Chapter XIII: Christian Patriotism

AFTER more than a century of struggle and revolution the principle of Nationalism has prevailed—at least, to a great extent. Oppressed nationalities have succeeded to a great extent in securing the freedom and the home rule which they demanded. And yet peace and contentment do not seem to have come together with the realization of the nations’ hopes. Far-seeing men are beginning to fear that a new element of discord and war has been introduced into Europe. Some nations find themselves cooped up within the limits of the lands of their ancestors with frontiers that have no pretension to be scientific. On the other side of their frontiers are hostile and aggressive peoples who seriously threaten their security. In pure self-defence they must make their security more certain. Others find themselves cut off from easy access to the sea, and their commerce with the outside world controlled by jealous neighbours. The more powerful nations are fully conscious of their own superiority. They show little disposition to adopt a self-denying ordinance, and refrain from using their economic and political advantages for their own benefit. On the contrary, they seem determined to take advantage of their opportunities to the full. The watchword of “Germany above all” has not been silenced even though it is uttered in less boisterous tone than was usual before the Great War. National pride and ambition is one of the strongest passions of human nature, and it has not been exorcised by any means as yet.

On the contrary, the old spirit of imperial Rome seems to be as strong as ever in some modern peoples. According to the national poet it was the proud mission of Rome to rule the subject nations with imperial sway, to spare those who submitted, and to war down those who obstinately resisted. This, of course, was for the benefit of less cultured nations. Roman culture and Roman peace were blessings which the outer barbarian should be compelled to accept for his own good.

The fervour and the absolute character of pagan patriotism added strength to this imperial temper. In his work on Duties, Cicero tells us what pagan patriotism was. “When we have gone over,” he says, “all the relations that are in the world, and thoroughly considered the nature of each, we shall find that there is no one of greater obligation, no one that is dearer and nearer to us than that which all of us bear to the commonwealth. We have a tender regard and concern for our parents, for our children, our kindred and acquaintance, but the love which we have for our native country swallows up all other loves whatsoever.” The ancients deified and worshipped their country, and the ancient state domineered with absolute power over both soul and body. There is not much tendency nowadays to pay religious worship to the state, but in other respects in many quarters a recrudescence of the pagan doctrine of patriotism may be observed.

This recrudescence of pagan patriotism is all the more dangerous because it is untrammelled by any laws of morality. The ancient state professed to be scrupulously observant of the laws of justice and fidelity. The modern state adopts the principles of Machiavelli; it acknowledges only one law, the law of success. The watchword, ‘ Germany over all,” is not confined to Germany; some in England change it to “England over all,” and they add another to it, “England, right or wrong.” A powerful state, fettered by no laws, human or divine, treating its pledged word as only a scrap of paper, commanding the blind obedience of its subjects, becomes a menace to the world.

While some exaggerate the duty of patriotism, there are others who minimize or deny it altogether. They profess to be cosmopolitans, citizens of the world, or they are Internationals. The Red International of Communism fosters loyalty to class rather than to country. The yellow International of high finance pursues its object of gain irrespective of country; it is prepared to assist the fatherland in difficulties, but on strictly business principles. Many people who belong neither to the red nor to the yellow International deny that patriotism is a virtue. In their opinion it is a mere prejudice, a provincialism, a sort of extended selfishness. The true attitude according to them is to cultivate esteem and friendship for all mankind, and to recognize the good points in all men. Some Catholics even regard patriotism as rather a pagan virtue. The true Catholic, they think, considers heaven as his true fatherland, and looks upon his home on earth as a place of exile and a vale of tears. Are we not exhorted to conduct ourselves here below as strangers and pilgrims? Is not human life a journey through the desert of this world towards the promised land? All this suggests that patriotism is a matter of practical importance, and that it is not without its ambiguities and difficulties. It will be worth while to try to state the Catholic doctrine on the subject as clearly and concisely as possible. We shall find that patriotism is recognized as a virtue by Catholic theology, and that, like all moral virtues, it occupies a mean position between two vicious extremes.

Although it may be said that patriotism is nowhere explicitly inculcated as a virtue in Holy Scripture, yet there are many passages and incidents where it is implied. The book of Esther and the books of the Machabees abound in such passages. One of the tenderest and most touching of the Psalms is the hundred and thirty-sixth: “How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws if I do not remember thee.” One of the most pathetic incidents in the Gospels is our Lord’s weeping over Jerusalem. So that if we are taught that heaven is our true spiritual country, and are bidden to conduct ourselves on earth as exiles, this does not mean that we have no duties to our earthly country while we live here.

St Ambrose, St Augustine, and St Thomas, in the name of the Church, expressly teach that patriotism is a virtue implanted in us by Nature herself and inculcated by the religion of Christ. It is a part of the two fundamental virtues of justice and charity. Justice requires that we should give everyone his due, that we should pay to all what we owe them. There is no one to whom we owe more than to God, our Creator and Lord. To him we owe all that we have, all that we are, and all that we hope to be. We depend upon him every moment of our existence. We cannot repay him the immense debt that we owe him, but justice compels us to do what we can. We strive to do this by practising the virtue of religion, by giving God the love, honour, and worship which pleases him and which is his due.

Under God we owe most to our parents. They brought us into the world, and gave us the first and most important part of our education. We inherited from our parents a certain habit of body, certain tendencies, and certain dispositions, and those dispositions were developed and stereotyped during our early years, when we were under the more immediate control of our parents. Our characters for good or evil were moulded to a great extent before we began to think, and they were moulded largely by our parents and by the home which they provided for us. To our parents we owe the education which was intended to fit us for the battle of life. It is our duty to strive to repay all the debt which we owe to our parents by honouring them, by loving, reverencing, and obeying them as long as we are not emancipated from their control. Our duty towards them of love and reverence lasts as long as life.

Under God and our parents we owe most to the country in which we were born and bred. Our country gave us the food, drink, clothing, air, and exercise which our bodies required. Our characters, ideas, feelings, sentiments, aims, and ambitions are to a great extent inherited from the race to which we belong, and are the product of its character, its history, and its traditions. The very hills and valleys, the woods and the rivers of our native land, have left their mark upon us. We should have been quite different beings if we had been born and brought up in Spain or in India.

That immense debt which we owe to our country we pay by practising the virtue of patriotism. We are bound to esteem and love our country and to serve it to the best of our ability in its needs. This does not mean that we are to hate other countries. Just as the love of our parents does not imply that we should hate the parents of other people, so the duty of loving our country does not imply that we should hate other countries. We fully recognize that other people have their obligations towards their parents; we prefer our own. In the same way we recognize the duty and the right of other people to love their country; we prefer our own.

In the second place, patriotism is based on the great virtue of charity. Our Lord was only announcing what the natural law prescribes when he said that all morality hangs on the two fundamental precepts of the love of God and the love of our neighbour as ourselves. The duty of loving our neighbour as ourselves, of doing as we would be done by, does not mean that we are to entertain the same evenly balanced affection for all men. We must love other men inasmuch as they are our neighbours. We must wish well to the Chinese and the Japanese whom we do not know and shall never see. Our fellow-countrymen are much nearer to us than the Chinese and Japanese; they are our neighbours in a stricter sense, and well-ordered charity takes note of the fact. Their interests and welfare are intimately bound up with ours. We need their help, protection, and good will in a thousand different ways. We are members of the same organized body politic, of the same community, and St Paul tells us that one member cannot say to another: “I need you not.”

There is, then, an obligation made known to us by right reason, and enforced by Christian charity, of loving our fellow-countrymen and fellow-citizens with a special degree of affection. The instructed Catholic will not be exposed to the danger of exaggerating this obligation and making it supreme and absolute over all other duties. He knows that he is a member of a still greater communion of saints, to whom also he is bound by special ties in this life and in life everlasting. He must do nothing to imperil his claim to life everlasting, even under the excuse of patriotism. Such a maxim as ‘ England, right or wrong ” is self-condemned in his eyes. And so the true Catholic’s patriotism is real and genuine, but it is not exaggerated. It occupies the golden mean between two vicious extremes. The country which, as true patriots, we are bound to esteem, love, and serve is in general our native land, the country in which we were born and bred. That is clear from what has just been said about justice and charity, the foundations of patriotism.

But in these days of emigration the case frequently arises of a man leaving his native land and making a home for himself and his children elsewhere. An Englishman, for example, emigrates to America, with a view to settling there. He will preserve a warm affection for the old country, he may visit it occasionally, but he has made his home in America, and henceforth he will regard America with a true patriot’s esteem and love. That, too, is a conclusion drawn from justice and charity.