News: Tim Russert

“His life and his fame offer a good example of the switch in the American Catholic community from the priest to the layman and from the Church to the Country.”

The death of Tim Russert dominated the newscasts of the past few weeks. Mr. Russert was an Irish Catholic newsman. His life and his fame offer a good example of the switch in the American Catholic community from the priest to the layman and from the Church to the Country.

The comments upon Mr. Russert from the general public and from distinguished citizens, all but canonizing him, attest to this switch. From all accounts Tim Russert was a positive, affable, highly intelligent, and  fair-minded person. In being such, he deserves all the praise he is receiving, and, as such, he is a credit to the County and to his ethnic background.

Apparently, his favorite comment was, “What a country.!’ He said that often, sincerely and with great enthusiasm.

The passing of Tim Russert was but a moment in time. It marked the high point of American Irish Catholics, the sudden demise of the church institution to a position of social inconsequence, and the beginning of a new American reality, the day of the American Hispanic.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Politics released a recent study that asserts  immigration, especially from Mexico, will lead to the paramountcy of Catholicism in the United States and the browning of that constituency. This bald assertion gives  no credit to the strength of the American culture and to the weaknesses of the Catholic Church institution. Historically, it takes two and a half  generations for residents in this country to become thoroughly Americanized. There is no reason to believe that will change in the near future. Moreover, the Catholic Church institution in the United States has proven to be incapable of holding the allegiance
of Mexican immigrants. And, there is no reason to believe that will change. Thus, there is no question of the impact of Mexican immigrants upon American society, but it will, most likely, be quite different from the situation described in the Pew Report. In all likelihood, American society will be changed, as it has been with the advent of other large immigrant groups, but so, also, will the immigrants be changed, as has been the case with other such groups.

The situation of Mexican immigrants and the Catholic Church in the United States is treated in another part of this Newsletter.