Nationalism/Patriotism & Catholicism

[Ederico]

Patriotism from a Catholic perspective

[Excerpt from: CatholicCulture.org]

"That this is and has always been the teaching of the Catholic Church may be gathered from the pronouncements of the Head of the Church as collected in such a work as La Patrie et la Paix. Textes pontificaux.5 Thus we find Pius X, in an address delivered in French to French pilgrims on April 19, 1909, saying in express terms: "Si le catholicisme etait ennemi de la patrie, il ne serait plus une religion divine" (if Catholicism were the enemy of the country, it would no longer be a divine religion). He went on to say (the translation is mine): Yes, it is worthy not only of love but of predilection that country (patrie) whose sacred name awakens in your mind the most cherished memories and makes quiver every fiber of your soul, that common country which has cradled you, to which you are bound by bonds of blood and by still nobler bonds of affection and tradition."

Twenty years earlier Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae set forth patriotism as a moral obligation based on natural law. "If," writes the Pope, "the natural law bids us give the best of our affection and of our devotedness to our native land so that the good citizen does not hesitate to brave death for his country, much more is it the duty of Christians to be similarly affected to the Church."

In view of these and many similar pronouncements, the editors of the work mentioned above include in their synthesis of papal teachings the two following propositions: Country (/a Patrie) is a legitimate and noble institution which is postulated by natural law and consecrated by Christianity; Love of country is one of the obligatory forms of human and Christian charity towards the neighbor, coming in between the love of family and the love of mankind.

A passage which expresses clearly and simply what I believe to be the truth in this matter of patriotism is from a pamphlet of the Catholic Association for International Peace entitled Patriotism, Nationalism, and the Brotherhood of Man, being a report of a Committee on National Attitudes, the chairman of which was the distinguished historian Carlton J. H. Hayes. The passage is as follows:

"Men have always lived in groups. Apparently it is a part of God's plan that they should. And one of the things which have enabled them to live in groups has been the loyalty —the patriotism—which God has implanted in their very nature. This loyalty—this patriotism—this love of country'—involves a triple affection. It embraces an affection for familiar places, an affection for familiar persons, and an affection for familiar ideas. One's 'country' connotes all of these: the land itself, the persons on it, and the traditions associated with it. One's 'native land'—the terra patria, la patrie, das Vaterland—is an extension of hearth and home. It is the soil that has given life to one's forefathers and holds their tombs, and which in turn nurtures one's children and grandchildren. It is a link between generations, between families and friends, between common experience of the past and that of the present and future." . . .

I make no apology for adding the following passages in which patriotism is described by two independent and very different thinkers.

"Patriotism has always existed, and always will, so long as men are bound in societies. One may feel that emotion of loyalty towards a tribe or a town, a tiny district, a feudal group and lord, a large nation or a whole vast culture; but it is always present and always must be present. For if it were not, society could not hold together. Now, men must live in society; and therefore by every law of man's nature (that of self-preservation, that of the organ arising to supply the need, etc.), devotion to what the Greeks call 'the City' must be present. One may go much further and say that in sound morals patriotism must not only be present in every society, but should be strong; because the absence of it is inhuman and unnatural" (H. Belloc: Survivals and New Arrivals, p. 140).

"The fatherland— 'la patrie'— is first and foremost the soil, the soil with its own peculiar physiognomy, the soil with the contours and undulations that lend it its character. . . . But before all else the soil keeps its hold upon us by the memories it stores up for us, memories whose range is as wide and as varied as life itself, memories that dwell in the intimate depths of our hearts, but more than all that memories the common possession of which links together in a bond of union the compatriots who share them. . . .

"Land of birth, land of cradles and of tombs, in a word, land of the family,—and already there enters into the very idea of fatherland a more living and more lovable reality: the family, of which the fatherland is but the historical flowering, the family, from which the fatherland comes forth as from its prototype and native element. The fatherland is the uniting bond of fathers, the bond of ancestors, the bond of memories and of domestic traditions.

"Let us unite religion with the fatherland, the altar with the hearth. What point of attachment can be more solid? . . . Always do you find those two intimately united. . . . The altar and the hearth —there we have as it were the two historical poles of the fatherland, pro aris et focis.

"Native soil, cradle, tomb, hearth, altar, history,—such then are the august and cherished realities contained in the name of fatherland" (From a speech Le Patriotisme dans l'Enseignement Catholique delivered at the college of Vaugirard by R. P. Longhaye, S.J. Author's translation)."