America's Puritan culture and its liberal and libertarian manifestations

The Pittsford Perennialist links to this article by Thomas Storck over at the New Oxford Review online discussing Cardinal George of Chicago and his take on American culture: American Catholics as cultural Protestants. Well worth a read.  As the article reports:

Archbishop Francis George of Chicago made a startling statement during the Synod of Bishops for the Americas in November 1997. Archbishop (now Cardinal) George said that U.S. citizens “are culturally Calvinist, even those who profess the Catholic faith.” American society, he continued, “is the civil counterpart of a faith based on private interpretation of Scripture and private experience of God.” He contrasted this kind of society with one based on the Catholic Church’s teaching of community and a vision of life greater than the individual.

One should note that the social atomization that Cardinal George notes is embodied almost perfectly in both modern liberalism with its emphasis on individual rights dependent on the State, and libertarianism with its denial of the claims of duty and social order.