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It makes me smile when someone talk about Catholicism combating social degeneracy. I live in one of the most religious area of Southern Europe[1]. The amount of social deviancy, disfunction, filth (both physical and moral) observed while people keep professing their Catholic faith makes me think that when "studies prove" that religion is "actually good for you" are talking about American society. American culture is generally more optimistic and extroverted and American religious people bring this to their relationship to God. Here the Church is interwoven with scandals and organized crime. Yes, I am talking about Sicily.
[1]Many of my acquaintances are even scared to say to their parents that they are atheist and I've witnessed a 36 years old woman being scolded by her mother for not attending service while being sick.
I think you're giving the Americans a bit too much credit; the population of the Bible Belt isn't exactly a paragon of moral virtue, at least if you believe the statistics. Anyway, if you couldn't tell, I wasn't being serious. The reason I used that as an example is because I'm Catholic and most of the hardcore Christians in this country make it pretty clear that they don't consider us to be real Christians, which is ridiculous. Obviously, a Catholic state would be pretty distasteful to them. Socially compelled religious displays don't do anything except create the illusion of virtue. IT reminds me of the NFL kneeling scandal, where some people acted as though someone standing for the anthem because they were compelled to was akin to genuine patriotism.
Standing up to a national anthem of any country, let alone one's own, is basic human decency and doesn't indicate a particularly high degree of loyalty for the country the anthem of which is played. But refusing to do so for one's own does show a high degree of contempt due to rare it is to sit during anthems of even other countries.
You're making my point for me. However you want to couch it, you can't use the fact that someone stands for the anthem, or the pledge, or whatever, as evidence of their patriotism, because it has been culturally ingrained to the point where not doing it becomes a conspicuous sign of disrespect among certain people. If church attendance and public religious displays ever reached the same level of ubiquity in our society, they would lose whatever virtue-signalling power they have now.
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