Patriotism

Frodo: “I can’t do this, Sam”
Sam: “I know.
It’s all wrong
By rights, we shouldn’t even be here.
But we are.
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?”

With looming political unrest, the election, and undoubtedly the largest organized worldwide shut down, justified or not, many whose spirits might have been otherwise high, have found unrest and despair in a world unrecognizable from months previous. Fueled by media and politics, our minds have been polluted by biases, resulting in a lack of Christianity in our culture. Bias is not a new concept however, C.S. Lewis a man commenting on the first world war said, “Most of us are not really approaching the subject of a Christian society in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party.”
 

How do we combat unwanted bias in our lives, and replace it with a Catholic perspective?

How does one reconcile a love of country when the country is in such a dismal state?

Patriotism.

Patriotism is the answer to both questions.

Throughout the bible, there is one predominant message: love one another as Christ loves us. Patriotism is love; love of country is no less valid of love than any. And in the hippiest scene, does love not conquer all? God is love after all.
Like any college student, I am better at quoting geniuses than I am at being one. In The Four Loves (1960), C.S. Lewis elaborates on the idea of patriotism. “With this love for the place, there goes a love for the way of life; for beer and tea and open fires… and an unarmed police force and all the rest of it.” He references another favorite author “As Chesterton says, a man’s reasons for not wanting his country to be ruled by foreigners are very like his reasons for not wanting his house to be burned down; because he ‘could not even begin to enumerate all the things he would miss.”

If you are anything like me, you forget easily the good in the world and are all too ready to be convinced of the bad; Bishop Sheen attributes this to a revolution culture in America, ever since her founding. And now, in this age, there is, “the new type of revolt which involves the destruction of everything that is in the past,” citing, most formidably, Thomas Jefferson and his revolution as the progenitor of the past revolt. His revolution was founded on the existence of a creator and the dignity of mankind depends on the creator. No man then could take those rights, save that creator.
 
Contrarywise this is the new age revolt.
A revolt of violence: violence for the sake of violence. However, its principals are more cunning and have picked a better moto. Big kind words are used to disguise their opportunism and their desire, countering patriotism’s love with its vice: hate. As mentioned earlier, when provided with so many opportunities to hate the country, do not fall prey to hate and the violence that follows her. Look at the world with the lenses of a Christian, look at the filled church pews after 9-11, or the nationally decreasing abortion numbers. Referencing the GOAT of simplifying Christianity, C.S. Lewis says, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

There is no theory of the moral majority, there is no reconciling Christianity or Catholicism with your beliefs. Instead reconcile your beliefs with Christianity, with God, with love. Love your homeland.
As for me, I am a Catholic, American, and a Patriot in that order.

“But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.”
Frodo: “What are we holding on to, Sam?”
Sam: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”