I grew up in Maryland. It has been a long time since I lived there, but there are still many things about Maryland that strike a special chord in my heart. Every once in a while, the smell of salt water or a sea breeze will remind me of the Chesapeake Bay, and I am transported back to my childhood, going out on the boat with my grandparents, catching fish or crabs, and gazing at the lights of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. When I see the success of an olympic athlete from my home state, I am filled with pride. When I hear about a tragedy taking place there, like the recent mass shooting in Baltimore, I am especially troubled by the news. My home state is a part of me and always will be, even if I never live there again.
This is the meaning of patriotism, a love for one’s homeland and a feeling of solidarity with those who come from there. It is an acknowledgement that the culture, heritage, and history of a place are worth celebrating. It is a form of love, and for that reason alone it is a good thing. But that does not make it uncomplicated.
Patriotism is not a universally popular concept in America today. Many people argue that patriotism can be misused to ignore or dismiss the crimes of the past. The displacement and cruel treatment of first nations peoples, the legacy of slavery and segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during the Second World War, etc. - many would say that these are examples of patriotism run amok, and therefore any displays of unbridled affection for America run the risk not only of ignoring the violence that marks so much of our history but of allowing for more of the same to be perpetrated in the future.
True patriotism is not blind to the problems of the past, but to have such a patriotism is a necessary condition for both repentance and renewal. You cannot fight for a better future for a country that you do not love.
The catechism says that “The love and service of one's country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity” (CCC 2239). This is not charity in the way we tend to think of it today, an offering of time or money to organizations that help those in need. Charity means divine love. When we act with charity, we love with the same kind of sacrificial love with which Jesus offered Himself on the cross. Patriotism is a natural love, meaning that anyone can experience it regardless of faith, but charity is a theological virtue, given only as a grace by God. Patriotism is perfected by that divine gift, and it can easily devolve into something else without it.
The most direct Catholic teaching on patriotism appears in the 1890 encyclical Sapiente Christianae by Pope Leo XIII. In it, the pope acknowledges love of country as a good, along with obedience to civil authority, but he stresses that for Catholics there is a higher allegiance that needs to be heeded. He says, “If the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land, very much more is it the urgent duty of Christians to be ever quickened by like feelings toward the Church” (SC 5). He alludes to the dual citizenship that followers of Jesus possess, citizenship in our nation but also citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Both of these spring from love and therefore originate in the same place. “The supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle,” he says, “since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other” (SC 6). Since both come from God, both are good and do not naturally conflict with one another.
Yet the pope says that conflicts emerge whenever the state attempts to contravene the laws of God or demands more allegiance from its citizens than it is due:
If the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State (SC 10).
Sometimes the most patriotic thing you can do to show your love for your country is to disobey unjust laws and to call out unjust practices. The vast majority of the rest of the encyclical follows this theme. Our first allegiance is to Christ, which means to the Church, and therefore a healthy patriotism will always reinforce the principles of our faith, even when that requires standing up against immoral actions sanctioned or carried out by the state. “To love both countries, that of earth below and that of heaven above, yet in such mode that the love of our heavenly surpass the love of our earthly home, and that human laws be never set above the divine law, is the essential duty of Christians, and the fountainhead, so to say, from which all other duties spring” (SC 11).
If our patriotism is properly ordered, not only will it be in line with the love of God, but it will also increase our love of others. The Second Vatican Council affirmed this in Gaudium et Spes, “Citizens must cultivate a generous and loyal spirit of patriotism, but without being narrow-minded. This means that they will always direct their attention to the good of the whole human family, united by the different ties which bind together races, people and nations” (GS 75). Patriotism is meant to be a school of love, akin to that which we experience much more deeply within marriage and family. The better I learn to love my wife and appreciate the reality of Christ in her, the more I will come to see that same presence of Christ in everyone I encounter. Likewise, the more I love my homeland and my community, the more I should be able to see and appreciate the presence of God in other places and among other peoples.
It is never my country first and everyone else last. The ways in which I celebrate my own country, along with the things I do to enrich and protect it, should always be oriented towards service and care for others. Pope Francis calls this a “fraternal gratuitousness” and he says that the more we practice that kind of patriotism, the more deeply we will experience the fruits of fraternal love. “The true worth of the different countries of our world is measured by their ability to think not simply as a country but also as part of the larger human family,” he says. On the other hand, “Narrow forms of nationalism are an extreme expression of an inability to grasp the meaning of this gratuitousness. They err in thinking that they can develop on their own, heedless of the ruin of others, that by closing their doors to others they will be better protected” (Fratelli tutti 141). According to the pope, this leads to all manner of problems, from racism and xenophobia to “the simplistic belief that the poor are dangerous and useless, while the powerful are generous benefactors” (ibid.).
All of this stands ultimately on the example of Jesus. “This is my commandment,” he says to us, “that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). We live out all of our loves profitably, including our love of country, only when we ground it in the love of God in Christ. Saint Paul says we should “be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word, and to be ready to every good work” (Titus 3:1, KJV). Pope Leo says that readiness to carry out every good works means “if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them” (SC 10). Christ’s selfless, sacrificial love for us makes it possible for us to love others in a selfless, sacrificial way. Our love for our country, if it follows the same path, must also make our country more selfless and sacrificial.
How then do we square a love of our country with the sins of our past? Or even for that matter with the sins of our present? The answer is not to deny our love for our country, but to love our country more. We must be able to recognize the ways in which we have perpetuated injustice in our history. A patriotism that denies the horrors of the past is nothing more than a grotesque sentimentality. On the other hand, if we look at our nation’s sins and say, “It is hopeless, we have always been and will always be evil,” not only do we fail to see the genuine goods that have also been a part of our national life, but we deny the fundamental Christian principle that people can change. In the absence of Jesus Christ, there is no atoning for our sins. They weigh as heavy as chains upon our souls, never to be escaped. But because of Jesus Christ and His cross, we have been set free from those chains. We can be not only forgiven but made new. Only sinners ever become saints, after all. If this applies to us as individuals, it certainly also applies to us as nations. The more we love our country and fight for her to be all that she has the potential to be, the more loving she may become.
America is still a young country. We have much yet to learn. And we find ourselves today in a state of adolescent turmoil, pulling ourselves apart at the seams as we back into ever more deeply entrenched ideological camps. But we have much to be grateful for. We have been granted by God an unprecedented level of prosperity. We live in a land that is rich with beauty and blessed with a mixture of cultures and traditions that are worth preserving and celebrating. We are the inventors of the automobile and the first nation to travel to the moon. We are the birthplace of jazz, rock and roll, and hip hop. We have at our best fought for liberty, honesty, and equality, some of us even offering our lives for the greater good. And when we have done things that have subverted or denied those principles, brave men and women have always risen up in protest, willing to lay their lives down to transform this country for the better.
All of this is America, the good and the bad, but that’s not ultimately why we should love her. It is not about making a list of good things versus faults and then counting them up. You would never say to your husband or wife, or your son or daughter, “Well I made a list of your good and bad traits and it seems there are more good ones than bad, so I have decided to love you.” That is not love at all, at least in the Christian sense. Our love of country is only genuine when it comes from a deeper place, one of familiarity, of deep resonance. This is my land. These are my people. I am a part of this, I have a stake in it, and I will give the whole of myself for its well being.
America is not an abstraction. It is me. It is us. It is all of us who make our home here and participate in the fabric of our common life. I am a sinner, but I have been made worthy of becoming a saint by the love of God poured out for me. America is worthy of love too, for the same reason.