This week, of course, we will be celebrating the Fourth of July, the anniversary of when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the great “American Experiment” began. It reminds me of a couple of famous quotes. The first was by one of the founders of the U.S. Navy, Commodore Stephen Decatur, who said, “My country, right or wrong!” Many years later, in responding to someone who used Commodore Decatur’s quote, Senator Carl Schurz replied, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” The Jesuits who taught Senator Schurz when he was a boy must have been proud, because he accurately reflected the Catholic teaching on the virtue of patriotism.
Some might find it surprising to hear patriotism as being described as a virtue, but it is a great one. Patriotism is to love one’s country, and it is a natural overflow of the virtue of piety. Simply piety is rendering what is due in justice to one’s parents and other family members. Of course, at it’s ultimate, piety is rendering to God, our Heavenly Father, what is due to Him. Patriotism is an extension, viewing one’s country as an extension of one’s family, so a patriot renders what is due to their nation, their government, and their fellow citizens. The foundation for this virtue is found in the New Testament; “Be subject to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the approval of those who do good. For it is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish people. Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God. Give honor to all, love the community, fear God, honor the king” (1 Pe 2:13–17). While rooted in the virtue of justice (as is piety), patriotism must be governed by the virtue of charity.
Patriotism is rooted in the land or country one lives in, and its people. This “organic” notion is important, and one that many Americans fail to appreciate. Too often Americans reduce patriotism to the love of loosely comprehended abstractions such as “freedom,” “pluralism,” “democracy,” “our way of life.” Some of these ideas need to be taken with caution from our Catholic faith. For example pluralism -- the respecting of various ideas -- is NOT a virtue in terms of religious matters. We cannot equate God’s truth with Satan’s lie nor with human distortion. As for freedom, it is not the liberty to do whatever one wants to do (which can be seen as a freedom to sin), rather the greatest freedom is “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21), that is the freedom from the impediments that keep us from becoming what God created us to be.
It is important to recognize the many things that pass themselves off as patriotism, but aren’t. Patriotism is not love of the government that rules us, but it does demand respect for that government and obedience to its just laws. Patriotism is not an ideological commitment to the founding principles of the nation in which your were born, for there can be circumstances when a Catholic patriot may need to fight the tyrannical governments that oppress their fatherlands; e.g. Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J., who resisted the Nazi party when it seized control of his German fatherland. Patriotism is not a feeling that your nation is superior to another nation, nor is it the nationalism that would pursue the good of one’s country at the expense of others.
In the end, the Catholic patriot desires their country to come under the rule of Christ the King. Here in the USA it means the desire for a Catholic America.