BEING AMERICAN AND CATHOLIC

Living with Contemporary tensions

When we break bread with people of many races, languages, and ways of life, we recognize that we share some common goals. We hope for good health, a meaningful, secure, and well paying job, a comfortable home, education and opportunity for our children and grand children, a reasonable dose of warmth and intimacy, and a meaningful connection with God and our religion. We are amazingly tolerant toward others and engage one another with remarkable civility. Sometimes our forebears imagined that we were at the entrance to utopia.

But we are not naïve. A bill is presented at the end of every meal. Personal desires are confronted with long standing social shadows: the shame of racism, differing views of national identity. xenophobia, and the possibility of violence and war. Tolerant as we are, we avoid dining with those who impose their moral and cultural standards on us.

We only have so much energy to address the larger-than-life subjects that are splashed onto big canvases or painted onto street corner murals. Nonetheless, every once in awhile, we glimpse the connection between deeply foundational issues and our everyday concerns. Catholics have a long memory. We remember the struggles shouldered by our forebears. Many Catholics do not have to prove that they can be American and Catholic. Our churches dot the American landscape and our spirituality contributes to the American soul.

We walk our daily pathway as Americans and Catholics. We seek insight into important questions. What is our mission in the United States? What is our place as one of many religious groups in America? How do we sit at table, engage in civil conversation, develop a consensus on things that matter, and enter into partnership and action? Mission in the midst of pluralism is no easy task. Decisions about mission should not be left to leaders or a religious elite. We all have a stake in the mission of our church and the ways in which we contribute to the public good of the commonwealth.

Catholics are already a presence in American society. Local city and suburban parishes, Catholic institutions and all kinds of agencies stand with the poor, promote the dignity of each person, enable people to meet each other, encourage participation in civic and voluntary associations, and cultivate a voice in public prayer and citizen action. In all these ways, the church thwarts a culture of self-realizing individualism. Church supplies supports so that people do not have to go it alone.

Future columns will address the presence of

Catholicism in the United States. Much of the story has not been fully accessible to the Catholic public. It is now being researched in the archives of parishes, dioceses, religious orders and communities, in photographs, films, songs magazines, and in the oral testimony of eyewitnesses. If we do not know the story, then we miss out on a rich heritage. Many of our forbears sacrificed a great deal to become American and Catholic. Their legacy can continue to inspire us to build up the kingdom of God, to add to the luster of our nation, and to tend the beauty of our land.

John J. O’Brien, C.P.