that “Catholic allegiance complemented and reinforced the allegiance to the American experiment.” Be that as it may, Catholics are heavily inoculated against American ecclesio-nationalism.

Protestants will know we’ve made some progress when we start getting charged with having a “dual allegiance,” when we are suspected of being agents of a foreign power.