Happy Independence Day to all our readers. Here are a few oldies to mark the day:
Praise for George Washington from Leo XIII
When I see the flag, I am reminded of the glory and the sins in the history of America. Patriotism is not only pride in one’s country (not necessarily in one’s State), but it is also criticism of the history of that culture. And there is plenty to be critical of in American history! But an American ought to be cautious in conducting this necessary criticism. After all, the very vantage point, language, resources and means of this criticism have been supplied by American culture!
To love America is appropriate for an American if by love we mean familial affection for our patrimony (patrimony comes from the Latin word for country, patria, which comes from the Latin word for father, pater). For an American to hate this patrimony, I think, is self-defeating and absurd. For an American to criticism his/her government is not necessarily unpatriotic, nor is it anti-American. To refrain from such criticism, I think, is unfreedom.
But a good amount of criticism that a Christian can level at the USA comes from the Biblical vision of justice — a tradition that precedes America and is in contradiction to many of the premises of our nation’s founding documents.
I agree with you that true patriotism is a virtue, and that we must do our best to love our country — the land of our fathers.
But July 4 celebrates a document that led to the war through which the American STATE gained independence. And celebrating a state is not the same as celebrating the patria.
The state born of the revolution and the constitution is founded on principles of individualism, of centralized Federal power, of privatized religious belief — principles that I wish not to celebrate. So here I’m with Michael I. — love our land, our fellow residents on the land, be grateful for what we have, have a nice party and don’t rain on anyone’s parade, etc. But reserve the expressions of ritual piety for St. Elizabeth of Portugal.
G Alkon,
I agree with you that true patriotism is a virtue, and that we must do our best to love our country — the land of our fathers. But July 4 celebrates a document that led to the war through which the American STATE gained independence. And celebrating a state is not the same as celebrating the patria.
I agree with you, and tried to articulate some similar thoughts last year at this time here.
I very much agree with Policraticus.
THere are times we need to clebrate and remember.
As to the complaints about ritual well these days are for ritual and to be honest we need a lot more of it. We need to see less stores open on the fourth and fight to keep this day special.
Ritual binds and ritual passes down knowledge and helps us remembers those that came before us. We see perhaps the ill effects when Ritual is ignored or thrown out the window as to the Church in too much haste. THe same for the Fourth and other rites of our civic religon
jh – I am troubled when you clearly admit that the fourth is part of american civil religion and yet say that “we” have to “fight” to keep special civil rituals, comparing them to the Church. You cannot serve two masters.
I am also troubled by the fact that you seem to think Policraticus agrees with your love of civil religion.
“I am troubled when you clearly admit that the fourth is part of american civil religion and yet say that “we” have to “fight” to keep special civil rituals, comparing them to the Church. You cannot serve two masters”
I am big Football fan and College Sports fan. Those immense rites that surround My Ala Malter involved tons of ritual and passing down that also invoke a sense of community and bind us all together. Even those that are now dead. I think I can do that and be a good Catholic. Same thing with the Fourth. and what is called “Civic Religon.
As for my Civic Religion what is it? The passing down of traditions, honoring those that came before us, the fact that as individuals we are bound to each other, having a day where Children are introduced to their history and can celebrate it acrtoss different cultures, faiths and ethinic groups. That what we have must sometimes be fought for rather it is at a demostration or at times on battle field. That this is fragile and takes constant vigilance to maintain and that means their involvement.
That is my Civic Religion and it does conflict with my faith one bit
John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the American Founding. Just a different perspective on the central ideas of our nation’s founding.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the American Founding. Just a different perspective on the central ideas of our nation’s founding.
Their narratives of the founding are about as idealistic as their ecclesiologies!
Nice, touching speeches, though. I’m glad at least those speeches inspire you; their social teaching and consistent denunciations of war sure haven’t!
Happy 4th of July to you and your West Virginian kin, Mike. =)
jh-
i hope that you, as a catholic, pass down the tradition that only one death, one sacrifice was necessary to bring the world, hope, freedom, liberty, and true life.
tradition tells me that that one was sufficient enough. all other claims to freedom for all are suspect, at best.
j. – YES.
“jh-
i hope that you, as a catholic, pass down the tradition that only one death, one sacrifice was necessary to bring the world, hope, freedom, liberty, and true life.
tradition tells me that that one was sufficient enough. all other claims to freedom for all are suspect, at best.”
Rest assured that I think most faithful Catholic ae not teaching George Washington reconciled Man to God.
The state born of the revolution and the constitution is founded on principles of individualism, of centralized Federal power, of privatized religious belief — principles that I wish not to celebrate.
Just to touch on “privatized religious belief” — when I read our early American history I get the sense that the Founding Fathers made the best with the situation they had. They were a body of Anglicans, Quakers, Baptists, Heugenots, Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, Reformed Dutch, Calvinists, Roman Catholics and a smattering of Jews.
There’s an amusing recollection from a Scottish visitor to a Philadelphian tavern who found himself in “very mixed company — Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers, Newlightmen (?), Methodists, Seven Day Men [adventists?], Moravions, Anabaptists, and one Jew” among his drinking partners, engrossed in political debate. Funny, but that’s America.
Many Catholics and Protestants alike had settled in the colonies because they were fleeing religious persecution from a temporal state identified with a national church. Protestants didn’t fare too well under Catholic rule and vice versa. Pluralism is messy, but considering the alternatives Europe didn’t have a great track record, nor attempts by this or that Protestant sect to establish themselves as the state religion in the colonies.
I have to wonder what would they might have done better? — What would you have done better if you had authorship of the founding documents of this nation?
Hauerwas and Schindler on the Religiouse Sense in America:
http://www.meetingrimini.tv/index.php/content/show/ContentId/17
…the Founding Fathers made the best with the situation they had.
That may very well be the case. So what? May we not think critically about what has resulted from the (dis)order that they constructed, especially if our informs us that their foundational principles were wrong?
Right.
What we’re talking about on July 4 is the birth of the first successful modern liberal democratic state. Such massive historical events — this one marking the onset of the paradigm for all modern government — are highly equivocal, meaning that they contain and imply multiple meanings and outcomes, which take hundreds of years to understand.
Certainly the “privatization of religion” HAS coincided with religious freedom, and I am certainly grateful for that. I am of Eastern European Jewish background, and most of my family was killed because they lacked religious freedom.
But the “privatization of religion” also coincided with the process by which the Church came, more and more, to cede all political and economic authority to the state — so that the Church could have its own domain, the souls of the faithful. This split between external (political and economic) authority and internal (spiritual) authority is highly artificial, anti-incarnational, and against the basic discoveries of the early Church — which was that their following of Jesus could introduce the Kingdom of God, bit by bit, into the Empire, and make possible a new way of life, “in earth as it is in heaven.”
The spiritual/political, internal/external, church/state split was the fruit of the Reformation, and of Luther’s misinterpretation of Augustine on the two cities.
All of this is to say that the events remembered yesterday are too big, too complex, too full of consequences good and bad to simply be celebrated, as we are constantly encouraged to do.
Celebrating the modern liberal democratic state is sort of like celebrating Galilean/Newtonian science, or paper currency — it’s a way of taking a break from the work of looking at and interpreting the incredibly complex reality in which we are all implicated. No one is talking about “rejecting the state,” or “setting up something new in its place,” as if that were possible. But as Christians we have an opportunity to measure the state against the Kingdom as it is realized in the Eucharist; we have the opportunity to use Christ’s light to see what is actually going on.
I enjoy July 4 — I really do — but I am afraid the piety and the reverence that accompany it are a way of encouraging us not to look carefully at the history of the U.S., which is still unfolding.
i think the inter-denominational drinking sesssion is a good example of the kind of sentimentality that creates a false sense of america as an all-uniting savior. i think that native peoples, african slaves, central americans and non-judeo-christians would have a different narrative to tell.
if we are to tell the truth about our history, we need to play with the idea that these lands and the people who lived here (all of no. and so. america) were better off before “christianity” got here.
i do not believe that what came here in the form of conquest and crusade was chrisitianity. it was certainly not the result of lives changed by the alternative life in the sermon on the mount.
“That may very well be the case. So what? May we not think critically about what has resulted from the (dis)order that they constructed, especially if our informs us that their foundational principles were wrong?”
What disorder was that? What foundational principles that were often echoed in Catholic principles wrong?
THey set the foundation. A foundation that set a path for things that the FOunders were not able/ or afraid to to do at the founding. The founding set what saw in the Jacksoian movement, it must viewed in light of the nation that emerged after the Civil war and then must seen through the lens of millions of immigrants that embraced this country and furtherd the aims and goals of that document
“i think the inter-denominational drinking sesssion is a good example of the kind of sentimentality that creates a false sense of america as an all-uniting savior. i think that native peoples, african slaves, central americans and non-judeo-christians would have a different narrative to tell.
We are not perfect that is ofr sure. But there is truth to it and we saw it recently.
The summer after 9/11,France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation.
That yea, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough fridge units to hold the bodies
until people came to claim them. This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America.
When Katrina hit the Gulf hit the Gul Coast the wayaAmerican pulled together for their fellow citizens was something to see. It was just not money that was donated but bodies, organization, and the citizens of states giving housing and shelter and jobs
to many of their fellow aericans.
That was not a false security or some false Solidarity that is procliamed by some on here as to America.
jh-
there is a lot about katrina that you failed to mention. hardly the point, i realize, but you cant discuss katrina without discussing the huge shame it is on this country, the errors of gwb, and a further testament to the state of the race/class divide.
also, i will never say that their are not stories of people helping one another or giving of themselves, caring for their fellow man, being good neighbors, etc. but why do these stories need to immediately fall under the “god bless america” heading? it doesnt seem that they have anything to do with america’s claim to unite and free its citizens…
i wonder why the stories told of united americans are not instead stories of a united, trans-national Church giving hopsitality and sanctuary to those considered “the other”?
I’m finally convinced. How could I have misspent 58 (the best years of my life) years in this hell hole.
I see the error of my conservative ways.
I’m emigrating to West Virginia.
t. shaw-
why?
no one has called america a hell hole. your sarcasm is in-appropriate for, what i think is, a really good, important conversation among Christ-followers.
there is nowhere in the world to live that does not have a history of violence, racism and neglect of poor people, the United States included.
the question for Christians in the United States is do we see the history of the world as one of power and wars won. if so, we see history as finding its savior in this superpower in which we live.
or….
do we see history as the story of the God of Jesus Christ who said blessed are the peacemakers and the meek and the poor in spirit…etc.
however we answer, i think it changes the way we read scripture, it changes our view of america’s role in the world, it changes our theology and practice.
J. – That’s T. method. Mostly sarcasm, little substance, little critical thought.
[Michael Iafrate]: That may very well be the case. So what? May we not think critically about what has resulted from the (dis)order that they constructed, especially if our informs us that their foundational principles were wrong?
Regarding the matter of religious freedom, what would you have done differently in formulating the documents which established of our nation?
Can you elaborate on what “foundational principles” did the United States get wrong?
[G Alkon] The spiritual/political, internal/external, church/state split was the fruit of the Reformation, and of Luther’s misinterpretation of Augustine on the two cities.
I posted a compilation a while back on Pope Benedict XVI’s understanding of the separation of religious and temporal authority. He asserts for instance that “The modern idea of freedom is thus a legitimate product of the Christian environment”. Pardon the extensive quotation but he sums up the present situation here:
What do you make of this?
Judging by their own words, Benedict and John Paul II appear to be largely in agreement with what the founders intended.
Benedict hails our nation as “guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation’s founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the “self-evident truth” that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Now, I think that is less the case today than it was at the founding. For instance, how many Americans still have that sense of the proper grounding of “inalienable rights” today?
Nonetheless I think it is still possible to celebrate and call recognition to those original principles at the founding and likewise to think critically of where we have, as a nation, quite obviously strayed from those principles in our nation’s history.
In short, I tend to see the 4th of July no so much as a blanket commendation of the United States as much as a reminder of those principles America was founded on; it is an impetus not to simply wave the flag but for pause and reflection on “ordered liberty” and the nature of this experiment.
Not sure exactly what Why? means.
Why West Virginia? Cheap nursing homes. Right, Mike!
Why: because no one has said one positive about America but then was ‘attacked.’
Compared to nearly every other country (we can’t all fit in Sweden), America is a ‘shining city on a hill.’ Sure it has it’s warts. But, all the other places have warts.
But, but, but!!! No one in America ever did anything christian until St. Barack said he would do all things christianly if he gets elected!!!!
[Racist comments deleted. Though the following racist citation will remain, since Christopher addresses it below.]
Regarding African slaves, P. Buchanan (and I agree):
“First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
“Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
“We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Apart from the fact of the slave trade. With all due respect, this is kind of like hearing somebody contend that the Third Reich was beneficial for Jews because it resulted in the creation of Israel.
J. – Also note that T. Shaw is racist. I would have deleted his racist comments and citations had Christopher not succinctly refuted them.
Christopher – I do not disagree with the idea of religious freedom.
On second thought, I deleted some of them.
To the following statement:
“The United States is the last, best hope of man on earth.”
…may I assume that we are all in agreement that that is idolatry?
May I further assume that:
“The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing”
…is also agreed by all here to be idolatry?
iafrate- thanks for the clarification on t. shaw. i’ve no need to ask why? ever again.
matt talbot- agreed.
t. shaw- i am no supporter of “st. barack”. along with your ridiculous comments you make ridiculous assumptions. your buchanan quote is a nightmare.
…and can we also agree that for a Catholic to participate in the ritual described here is probably, at the very least, giving credence to error?
Matt – Thanks for the quotes. They illustrate nicely the kind of baloney I’m talking about.