Religion is the opiate of the people

We need opiates

Yeah I'd take an epidemic of the people being hopped up on christ rather than on heroin any day

It’s official boys. I joined.

Album: http://imgur.com/a/jSrgO

There's more in memetics too.

Wouldn't Catholic principles clash greatly with American principles?

@here

What came first, the Church or America?

And which takes primacy, God or ideology?

God always takes supremacy over ideology. Which is why such a thing would come into contrast with America. Wouldn't it be in the church's best interest if America were non-existent? The fact that it exists at all ought to be considered tantamount to heresy.

@Nicholas István

If someone asked me to renounce either my faith or my country, I'd renounce country. But that is wholly irrelevant.

@Thomas american principles are bad

america is built upon the enlightment and the enlightenment was a mistake

Then why should we support its traditions? Its heritage? If it's founded exclusively on heresy, then why should we even wish to preserve the traditions of such a thing?

its not exculsive, but its important to realize that americana has its flaws and thus something that goes against it inst exactly horrible

conservatism based on just remkaing the past cant happen we can only build a better future

Wouldn't that be considered putting primacy into a nation over God?

?

If you're trying to culturally preserve something that is deemed rhetorically toxic to the universal faith, would that not be considered heretical?

@here Anyone? I'm not trying to debate. this is messing with my head and I don't know if I should even support America as an idea anymore.

I mean I'm serious, we shouldn't have free speech as it pertains to ungodly behavior, we shouldn't have freedom of religion, we shouldn't have separation of church and state. All these things are against Catholic ideas and and principles. And yet as American traditionalists we fight to preserve them. What's more the people who made the country, were by definition heretics.

Why should we wish to preserve this idea, this nation at all?

I've been thinking about this very issue a lot lately, it's a complicated question that will be difficult to solve, further complicated by the fact that the 'overton window' is so far to the left right now. Until then, we could start by considering that America should be loved more as a people and land, and less as a creed, idea or ideology.

One source we can gain some insight is Pope Leo XIII's encyclical *Testem benevolentiae nostrae*, which addresses this topic to an extent.

But the ideas go hand in hand *with* the people and the land.

To separate one from the other would be to declassify it as a nation.

A nation is generally defined as a group of people with common ancestry, faith and culture. It wasn't until the 'enlightenment' era that ideology began to play a role in the framework of governance of some nations, until that point the only fundamental idea that persisted was Christendom, rooted in Natural Law.

and America is a product of that enlightenment.

How then could we possibly separate it from that concept then?

The world has been straying from God since long before America was founded... when the people, including the American *people*, come back to God, these liberal ideas will naturally seem much less important than they do now.

Then America will cease to be America.

I'm pretty sure the American people is what constitutes America, not treating the True Faith exactly the same as false religions and allowing degerates to spew their filth in public.

On a side note, I find it highly ironic how many people (not directed at you, just in general) act shocked by the doctrine of papal infallibility yet treat the founders as saints and the constitution as an infallible dogma.

Actually America was not founded on enlightenment. The American revolution was a reactionary movement against the absolute state of Westminster.

It is based on the tradition of liberties originated from medieval England.