Church and State

The heart of an email I just sent my pastor. You'll get a pretty good sense of how Mass went yesterday from the below. It seemed good to mark the passing of July 4 with some reflections on freedom, America, and Jesus. And this is what I needed to write.

Let me begin by confessing that I am someone who goes into Mass on 4th of July weekend (and Memorial Day and other patriotic holidays) more or less expecting to be offended. Although I was raised in a "God, Country, Notre Dame" sort of way that would not have had me think twice about what I experienced at Mass today, I ended up studying with some professors who either were pacifists or who took pacifist concerns very seriously. I learned to be pretty critical of occasions where Christians seem to sacralize America, of churches where flags are in the sanctuary, and where the assumption is that American values/interests and Christian values/interests are the same.

Therefore, it won't surprise you to learn that I think there are some pretty serious risks involved in some of the directions you took in your homily yesterday--most notably the idea that we would view the true freedom Jesus gives us through the prism of the Declaration of Independence (rather than the other way around!) and that a primary example of the kind of love and service that Jesus demands are soldiers (whose great sacrifice is not simply a willingness to die but also a willingness to kill for our interests). I deeply appreciated that you also gave the example of the middle school teacher. Also, at the end you seemed to suggest a question about what sort of king we enthrone in our hearts, and I thought you might raise the question of Jesus vs. Caesar, what the gospel demands vs what the world offers, but you didn't really go there.

All that, I think, is within a realm where, although you and I might see it differently, I don't really begrudge you your choice to approach the things as you did (though I do hope this is a conversation we can continue!). After all, it's your homily, and although I would have liked to see it more focused on the Word and less on the (national rather than liturgical) feast, it's yours to do with as you will. However, I thought that having the Declaration of Independence proclaimed from the pulpit (though half was from the other microphone) crossed a line of liturgy that really should not have been crossed. I admit that I am one of these people who has probably studied just enough liturgy to be dangerous, and who has had care of portions of various communities' liturgical lives for quite a number of years. But formed as I am, it felt to me that the particular placement of the Declaration of Independence (both the place from whence it was proclaimed and its timing in the liturgy) was an attempt to communicate that the Declaration of Independence was the most important text, the one toward which all the others pointed.

I certainly don't think that that's what you meant to communicate; it would be silly to suggest that you were saying that the incarnation, death, resurrection of Jesus, the mission of the 72, etc, was all so that the American Revolution could come along and embody "true" freedom. But it felt more than a little like that today.

I really worry about these things, because, although I try to teach my students that participation in the political community is part of their obligation to the common good, I also try to teach them to be critical of a nation that fails to protect the unborn, that often engages in wars that fail to meet the traditional just war criteria, whose immigration policies are ... complicated, but clearly not simply directed to the dignity of each and every person involved. Historically, of course, our nation's credibility is even more complicated. The same revolutionaries whose vision of and sacrifices for freedom you lauded today counted their slaves at 3/5 a person and were not willing to make the sacrifices that freeing them would entail. My point is simply that, at every point in our nation's history, we have needed people who were more than just cheerleaders for the nation, but who were willing and able to give it moral vision and direction. Our best hope is that, truly formed by a gospel vision, we are sent forth like the 72, among our brothers and our sisters in our homeland, and that our love of them and love of the gospel can come together. It seems to me that the gospel must be the prism through which we see and measure and criticize and cheer our nation. And it seems to me that preaching as though America is already the embodiment (perhaps even the measure!) of that gospel really cuts off our ability to be the sort of critical citizen-Christians we need to be.