The 250th anniversary of the USA could be a turning point for its coming centuries and for the Catholic Church, which today, more than ever, is projecting itself into the world.
It was, or is, a special place. The Americas were a place to find a new life, a new chance. They were especially so for old Europe, but increasingly for the whole world.
In this, the United States of America was the opportunity of opportunities: the promised land, Israel. The American dream was an ideal, an occasion made real. It was a vision offered, in theory and in practice, to all.
Of course, not everyone found Eden. But the idea and ideal of inclusive, supportive communities, where everyone was respected and respected others and their community, large or small, was the concrete image America projected to all. There was an idea of fairness, of equality, which was not the leveling paucity that rummages through other people’s pockets. It was a moral fairness — being just, doing the right thing, and having regard for everyone.
Not everything was rosy beneath the surface, but everything was aimed toward rosy, and that tendency, that intellectual and moral effort, made great the America that wanted to feel small, modest, humble.
It was a dream-reality that no other country had managed to match. The Soviet Union, with its communism, promised paradise on earth and gave its citizens hell instead.
America had won the hearts, souls, and minds of everyone, friends and enemies alike, before, during, and after the Cold War.
A Dream Half-Fulfilled
After 250 years, America seems more divided than ever. One part seems to want to close in on itself, to retreat; it feels weak and, therefore, wants to make America great again.
Another part of America seems embodied in the Catholic Church, seeking to carry the American dream into Catholicism (and vice versa) and will celebrate the country’s quarter-millennium at the symbolic border in Lampedusa. It’s the island at the center of the Mediterranean, where migrants from the Global South long to arrive in the north to gain access to the dream.
What the first American Pope will celebrate in Lampedusa will be a gesture for eight billion people: the American dream with Catholic characteristics, or perhaps better, the Catholic dream with American characteristics.
Perhaps never more than today, amid so many dangerous crises, is this needed. Ordinary people — those trying to make ends meet, wishing for a better future for themselves and their families, anxious or afraid, fleeing or ambitious — still aspire to that America seen in the US and in Europe.
Migration is not just a matter of public order (how to manage arrivals and crack down on the mafias that traffic and deceive) nor is it only a matter of development (bringing economic growth to their home countries). Even though these things matter, there’s something else: there’s a spirit.
Are we open, free, and welcoming — or hostile, entrenched, and repelling? Faced with pressure from the Global South, do we run away, or do we move forward together with others? Do we seek courage, or surrender to fear?
Then, of course, one must reckon with reality, not walk on clouds. But the spirit — is it closed or open? It’s a choice about freedom: do we want it, or do we prefer the safety of a mental prison before a physical one?
After the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church seemed, for centuries, to embody conservatism. Today, it has increasingly taken up the torch of the Enlightenment and the liberal revolutions. These have transformed the world over the last three centuries, beginning with the English Puritan Revolution of the 17th century, in many ways the mother of the American Revolution.
It is human and understandable to fear freedom. And yet freedom is beautiful.
It is not enough, it cannot be enough, for America alone to be a special place — the whole world must be. It won’t be, it can’t be: not everyone will become America. After all, not everyone succeeds, not everyone “makes it.” The egalitarian spirit, the feeling of being together, the desire to be together — with prudence, with humility — is perhaps what matters most. From there come the concrete, realistic, practical paths by which each person, in their own way, seeks their way toward that dream.
The Church, under Francis, has already chosen this “America.” The divided, suffering, grieving United States, facing challenges on so many fronts, is unsure which path it will take: fear or courage, freedom or walls, America for the world or America for itself.
In theory, the home of the brave and the land of the free should have its destiny already written — but it could turn out differently.
So happy Fourth of July to America’s 250th anniversary, and happy Fourth of July to the Catholic Church with its American Pope, and best wishes for the Fourth of July to the whole world — Americans and non-Americans, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
