James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, can be ordered directly from Winepress Publishers — 1-877-421-READ (7323); $12.95, plus S&H. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
But there was one correspondent who took a different and unusual tack. He argued that it is wrong for Catholics to back policies by our government that would benefit American workers at the expense of the jobs of poor Mexican and Asian workers. He insisted that a Catholic should see all men and women, irrespective of their nationality, as brothers and sisters in Christ; that nationalism is a divisive sentiment that leads us to seek unfair advantages by exploiting the downtrodden of the earth.
Well? Is it wrong for a Catholic to harbor a special affection for his country and his people? Is it morally deficient to use American power and influence to give American workers the upper hand in the world arena? What should be a Catholic’s relationship to the nation-state system? The Church is universal, catholic. Should Catholics be wary of patriotic sentiment and national loyalties? Should our loyalty instead be to mankind as a whole?
I say no; that national loyalties and the nation-state system are uniquely compatible with Catholic social teaching. Now I am not saying that the Church views the nation-state system as the preferred way of organizing our societal lives. That is just not the case. Throughout the centuries, the Church had had amicable relationships with units of government smaller than the nation-state, the feudal manor and the Renaissance Italian city-states, for example. And also with units of government larger than the nation-state: the Roman Empire and the Hapsburg Empire, most notably.
So my point is not that Catholics are obliged to favor the nation-state system. But I would argue that Catholics are free to use reason and prudential judgment to conclude that the nation-state system offers a uniquely effective way of providing both security and freedom in the modern world; that there is nothing morally deficient about fostering a sense of duty toward our fellow Americans, even if doing so leads to us to work for their advantage over citizens of other countries. In other words, Catholics have no obligation to oppose nationalistic policy objectives out of some Catholic concern for “humanity.”
To see why, we must start with a premise articulated by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas: Humans must live in community to be fully human. The great accomplishments in science and the arts could not have been achieved by men living like hermits. A child isolated from all human contact would not know how to speak, to read, to develop his scholarly and artistic potential, to love. Our spiritual and moral development requires great books, teachers, churches, and schools. Michelangelo would not have sculpted the Pieta if he had been born a member of a small tribe on an isolated island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
This leads us to the question of what our communal life should “look like.” A small society — a village, tribe, city-state — can offer the maximum of freedom to its members, by increasing the odds that our society will be a society of neighbors, with common interests and beliefs. The laws will be made and enforced by men and women very much like the members of the society, and thus will stand a good chance of seeming “natural” to those obliged to lived under them, a government with the consent of the governed, a society of free men and women.
The problem is that such a society will be too small to defend itself against its enemies. It will lack security. Its free citizens will likely be victimized by the brutal conquerors who mark the pages of our history books. A village or city-state of peaceful and prosperous free men will be at the mercy of the Genghis Khans and Attilas of the world.
In contrast, a large and powerful empire can provide the maximum of security. It will have the military muscle to deter and resist, even destroy, would-be conquerors. But the price that the secure members of these empires will pay is the likely loss of their liberties. They will live under laws made, not by neighbors, but by a distant government of strangers, an emperor and his court, a viceroy, or a modern counterpart such as Soviet commissars or Nazi Gauleiters.
The nation-state system provides a rational middle ground between these two extremes. It will be large enough to possess the military strength required to protect the national independence of its citizens. But it will be small enough, local enough, to offer a sense of national brotherhood that will permit its citizens to view the government as “their” government, as one that represents their interests. They will be citizens, not subjects. The laws will not be imposed on them by a distant “them,” but by a government that rules with the consent of the governed, one with whom the citizens feel a sense of unity.
Intellectuals frequently deride “flag-wavers” and express discomfort with expressions of “Americana” – patriotic kitsch, parades, posters, military displays, historical reenactments and the like. And it is true that these things can be overdone. But we should not overlook what they represent. They are manifestations of a sense of community that permits citizens to feel free while living within a system of laws. The laws are their laws; they obey the majority views of their country, their people.
To get the point, think of some of the world’s hot spots. Palestinians, for example, would not feel free living under Israeli rule, even if the Israeli government guaranteed that their civil liberties would be greater under Israeli rule than under Arab rule. And Israelis would not be willing to end Israel’s existence even if the U.N. could guarantee that Jews would be given freedom of speech, press and religion in a newly created Palestinian state where they would be citizens. In both cases, there would be a group living in a society ruled by others, by “them,” rather than by “us.” The minority members of these societies would not be free men.
Perhaps the day will come when the bonds of nationalism will not be required for people to experience government with the consent of the governed. But for the foreseeable future it is not divisive and jingoistic to conclude that nationalistic sentiment and the nation-state offers the best hope for the communal life necessary to develop our full human potential, while at the same time allowing members of society to experience political liberty. Members of mighty empires have made great accomplishments in the history of world civilization, as well as members of city-states at the mercy of powerful enemies. The nation-state system allows for comparable achievements to be made by a free and independent people.
