FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
My Dear Parishioners
I read this article in the National Catholic Register. It was excellent and gives good insight to how we can be Catholic and patriotic. I was written by Daniel Gallager, a professor at Ralston College in Georgia. I hope you enjoy it and it can bring two topics together for as American Roman Catholics.
Each Independence Day is an opportunity to appreciate anew the distinctiveness of being Catholic and being American. If there were any doubts one could be good at both, they were dispelled by the last conclave.
Yet the issue of whether and how one can — and indeed should — cultivate patriotic values while practicing the Catholic faith continues to evolve in unprecedented ways. This is only natural since the Catholic faith necessarily orients us toward eternal life in a way that earthly citizenship does not. That leaves room for discussion and debate about the relationship between Church and state, religious and civic duty, and law and freedom.
The Catholic tradition is blessed with a long history of thinking through these issues. St. Augustine made the radical claim that, for Christians, the love of God should prevail to the extent that all earthly concerns and individual desires are to be subjugated to it.
In the pagan worldview, the two were indistinguishable. It was impossible to tease out civic duties from religious duties and vice versa. Polytheistic worship and sacrifice were not only permitted in ancient Rome, but considered a sacred civic duty. If neglected, ruin could ensue upon the empire. No major political decision was made, no battle undertaken, without meticulous consultation of the auspices, which consisted primarily in the interpretation of avian innards.
Christianity, Augustine explains, disentangles the two, such that individuals can be citizens of the City of God and of the Earthly City since everything — family, commerce, government — can be shaped by the love of God and contribute to man’s proper end of union with Him. Paganism, on the other hand, considers the world — the “cosmos” — the ultimate horizon, and the gods are part of the world. The gods are the highest and best, but, unlike the Christian God, they are nonetheless part of the world.
Christian faith, in contrast, sees the necessities of the world and the essentials of the cosmos as contingent upon the free, unnecessitated choice of the Creator. For Christians, the world or “cosmos” is not the ultimate horizon, but rather the result of God’s generosity and his free act of creation. In Christianity, it is possible to conceive the world as never existing, something impossible for the pagan mindset.
Why is this important for patriotism? Because it allows for a kind of civic and religious freedom that was simply unthinkable in the ancient world. It opens up space for an “immunity of coercion” that allows men and women to fulfill their duty of worshiping God based solely on the exigences of the City of God.
“It is one of the major tenets of Catholic doctrine that man’s response to God in faith must be free” (Dignitatis Humanae, 10). This means that a constituent part of American Catholics’ devotion to their nation is their indebtedness to the freedom enshrined in their nation’s founding principles. To observe Independence Day is to gratefully acknowledge that we live in a country that recognizes and affords the freedom to direct not just our religious practices but our civic activity toward the City of God.
If we fail to revisit the distinction between the Christian and pagan worldviews outlined above, we slide into a suspicion of the freedom afforded by our country. To guard against this suspicion, we must also remember that the very liberty our country affords us also affords us the freedom of tying that liberty to truth. This is also a bedrock of Catholic social teaching, as evident in a wonderful encyclical by Pope Leo XIII from 1888 entitled Libertas Praestantissimum (On the Nature of Human Liberty).
Leo called attention to the essential bond between human freedom and truth, noting that a freedom which refuses to be bound to the truth descends into mere arbitrariness and submits itself to self-gratification and vile passion.
More than a century later, Pope John Paul II, in Centesimus Annus, would recall that the origin of every evil Leo XIII wanted to respond to in Libertas Praestantissimum and Rerum Novarum is a kind of freedom, “which, in the area of economic and social activity, cuts itself off from the truth about man.” The devotion to one’s country known as “patriotism” instills in one’s heart a love for a nation that explicitly acknowledges and professes an obligation to honor and protect a freedom that, for Catholics, is not only in accord with human dignity but essential for pursuing the City of God in a manner consistent with the Gospel itself.
Leo XIII and John Paul II were both aware that the citizens of a nation such as ours could fall woefully short of living in accord with the ends toward which civic freedom is directed. They also both knew that if a state curtails civic and religious freedom for that reason — i.e., the reason that there is no guarantee the citizens will bind that freedom to truth — the consequences will be even more disastrous. Thus, “whenever heretics or innovators have attacked the liberty of man,” wrote Leo XIII, “the Church has defended it and protected this noble possession from destruction.” He then lists moments in history, such as during the crises of Manichaeism and Jansenism, when the Church proclaimed and defended human freedom with particular earnestness.
Pope Leo XIV has made it clear that such freedom is also absolutely crucial for the kind of interreligious dialogue that can promote world peace.
“I believe that religions and interreligious dialogue can make a fundamental contribution to fostering a climate of peace,” he told members of the Diplomatic Corps May 16. “This naturally requires full respect for religious freedom in every country, since religious experience is an essential dimension of the human person. Without it, it is difficult, if not impossible, to bring about the purification of the heart necessary for building peaceful relationships.”
This 250th Independence Day, as American Catholics wave the Stars and Stripes, march down Main Street, and honor the men and women who have served their country, they should have no fear that this is the kind of freedom their Church teaches and promotes. This is the kind of patriotism their Church encourages. This is the kind of liberty that can lead us to the City of God.
Peace,
Fr. Monteleone
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