The Burning of Nottoway and the New Pope: American Identity and the Future of Catholicism 

The past six weeks have been filled with news in both the United States and the world at large. April 19 was the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy, which opened the American Revolution, resulting in our independence in 1783. This semiquincentennial has received much less attention—outside the particular localities directly involved—than the bicentennial did 50 years ago. In addition, this year, the Triduum and Easter fell on the very weekend when the festivities began—Good Friday rather clashes in theme with remembrance of Paul Revere’s Ride.  

Then, after record conversions recorded in many countries at the Holy Saturday vigil, Pope Francis died on Easter Monday; a frankly unpleasant and divisive pontificate came to an end. On May 8, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected pope as Leo XIV. Eight days later, in White Castle, Louisiana, Nottoway, the largest antebellum plantation home in the southern United States, burned to the ground. May 20 was the 1,700th anniversary of the opening of the Council of Nicaea. Disparate as all these events are, they each have a significance that is not unrelated to the others.

Leo XIV is the first pope since the fourth century to come from a traditionally non-Catholic country. That in itself must not be ignored. In a real sense, he might as well have come from India or Japan, in the sense that he is the first in centuries who was born and brought up in a country that is essentially heathen—little as we like to think of it that way. That is not to say—as with India and Japan—that the United States does not have a Catholic history; but it is the history—replete with Saints and Blesseds as it is—of a minority people who ultimately have little effect upon their country’s mainstream. 

Unlike the Indian or Japanese Catholics, however, it is a status that American Catholics—at least in terms of their leadership—have quietly acquiesced to for two and a half centuries. In return for respectability and a “place at the table,” we would make no serious attempt to evangelize our country. The election of JFK was perhaps the apogee of this silent pact.

There were individuals—usually either converts or foreign-born—who, throughout our history, tried to remind us Catholic Americans of our duties to God and Country. But these—from Fr. John Thayer to Orestes Brownson to Integrity and Triumph magazines—have been few and far between. For the most part, we have been content to join in the self-worship of the American civic religion; praising its demi-gods and doctrines in unison with our fellow citizens, until the Sunday (or Saturday) break. During that time, each group of us repaired to our own respective worship spaces to venerate the deities our ancestors brought from the four corners of the world. That duty done, we would return to the marketplace and our joint veneration of American heritage.

To be fair, even if it was a heritage we Catholics—with some few exceptions—had contributed to primarily on the state or local level, it was and is a proud one, even if not of divine origin. The two Civil Wars, with incredible bravery and sacrifice shown on both sides regardless of where lay right or wrong; the settling of the frontier, which, despite its bloodier aspects, still represents an amazing human accomplishment; accomplishments in the arts and sciences which have made us the envy of the world; the arrival of immigrants from the four quarters of the world and their accomplishments herein; and some of the most amazing natural scenery on the planet—all of these are part of the American inheritance.

Since the time of our independence, the management and preservation of this heritage has fallen to the primarily WASP institutions whose forefathers set the thing rolling to great degree: the mainstream Protestant churches; the hereditary, learned, genealogical, historical, living history, and preservation societies; fraternal organizations; conservation organizations and land trusts; innumerable “friends of” the various libraries and museums; the various publications dedicated thereto; and, of course, those branches of local, state, and Federal government devoted to such things. All of these bodies did their work in great part as a patriotic duty; individual Catholics participated to the degree that they wished or were allowed to, depending on immediate circumstances.

But in the 1960s, the moral consensus that undergirded the country since colonial times collapsed; with it went the foundation of the National Religion. The Age of Aquarius erupted in the counterculture. As with Europe in the Romantic Rebellion of the 19th century and the interwar period in the 20th, the fall of certainty in the idols of the tribe opened up avenues for Catholics to evangelize. Consumed with our own self-doubt in the wake of Vatican II, however, we were not interested. In the 1960s, the moral consensus that undergirded the country since colonial times collapsed; with it went the foundation of the National Religion. The Age of Aquarius erupted in the counterculture.Tweet This

So, the past decades have continued. Despite a short revival in response to 9/11, the American religion has continued its downward fall; worse yet—for the fraying national unity—has been the emergence of Wokery. Playing Unitarianism to the fading faith’s Calvinism, it turns the latter’s narrative on its head. Instead of being the “Shining City on the Hill,” the “Last Best Hope of Mankind,” the United States in this new gospel became the worst country that ever has been, founded in genocide and built on slavery. What is lost on both is the idea that it is simply a country with a mixed history, like any other—ours to love because God chose to place us here. For the believing Catholic, that love must join the preexisting love of any neighbor as a spur to bring his beloved native land to Christ and His Church.

For the last decade, a war has been fought against the memory of the American South. To be sure—as with the sweatshops and the Know-Nothing riots of the North—there are dark chapters in Southern history. But, as with the North, there are bright ones as well. It is to these that the faithful Catholic looks for a praeparatio evangelica, a “preparation for the Gospel.” Flannery O’Connor wrote about the South and its writers: 

Whenever I am asked why Southern writers particularly have this penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man. And in the south, the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. Of course, the South is changing so rapidly that almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

Christ-haunted! So it is in a way that the Northeast and California are not. In an era where America’s rulership has devoted themselves to transforming our country to the freakish, there are a great many in the South who still see the freakishness of the current project for that very reason. They must be punished—and so has emerged the present cultural war on the South, using its racial Achilles’ heel. It is why figures like Confederate Generals Beauregard and Forrest (despite his initial involvement with the KKK), who spent their later careers working for racial reconciliation, are attacked with all the others. It has nothing to do with righting supposed past injustices and everything to do with domination in the present.

Of course, it is not only the South that is receiving this treatment—hence the relatively quiet opening of the nation’s 250thanniversary. But for the reasons mentioned, it is the former Confederacy that gets a special share. This is where we come to the burning of Nottoway. It was thusly described by the American Battlefield Trust: 

This is the largest plantation home in the South, an outstanding example of the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by the wealthy sugar planter before the Civil War. The three-story mansion has sixty-four rooms and was considered immense even by the standards of the antebellum “Golden Age.” 

It was—as I recall it from a visit in 1986—incredibly beautiful. In architecture, art, and furnishings, it was, without a doubt, one of the greatest products of American creativity. The destruction of such a place is an immeasurable loss to all Americans. But in the current climate, a great many foolish mouths yapped about how—as the product of slavery—it deserved to burn. “So what?” was a comment echoed by mental munchkins of all races. This debate was entertained seriously by outlets of the media industry, and no doubt the education industry shall chime in.

No nation’s built and environmental fabric can prosper in the hands of those who despise its builders. The WASP organizations mentioned earlier, who have acted as its watchdogs since independence, are riddled right through with Wokery of the most infantile quality. They are not fit guardians of it, as both the reaction to Nottoway’s fall and the semiquincentennial show. But as their commitment to genocide and perversion shows—and this commitment is far from restricted to what is called the Left—neither they nor their complaisant Catholic minions should be running the country either.

Without the Catholic Faith, as Orestes Brownson foresaw in 1845, our country is ultimately doomed. We Catholic Americans have no right—if ever we did—not to evangelize. Our country and our fellow Americans need what we have—and what we so frequently take for granted. It is up to us to at last become responsible for this great land of ours. It has given us so much materially; we owe it the spiritual gifts we alone can give it. Without these, the forces that threaten to tear her apart will only increase in strength until they succeed.

The election of an American pope underlines our situation even further. We are not a Catholic country; how can we play a proper or good role in the world? On his mother’s side, the new pope descends from one of the few really integrally Catholic areas in our country. Having produced him, we need our country to take her proper role among Catholic nations—but this, too, makes evangelization essential.

We must try to convert our neighbors, our institutions, and ourselves. This will be an organic process. Just as the Faith altered and improved as she converted the decadent Classical civilization and barbaric Germanic tribes, she shall do with us—and all that is best in America shall be reborn in a much better way than at present. In the meantime, as our fathers did across the seas, we need to preserve as much as we can of the best of what we have received from our non-Catholic origins.

Let us also treasure, as the building blocks of the future, what bits and pieces of Catholic culture and history we already have here. From St. Junípero Serra to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, let us tell their stories—and those of the American Blesseds, Venerables, and Servants of God who are our true heroes. Above all, let us promote devotion to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of these United States.

The election of an American pope, coupled with the disintegration of the non-Catholic American ethos, should force upon each of us the reality of our situation. Catholic America, ready or not, is at childhood’s end. We must take up seriously both the evangelistic and civil duties that we have left to others for 250 years. It shall not be easy; but if we fight for the Kingdom of Christ here, we shall surely enter it when we die.