The Papal State?

What is a nation?

Is it merely many people living on the same real estate, saluting the same flag? Or is something more? Perhaps an ideal, a whispered dream of freedom and grace.

For at least twenty to thirty years after the Second World War it was something more, as a postwar cultural consensus reigned. But as sociologist, Charles Murray observed in his recent book ‘Coming Apart’, that consensus has been pulled asunder by a division of Americans into polarized camps.

Gone are the days when, as one Hollywood wag put it, “Jews made Catholic movies for Protestant audiences.” As a convert from Judaism to Catholicism, proud of my religious heritage, that sounds nice to me.

But as Roman Catholics, we see even within our faith ideas once thought vices and barbarism tolerated, if not accepted outright by some, and resisted vigorously by others. Per our country and our faith, is it possible to heal these ruptures?

Does Dallas today dance to the tune of San Francisco? Can Manhattan break common bread with Tulsa? If they once did, will they ever again?

A 2013 article in Tufts Magazine says no.

The writer, Colin Woodward, says using data such as demographics, voting patterns, buying habits, religious worship, etc., North America could break up into eleven culturally homogenous countries. The names and characteristics of all of these theoretical nations are too lengthy for this space. Some of the names are Yankeedom, Deep South, Left Coast, you get the idea. The piece can be easily found online.

Sound farfetched? As notable a figure as the former governor of Texas and presidential candidate Rick Perry has theorized about the ultimate outcome of a Tenth Amendment showdown. Many states have, granted, small, movements that discuss a post federal America.

Well, if we as a people continue to hurtle towards and over the abyss of fragmentation, then I have a suggestion for the twelfth state:

Pacellia. Would have used “Maryland”, but rather plagiaristic.

Named after Pius XII, just to upset rabid modernist poseurs and ensure their habitation elsewhere, I’d place it on the east coast from the Delmarva Peninsula down to the South Carolina-Georgia border. Given current trends and demographics, the cultural mores would look a lot like the United States around 1962, with allowances made for the relatively few good societal innovations made after that era. A de facto Catholic nation, not a de jure one.

As William F. Buckley Jr., speaking as a conservative Catholic, said of the changing of the liturgy by the wholesale vernacular modifications of Vatican II, paraphrase, “In supposedly making the mass so much more relevant to many various groups, can not a small part be reserved for us?”

In the event of vastly different American polity, could not a small parcel of the American east coast be put aside, not for an exclusive Catholic nation, but for a democratic nation that generally subscribed to the eternal moral values and traditional cultural precepts of a former stronger, safer, even holier America?

Yes, a silly idea as we ponder it today. A preposterous scenario, it could never happen here.

However, a scant two generations ago, one would have thought abortion on demand, radical indoctrination in our grammar schools, a viable socialist candidate for president, glorification of sex change procedures, online porn, a sewer of popular music, an actual debate on whether grown men can utilize the same public bathrooms as small girls…a preposterous scenario, it could never happen here.