A Prayer for the Nation

On this Independence Day we look to the Founding Fathers of the United States of America to see not only where we have been but also to see where we are to go in the future; we look back to keep their vision alive.
Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, one was Catholic, Charles Carroll:

And his cousin, John Carroll, was the first Bishop of the United States of America, with his See in Baltimore:

On August 10, 1791, Archbishop Carroll composed the following prayer to be prayed in each of his parishes.  Let us pray it with him this day:

We pray, Thee O Almighty and Eternal God! Who through Jesus Christ hast revealed Thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of Thy mercy, that Thy Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of Thy Name.

We pray Thee, who alone art good and holy, to endow with heavenly knowledge, sincere zeal, and sanctity of life, our chief bishop, Pope N., the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the government of his Church; our own bishop, N., all other bishops, prelates, and pastors of the Church; and especially those who are appointed to exercise amongst us the functions of the holy ministry, and conduct Thy people into the ways of salvation.

We pray Thee O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with Thy Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality. Let the light of Thy divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety, and useful knowledge; and may perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.

We pray for his[/her] excellency, the governor of this state, for the members of the assembly, for all judges, magistrates, and other officers who are appointed to guard our political welfare, that they may be enabled, by Thy powerful protection, to discharge the duties of their respective stations with honesty and ability.

We recommend likewise, to Thy unbounded mercy, all our brethren and fellow citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of Thy most holy law; that they may be preserved in union, and in that peace which the world cannot give; and after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.

Finally, we pray to Thee, O Lord of mercy, to remember the souls of Thy servants departed who are gone before us with the sign of faith and repose in the sleep of peace; the souls of our parents, relatives, and friends; of those who, when living, were members of this congregation, and particularly of such as are lately deceased; of all benefactors who, by their donations or legacies to this Church, witnessed their zeal for the decency of divine worship and proved their claim to our grateful and charitable remembrance.

To these, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light, and everlasting peace, through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.  Amen.

May God bless America!

An American history lesson in Cathedral glass

As a comment within a post yesterday, I remarked that Catholics all too often do not know the history of Catholics in the United States of America, either the positive contributions made by Catholics to American society or American society's negative attitude and persecution of Catholics.

When His Excellency the Most Reverend James Aloysius Griffin set out to establish his Seat in the newly erected Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, he looked to the example of his mentor, His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein, to demonstrate that it is possible to be both a good Catholic (this must always come first for our duty to God is of the utmost importance) and a good citizen at the same time.

Bishop Griffin expressed this reality in the windows of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. 

The windows in the north wall of the Cathedral depict the growth of the growth of the Church in Europe whereas the windows in the south wall depict the growth of the Church in the New World.

Of particular interest to us today are three of these northern windows.

Here, General George Washington is shown commissioning Bishop John Carroll to gain the support of the French Canadian Catholics in the cause of independence.  Bishop Carroll was successful in his mission.  Above the two men stands the angel of peace, signifying God's Providence.

Here, President Abraham Lincoln is shown asking Bishop John Hughes of New York to convince Napoleon III against recognizing the Confederacy.  Bishop Hughes was successful.  (Incidentally, the face of Mr. Lincoln's assistant is the face of Bishop Griffin.)

In this third window, a Catholic chaplain is shown blessing American soldiers from Illinois as they leave Springfield during World War I.  The State Capitol is shown in the background surmounted by the gold star of the Gold Star Mothers whose sons were killed in battle.

It is indeed possible to be a good Catholic and a good patriot, but our faith must always come before our patriotism.  By our prayer and fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we are also good citizens seeking to build up this nation in morality, in truth and in justice for all.

Bishop Conley: We need to live as if we believed that God is the only sure guarantee of human rights and liberty

Over at First Things, His Excellency the Most Reverend James D. Conley, Auxiliary Bishop of Denver, considers the religious nature of America's founding.  He writes with my emphases (bold in is original):

G. K. Chesterton said famously that America is “a nation with the soul of a church.” And he believed the Declaration of Independence formed the substance of our national soul.

But as we celebrate this Fourth of July, we need to recognize that some of the deepest problems in our public life can be traced to our collective neglect of America’s great founding document. 

The Declaration establishes our common self-identity as Americans. It tells us that we are one nation under God, a people who believe that all men and women have God-given rights. It tells us that government exists for no other purpose than to defend and promote these rights. All this we find in the Declaration’s preamble, which still has the power to stir us.

America’s founders never intended to establish a religious government, let alone a theocracy. In fact, just the opposite. They specifically disallowed any state-sanctioned religion. Yet the government they did establish was founded on theistic, if not explicitly Christian, principles.

Many observers have identified a deep Christian influence in America’s founding documents—including such luminaries as Chesterton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jacques Maritain, John Courtney Murray, Martin Luther King Jr., and Blessed John Paul II.

Others see more the hand of the Enlightenment’s philosophical Deism at work.

Whatever its precise Christian pedigree, it cannot be denied that our government was founded upon a belief that human rights come from God, not governments, and that the world is in the hands of what the Declaration called “Nature’s God” and “the Supreme Judge of the World.”

It is true: the Constitution that America’s founders would later draft makes no mention of God. It is also true that this Constitution denies full rights to slaves and women.

But the Declaration’s belief in the divine origin of the human person is everywhere presumed. And throughout American history, this belief has served as a goad to the conscience, inspiring reforms and renewal in almost every generation. It has ensured that injustice, cowardice, and political expediency do not have to have the final word in our public affairs.

The Constitution and Declaration together form the “great wells of democracy” that express “the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage,” King wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail.

America’s founders also shared a belief that religion mattered—not only for the private welfare of individuals but also for the commonweal. Charles Carroll, the Declaration’s only Catholic signatory, put it succinctly in a letter to James McHenry, a signer of the Constitution:

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure . . . are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments. 

Unfortunately, in our day, those “decrying the Christian religion” have seized the captain’s seat in America—in the academy, the media, the government and courts. The result is a kind of publicly enforced religious indifferentism, or what recent Popes have called “practical atheism.” The Constitution insists that no religious test shall ever be required for public office. But our society, in effect, now imposes an “irreligious test.” To take part in civic life, Americans must first agree to think and act as if they have no religious convictions or motivations.

America today is becoming what I call an atheocracy—a society that is actively hostile to religious faith and religious believers.

An atheocracy is a dangerous place, both morally and spiritually. Cut off from the religious moorings expressed in the Declaration, we risk becoming a nation without a soul, a people with no common purpose apart from material pursuits. Worse, as Chesterton well understood, without belief in a Creator, our democracy has no compelling reason for defending human rights:

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal. . . . There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. . . . Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion … always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant. 

Our atheocracy has rejected what Chesterton called the dogmatic basis of American identity and liberties. An atheocracy has no ultimate truths to guide it and no inviolable ethical principles by which to direct political activity. Hence, it has no foundation upon which to establish justice, secure true freedom or to constrain tyrants.

We see the consequences of this atheocratic mindset everywhere. We see it most clearly in the case of legalized abortion. Denying the divine origins of the human person, our government has withdrawn the law’s protection from unborn children in the womb—the most absolutely innocent and defenseless members of our human family.

The legal extermination of the unborn is only the most egregious offense against God’s law. In fact, there is apparently no area of life over which our atheocratic government does not feel omni-competent—that government knows best.

This is dramatically clear in the movement to establish homosexual unions as an alternative kind of family. Under pressure from powerful special interests who manipulate the language of “rights” and “freedom” in ways that contradict “the laws of Nature’s God,” our atheocratic government now deems itself competent to rewrite the God-given definitions of marriage and the family.

These are sobering thoughts as our nation celebrates the anniversary of its independence on July 4, 1776. Yet there is a way forward.

We need to restore a government based on theism and natural law. We need to restore the original integral relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Until recently in our history, this connection was taken for granted. If the Constitution was the letter of the law, the Declaration was regarded as the spirit.

In 1841, defending African men on trial for rebelling against slavetraders who had abducted them, John Quincy Adams said: “In the Declaration of Independence, the Laws of Nature are announced and appealed to as identical with the laws of Nature’s God—and as the foundation of all obligatory human laws.” The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case, made famous by the Steven Spielberg film, Amistad, was an important milestone in the abolition of slavery.

America’s future depends today, as it always has, on the choices that faithful citizens will make. God—not government—is the only sure guarantee of human rights and the blessings of our liberty. We need to live as if we believe that. For only a people who believe these truths to be self-evident can build a society worthy of men and women created by God.

Marriage: More than a friendship

Over at The New Theological Movement, Reginaldusas a very interesting post in which he reflects on the clamour for same-sex "marriage".  He notes, among other things, that marriage is more than a friendship.

He also considers why the angels to do not marry.

In honor of the day: I vow to thee

George Washington and anti-Catholicism at the founding of a new nation

Writing for The Catholic Thing, George Marlin considers Catholics and America's Founding.  His text follows, with my emphases and comments:

For this Fourth of July weekend, a little history lesson. After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the vast majority of Catholics sided with the revolutionaries, because they considered themselves American, not British. “They understood the genius of America,” wrote the distinguished Catholic historian, Theodore Maynard, “Without hesitation they threw in their lot with Congress.”


American Catholics distinguished themselves throughout the war. John Barry is widely regarded as the “Father of the American Navy.” General Stephen Moylan of George Washington’s staff was the highest-ranking Catholic in the Army.

Out of respect for the Catholic presence in his army, George Washington ended the observance of the anti-Roman holiday known as “Pope’s Day.” [Good for him!  It is often forgotten that anti-Catholic sentiments were in force in the New World for many decades prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence; Maryland (pay close attention to the name of the Colony) was established by Lord Baltimore as a place safe for Catholics could worship and live their faith without fear of condemnation, reprisal or attack.]  In his directive he declared:

As the Commander-in-Chief has been apprised of a design formed for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the effigy of the Pope, he cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this juncture; at a time when we are soliciting, and have really obtained the friendship and alliance of the people of Canada, whom we ought to consider as brethren embarked in the same cause – the defense of the liberty of America. At this juncture, and under such circumstances, to be insulting their religion, is so monstrous as not to be suffered or excused; indeed instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to these our brethren, as to them we are indebted for every late happy success over the common enemy in Canada.

Throughout the Revolution it was the American Tories who pursued a “no-popery” strategy to place a wedge between Catholic allies and Catholic patriots on the one hand, and on the other hand Protestant revolutionaries. But as so often happens in war, American soldiers became more tolerant of the men who fought and died beside them.

Charles Carroll by Thomas Sully (1834)

Bishop John Carroll (cousin of Declaration of Independence signer Charles Carroll), after a trip to Boston, expressed amazement at the change in attitude: “It is wonderful to tell what great civilities have been done to me in this town, where a few years ago a popish priest was thought to be the greatest monster in creation. Many here, even of their principal people, have acknowledged to me that they would have crossed to the opposite side of the street rather than meet a Roman Catholic some time ago. The horror which was associated with the idea of a papist is incredible; and the scandalous misrepresentations by their ministers increased the horror every Sunday [sadly, these scandalous misrepresentations continue to this very day, and from the lips of those who condemn lies].”

Bishop John Carroll by Rembrandt Peale (1811)

In the war’s final major confrontation, the Battle of Yorktown, it is estimated that 70 percent of the total American and French forces were Catholic. No one could deny, observed historian Charles Metzger, S.J., that American Catholics “contributed to the common cause far in excess of their ratio to the total population.”

With freedom came the responsibilities of governing and Catholics had an impact on the constitutional structure of the infant nation.

Two Catholics, Daniel Carroll (cousin of Charles) and Thomas FitzSimons of Pennsylvania, were among the framers of the Constitution who promoted the belief that power was derived from God and the people. And John Adams famously agreed. “Our Constitution,” he wrote, “was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

Catholics who sided with the revolution as the best way to achieve religious liberty were not disappointed by the Constitutional Convention’s final product. Article Six permitted Catholics to be part of the government: “But no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Finally, the First Amendment, which was ratified in 1791, adopted the phrase found in Catholic Maryland’s 1649 Tolerance Act which guaranteed Catholics equal footing within an impartial governmental structure: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .”

Knowing that Catholics would now have the opportunity freely and publicly to profess their faith, Charles Carroll happily admitted: “To obtain religiously as well as civil liberty I entered zealously into the Revolution . . .”

The leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church wrote a letter of congratulations to George Washington upon his election as America’s first president: “Whilst our country preserves her freedom and independence, we shall have a well-founded title to claim from her justice equal rights of citizenship, as the price of our blood spilt under your eyes.”

In his reply, Washington described his belief in equality for all and closed with this hope: “And I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution [sadly, it seems we have; far too few of us know anything about the Catholic history of this nation], and the establishment of their government; nor the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic religion is professed.”

A good beginning and, in these troubled times for Catholicism in America, a precedent that deserves to be remembered.

Happy Independence Day!

A Second Saint for Hawaii?

The Catholic News Service is reporting a miraculous healing that may be attributable to Blessed Marianne Cope, a Franciscan Sister who worked with Saint Damien of Molokai.  If Blessed Marianne is canonized, she will be Hawaii's second saint.

HONOLULU (CNS) -- The sainthood cause of Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai has taken a significant step forward with a Vatican medical board ruling in favor of a miracle attributed to her intercession.


According to a news release from her religious community, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities in Syracuse, N.Y., the seven physicians at the Vatican Congregation for Saints' Causes declared there is no medical explanation for the cure of a woman who had been suffering from an allegedly irreversible fatal condition.

"The board concluded the woman's healing was inexplicable according to available medical knowledge. The doctors on the case expected her to die and were amazed scientifically at her survival," the release said.

No other details about the case have been released.

The Sisters of St. Francis received the news from Msgr. Robert J. Sarno, an American priest at the congregation who has been working with the postulator of Mother Marianne's cause, Father Ernesto Piacentini, in the written presentation of the miracle case at the Vatican.

The miracle, approved June 16 by the medical board, still must pass two more Vatican examinations before it is presented to the pope for final approval for canonization. The first is by a board of theologians who will determine if the healing was the result of prayer for Mother Marianne's intercession, and then by a committee of cardinals and bishops who will examine the entire case and give a final verdict.

Sister Patricia Burkard, general minister of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, said that the medical board's decision is a "reason to rejoice" for her religious order, for her devotees, and for "all who unselfishly care for others and do acts of charity known only to God."

"Mother Marianne was the human face of the Gospel's mandate to care for the hungry, the sick and the impoverished," Sister Patricia said. "We pray for success in the case so that her inspirational life will be better known throughout the world. She is a model for us all."

Sister Francis Regis Hadano, regional administrator for the Sisters of St. Francis in Hawaii, said her community is "delighted" with the Vatican ruling.

"We Franciscan Sisters are very pleased and certainly excited about the advancement in the miracle case," she said in an email to the Hawaii Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Honolulu Diocese. "We are hopeful the theologians will meet sometime later this year. There is much work to be done in preparation for this session so prayer is needed."

"We thank all who pray specially for Blessed Marianne to be canonized," she said.

This is the second miracle attributed to Blessed Marianne's intercession to go through the Vatican approval process.

The first miracle, required for her beatification, was the medically unexplainable recovery of a New York girl dying from multiple organ failure after prayers were said to Mother Marianne. It was approved by the medical board Jan. 29, 2004. The board of theologians gave its approval six months later, on July 15. On Dec. 20, Pope John Paul II affirmed the case, making Mother Marianne eligible for beatification. She was beatified in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican May 14, 2005.

Mother Marianne, as the head of her religious community in Syracuse, led the first group of Franciscan sisters to the Hawaiian Islands in 1883 to establish a system of nursing care for leprosy patients. She was the only one of 50 religious superiors in the United States, Canada and Europe who were asked for help to accept the challenge.

Once in Hawaii, she relinquished her leadership position in Syracuse to lead her mission for 35 years, five in Honolulu and the remainder on Molokai.

When she died in Kalaupapa in 1918, a Honolulu newspaper wrote: "Seldom has the opportunity come to a woman to devote every hour of 30 years to the mothering of people isolated by law from the rest of the world. She risked her own life in all that time, faced everything with unflinching courage and smiled sweetly through it all."

Musical Ratz and Book-lover Ratz

Vatican Radio recently interviewed the Reverend Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, elder brother of Pope Benedict XVI, about the 60th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood of Jesus Christ.  Msgr. Ratzinger was ordained with this brother on June 29th, 1951.

The text of the interview follows, with my emphases:

Q: What are your memories of your priestly ordination 60 years ago?

Monsignor Ratzinger: It's difficult to explain it with words. It was a very solemn day. We had prepared ourselves very well for that moment, both from the spiritual as well as the practical point of view. It was a beautiful celebration. On entering the cathedral of Freising, it was clear that that day was very important for our lives.

Unfortunately, that afternoon we had to leave Freising, because the following day we were to take part in the ordination of a friend.

Q: There were more than 40 candidates to be ordained. What was the group's experience?

Monsignor Ratzinger: We were a very varied group. Many were young. My brother was the second to youngest, though there were some who were older. This was caused by the War, which set back the priesthood for many young men. In any case, we were a nice group. Each one of us was able to offer something special with his life.

Q: You referred to the different ages of the candidates that were ordained. Your brother is three years younger than you. On the day of ordination, did you feel like the elder brother or was the difference in age not a factor?

Monsignor Ratzinger: No, age did not count with me. My brother was very mature. On the day of ordination the most important thing was precisely the ordination.

Q: You have followed both the priestly as well as the musical path. Do you remember the music of the Holy Mass of that day?

Monsignor Ratzinger: Sadly I don't remember it exactly. In any case, at that time I was a member of a choir of priests and for priestly ordinations we always sang more or less the same songs. I am thinking of the "Veni Creator," or the "Christus Vincit," which is still sung today in Freising at the conclusion of priestly ordinations. Sadly, I don't remember the names of the composers. So much time has passed since that day.

Q: Have you and your brother kept a special memento from that day?

Monsignor Ratzinger: I have the stole and the cassock from that day. As for the rest, we have not kept particular objects.

Q: Priestly ordination is in a certain sense like the celebration of a marriage. There are guests, relatives, friends, who come to celebrate. Of the Ratzinger family, who took part?

Monsignor Ratzinger: Our parents and our sister were there. But there was no one else in particular. It was important for us that our parents participated, and to be united.

Q: Your nickname was Orgel-Ratz (Musical Ratz) and your brother had the nickname Bucher-Ratz (Book-lover Ratz). On the day of ordination, was it already clear in what direction your lives would go?

Monsignor Ratzinger: My brother had already obtained a certain experience in the field of theological science. It was clear that theology would be his path. Instead my life led me to music. But it was not clear to us where our particular vocations would lead us. At the time of ordination what was most important for us was being priests.

Q: Did you and your brother ever think of joining a religious order?

Monsignor Ratzinger: I never thought of it and I don't think my brother did either. But I cannot say with certainty.

Q: In your opinion, is priestly ordination more important than being elected Successor of Peter?

Monsignor Ratzinger: Priestly ordination is fundamental. To be the pope it is necessary to have received this sacrament. Obviously the responsibility and functions are much more difficult for a pontiff than for a priest. Nevertheless, priestly ordination is the foundation for episcopal ordination and for pontifical election.

Q: For the 60th anniversary of your priestly ordination do you have in mind the performance of some musical piece in particular?

Monsignor Ratzinger: Sadly I have difficulty in reading the notes and also my hands can no longer move in the proper way. In any case, I have in mind the notes I would like to hear. I have many CDs from my years as director of the choir of the Domspatzen. These are very beautiful memories.

Q: Do you have some CDs to hear this Wednesday with your brother?

Monsignor Ratzinger: I haven't brought anything. But in his apartment he has all he needs.

Msgr. Ratzinger seems to have the same simple humility and down-to-earthness as his brother.  I am particularly fond of the Monsignor's line that life "can't be all peace, joy and pancakes."

And the Pope still refers to his books as his "friends."

A Prayer from the Pope

Lord,

we thank you because you have opened your Heart for us;
because in your Death and Resurrection
you have become source of life.

Make us living persons,
living from your source,
and give us the power to be sources ourselves,
able to give to this, our time
the water of life.

We thank you
for the grace of the priestly ministry.
Lord, bless us
and bless all men of this time
who are thirsty and in search.
Amen.

- Benedictus PP XVI

1951 - June 29 - 2011

60th of Priestly Ordination

A must-read homily

Last week the Holy Father Benedict XVI celebrated the 60th anniversary of his ordination to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.  In his homily that day he reflected on the many years of priestly service he has been able to give to the Church.

The text of his homily follows, with my emphases:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,


“Non iam dicam servos, sed amicos” - “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (cf. Jn 15:15).

Sixty years on from the day of my priestly ordination, I hear once again deep within me these words of Jesus that were addressed to us new priests at the end of the ordination ceremony by the Archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, in his slightly frail yet firm voice. According to the liturgical practice of that time, these words conferred on the newly-ordained priests the authority to forgive sins. “No longer servants, but friends”: at that moment I knew deep down that these words were no mere formality, nor were they simply a quotation from Scripture. I knew that, at that moment, the Lord himself was speaking to me in a very personal way. In baptism and confirmation he had already drawn us close to him, he had already received us into God’s family. But what was taking place now was something greater still. He calls me his friend. He welcomes me into the circle of those he had spoken to in the Upper Room, into the circle of those whom he knows in a very special way, and who thereby come to know him in a very special way. He grants me the almost frightening faculty to do what only he, the Son of God, can legitimately say and do: I forgive you your sins. He wants me – with his authority – to be able to speak, in his name (“I” forgive), words that are not merely words, but an action, changing something at the deepest level of being. I know that behind these words lies his suffering for us and on account of us. I know that forgiveness comes at a price: in his Passion he went deep down into the sordid darkness of our sins. He went down into the night of our guilt, for only thus can it be transformed. And by giving me authority to forgive sins, he lets me look down into the abyss of man, into the immensity of his suffering for us men, and this enables me to sense the immensity of his love. He confides in me: “No longer servants, but friends”. He entrusts to me the words of consecration in the Eucharist. He trusts me to proclaim his word, to explain it aright and to bring it to the people of today. He entrusts himself to me. “You are no longer servants, but friends”: these words bring great inner joy, but at the same time, they are so awe-inspiring that one can feel daunted as the decades go by amid so many experiences of one’s own frailty and his inexhaustible goodness.

“No longer servants, but friends”: this saying contains within itself the entire programme of a priestly life. What is friendship? Idem velle, idem nolle – wanting the same things, rejecting the same things: this was how it was expressed in antiquity. Friendship is a communion of thinking and willing. The Lord says the same thing to us most insistently: “I know my own and my own know me” (Jn 10:14). The Shepherd calls his own by name (cf. Jn 10:3). He knows me by name. I am not just some nameless being in the infinity of the universe. He knows me personally. Do I know him? The friendship that he bestows upon me can only mean that I too try to know him better; that in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in the communion of saints, in the people who come to me, sent by him, I try to come to know the Lord himself more and more. Friendship is not just about knowing someone, it is above all a communion of the will. It means that my will grows into ever greater conformity with his will. For his will is not something external and foreign to me, something to which I more or less willingly submit or else refuse to submit. No, in friendship, my will grows together with his will, and his will becomes mine: this is how I become truly myself. Over and above communion of thinking and willing, the Lord mentions a third, new element: he gives his life for us (cf. Jn 15:13; 10:15). Lord, help me to come to know you more and more. Help me to be ever more at one with your will. Help me to live my life not for myself, but in union with you to live it for others. Help me to become ever more your friend.

Jesus’ words on friendship should be seen in the context of the discourse on the vine. The Lord associates the image of the vine with a commission to the disciples: “I appointed you that you should go out and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide” (Jn 15:16). The first commission to the disciples, to his friends, is that of setting out – appointed to go out -, stepping outside oneself and towards others. Here we hear an echo of the words of the risen Lord to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations ...” (cf. Mt 28:19f.) The Lord challenges us to move beyond the boundaries of our own world and to bring the Gospel to the world of others, so that it pervades everything and hence the world is opened up for God’s kingdom. We are reminded that even God stepped outside himself, he set his glory aside in order to seek us, in order to bring us his light and his love. We want to follow the God who sets out in this way, we want to move beyond the inertia of self-centredness, so that he himself can enter our world.

After the reference to setting out, Jesus continues: bear fruit, fruit that abides. What fruit does he expect from us? What is this fruit that abides? Now, the fruit of the vine is the grape, and it is from the grape that wine is made. Let us reflect for a moment on this image. For good grapes to ripen, sun is needed, but so too is rain, day and night. For noble wine to mature, the grapes need to be pressed, patience is needed while the juice ferments, watchful care is needed to assist the processes of maturation. Noble wine is marked not only by sweetness, but by rich and subtle flavours, the manifold aroma that develops during the processes of maturation and fermentation. Is this not already an image of human life, and especially of our lives as priests? We need both sun and rain, festivity and adversity, times of purification and testing, as well as times of joyful journeying with the Gospel. In hindsight we can thank God for both: for the challenges and the joys, for the dark times and the glad times. In both, we can recognize the constant presence of his love, which unfailingly supports and sustains us.

Yet now we must ask: what sort of fruit does the Lord expect from us? Wine is an image of love: this is the true fruit that abides, the fruit that God wants from us. But let us not forget that in the Old Testament the wine expected from noble grapes is above all an image of justice, which arises from a life lived in accordance with God’s law. And this is not to be dismissed as an Old Testament view that has been surpassed – no, it still remains true. The true content of the Law, its summa, is love for God and for one’s neighbour. But this twofold love is not simply saccharine. It bears within itself the precious cargo of patience, humility, and growth in the conforming of our will to God’s will, to the will of Jesus Christ, our friend. Only in this way, as the whole of our being takes on the qualities of truth and righteousness, is love also true, only thus is it ripe fruit. Its inner demand – faithfulness to Christ and to his Church – seeks a fulfilment that always includes suffering. This is the way that true joy grows. At a deep level, the essence of love, the essence of genuine fruit, coincides with the idea of setting out, going towards: it means self-abandonment, self-giving, it bears within itself the sign of the cross. Gregory the Great once said in this regard: if you are striving for God, take care not to go to him by yourselves alone – a saying that we priests need to keep before us every day (H Ev 1:6:6 PL 76, 1097f.).

Dear friends, perhaps I have dwelt for too long on my inner recollections of sixty years of priestly ministry. Now it is time to turn our attention to the particular task that is to be performed today.

On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul my most cordial greeting goes first of all to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I and to the Delegation he has sent, to whom I express sincere thanks for their most welcome visit on the happy occasion of this feast of the holy Apostles who are Rome’s patrons. I also greet the Cardinals, my brother bishops, the ambassadors and civil authorities as well as the priests, the confrères of my first Mass, religious and lay faithful. I thank all of you for your presence and your prayers.

The metropolitan archbishops appointed since the feast of Saints Peter and Paul last year are now going to receive the pallium. What does this mean? It may remind us in the first instance of Christ’s easy yoke that is laid upon us (cf. Mt 11:29f.). Christ’s yoke is identical with his friendship. It is a yoke of friendship and therefore “a sweet yoke”, but as such it is also a demanding yoke, one that forms us. It is the yoke of his will, which is a will of truth and love. For us, then, it is first and foremost the yoke of leading others to friendship with Christ and being available to others, caring for them as shepherds. This brings us to a further meaning of the pallium: it is woven from the wool of lambs blessed on the feast of Saint Agnes. Thus it reminds us of the Shepherd who himself became a lamb, out of love for us. It reminds us of Christ, who set out through the mountains and the deserts, in which his lamb, humanity, had strayed. It reminds us of him who took the lamb – humanity – me – upon his shoulders, in order to carry me home. It thus reminds us that we too, as shepherds in his service, are to carry others with us, taking them as it were upon our shoulders and bringing them to Christ. It reminds us that we are called to be shepherds of his flock, which always remains his and does not become ours. Finally the pallium also means quite concretely the communion of the shepherds of the Church with Peter and with his successors – it means that we must be shepherds for unity and in unity, and that it is only in the unity represented by Peter that we truly lead people to Christ.

Sixty years of priestly ministry – dear friends, perhaps I have spoken for too long about this. But I felt prompted at this moment to look back upon the things that have left their mark on the last six decades. I felt prompted to address to you, to all priests and bishops and to the faithful of the Church, a word of hope and encouragement; a word that has matured in long experience of how good the Lord is. Above all, though, it is a time of thanksgiving: thanks to the Lord for the friendship that he has bestowed upon me and that he wishes to bestow upon us all. Thanks to the people who have formed and accompanied me. And all this includes the prayer that the Lord will one day welcome us in his goodness and invite us to contemplate his joy.

Myths of the American Revolution

This morning I saw the following article refuting Myths of the American Revolution on friend and reader William's Facebook page.  Given this weekend's festivities, I thought it a good idea to share with you.

The article, written by John Ferling and published in Smithsonian in January 2010, follows, with my emphases and comments:

We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are. The Declaration of Independence, the Midnight Ride, Valley Forge—the whole glorious chronicle of the colonists’ rebellion against tyranny is in the American DNA. Often it is the Revolution that is a child’s first encounter with history.



Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps more than any defining moment in American history, the War of Independence is swathed in beliefs not borne out by the facts. Here, in order to form a more perfect understanding, the most significant myths of the Revolutionary War are reassessed.

I. Great Britain Did Not Know What It Was Getting Into

In the course of England’s long and unsuccessful attempt to crush the American Revolution, the myth arose that its government, under Prime Minister Frederick, Lord North, had acted in haste. Accusations circulating at the time—later to become conventional wisdom—held that the nation’s political leaders had failed to comprehend the gravity of the challenge.

Actually, the British cabinet, made up of nearly a score of ministers, first considered resorting to military might as early as January 1774, when word of the Boston Tea Party reached London. (Recall that on December 16, 1773, protesters had boarded British vessels in Boston Harbor and destroyed cargoes of tea, rather than pay a tax imposed by Parliament.) Contrary to popular belief both then and now, Lord North’s government did not respond impulsively to the news. Throughout early 1774, the prime minister and his cabinet engaged in lengthy debate on whether coercive actions would lead to war. A second question was considered as well: Could Britain win such a war?

By March 1774, North’s government had opted for punitive measures that fell short of declaring war. Parliament enacted the Coercive Acts—or Intolerable Acts, as Americans called them—and applied the legislation to Massachusetts alone, to punish the colony for its provocative act. Britain’s principal action was to close Boston Harbor until the tea had been paid for. England also installed Gen. Thomas Gage, commander of the British Army in America, as governor of the colony. Politicians in London chose to heed the counsel of Gage, who opined that the colonists would “be lyons whilst we are lambs but if we take the resolute part they will be very meek.”

Britain, of course, miscalculated hugely. In September 1774, colonists convened the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia; the members voted to embargo British commerce until all British taxes and the Coercive Acts were repealed. News of that vote reached London in December. A second round of deliberations within North’s ministry ensued for nearly six weeks.

Throughout its deliberations, North’s government agreed on one point: the Americans would pose little challenge in the event of war. The Americans had neither a standing army nor a navy; few among them were experienced officers. Britain possessed a professional army and the world’s greatest navy. Furthermore, the colonists had virtually no history of cooperating with one another, even in the face of danger. In addition, many in the cabinet were swayed by disparaging assessments of American soldiers leveled by British officers in earlier wars. For instance, during the French and Indian War (1754-63), Brig. Gen. James Wolfe had described America’s soldiers as “cowardly dogs.” Henry Ellis, the royal governor of Georgia, nearly simultaneously asserted that the colonists were a “poor species of fighting men” given to “a want of bravery.”

Still, as debate continued, skeptics—especially within Britain’s army and navy—raised troubling questions. Could the Royal Navy blockade the 1,000-mile-long American coast? Couldn’t two million free colonists muster a force of 100,000 or so citizen-soldiers, nearly four times the size of Britain’s army in 1775? Might not an American army of this size replace its losses more easily than Britain? Was it possible to supply an army operating 3,000 miles from home? Could Britain subdue a rebellion across 13 colonies in an area some six times the size of England? Could the British Army operate deep in America’s interior, far from coastal supply bases? Would a protracted war bankrupt Britain? Would France and Spain, England’s age-old enemies, aid American rebels? Was Britain risking starting a broader war?

After the Continental Congress convened, King George III told his ministers that “blows must decide” whether the Americans “submit or triumph.”

North’s government agreed. To back down, the ministers believed, would be to lose the colonies. Confident of Britain’s overwhelming military superiority and hopeful that colonial resistance would collapse after one or two humiliating defeats, they chose war. The Earl of Dartmouth, who was the American Secretary, ordered General Gage to use “a vigorous Exertion of...Force” to crush the rebellion in Massachusetts. Resistance from the Bay Colony, Dartmouth added, “cannot be very formidable.”

II. Americans Of All Stripes Took Up Arms Out Of Patriotism

The term “spirit of ‘76” refers to the colonists’ patriotic zeal and has always seemed synonymous with the idea that every able-bodied male colonist resolutely served, and suffered, throughout the eight-year war.

To be sure, the initial rally to arms was impressive. When the British Army marched out of Boston on April 19, 1775, messengers on horseback, including Boston silversmith Paul Revere, fanned out across New England to raise the alarm. Summoned by the feverish pealing of church bells, militiamen from countless hamlets hurried toward Concord, Massachusetts, where the British regulars planned to destroy a rebel arsenal. Thousands of militiamen arrived in time to fight; 89 men from 23 towns in Massachusetts were killed or wounded on that first day of war, April 19, 1775. By the next morning, Massachusetts had 12 regiments in the field. Connecticut soon mobilized a force of 6,000, one-quarter of its military-age men. Within a week, 16,000 men from the four New England colonies formed a siege army outside British-occupied Boston. In June, the Continental Congress took over the New England army, creating a national force, the Continental Army. Thereafter, men throughout America took up arms. It seemed to the British regulars that every able-bodied American male had become a soldier.

But as the colonists discovered how difficult and dangerous military service could be, enthusiasm waned. Many men preferred to remain home, in the safety of what Gen. George Washington described as their “Chimney Corner.” Early in the war, Washington wrote that he despaired of “compleating the army by Voluntary Inlistments.” Mindful that volunteers had rushed to enlist when hostilities began, Washington predicted that “after the first emotions are over,” those who were willing to serve from a belief in the “goodness of the cause” would amount to little more than “a drop in the Ocean.” He was correct. As 1776 progressed, many colonies were compelled to entice soldiers with offers of cash bounties, clothing, blankets and extended furloughs or enlistments shorter than the one-year term of service established by Congress.

The following year, when Congress mandated that men who enlisted must sign on for three years or the duration of the conflict, whichever came first, offers of cash and land bounties became an absolute necessity. The states and the army also turned to slick-tongued recruiters to round up volunteers. General Washington had urged conscription, stating that “the Government must have recourse to coercive measures.” In April 1777, Congress recommended a draft to the states. By the end of 1778, most states were conscripting men when Congress’ voluntary enlistment quotas were not met.

Moreover, beginning in 1778, the New England states, and eventually all Northern states, enlisted African-Americans, a practice that Congress had initially forbidden. Ultimately, some 5,000 blacks bore arms for the United States, approximately 5 percent of the total number of men who served in the Continental Army. The African-American soldiers made an important contribution to America’s ultimate victory. In 1781, Baron Ludwig von Closen, a veteran officer in the French Army, remarked that the “best [regiment] under arms” in the Continental Army was one in which 75 percent of the soldiers were African-Americans.

Longer enlistments radically changed the composition of the Army. Washington’s troops in 1775-76 had represented a cross section of the free male population. But few who owned farms were willing to serve for the duration, fearing loss of their property if years passed without producing revenue from which to pay taxes. After 1777, the average Continental soldier was young, single, propertyless, poor and in many cases an outright pauper. In some states, such as Pennsylvania, up to one in four soldiers was an impoverished recent immigrant. Patriotism aside, cash and land bounties offered an unprecedented chance for economic mobility for these men. Joseph Plumb Martin of Milford, Connecticut, ac­knowledged that he had enlisted for the money. Later, he would recollect the calculation he had made at the time: “As I must go, I might as well endeavor to get as much for my skin as I could.” For three-quarters of the war, few middle-class Americans bore arms in the Continental Army, although thousands did serve in militias.

III. Continental Soldiers Were Always Ragged And Hungry

Accounts of shoeless continental army soldiers leaving bloody footprints in the snow or going hungry in a land of abundance are all too accurate. Take, for example, the experience of Connecticut’s Private Martin. While serving with the Eighth Connecticut Continental Regiment in the autumn of 1776, Martin went for days with little more to eat than a handful of chestnuts and, at one point, a portion of roast sheep’s head, remnants of a meal prepared for those he sarcastically referred to as his “gentleman officers.” Ebenezer Wild, a Massachusetts soldier who served at Valley Forge in the terrible winter of 1777-78, would recall that he subsisted for days on “a leg of nothing.” One of his comrades, Dr. Albigence Waldo, a Continental Army surgeon, later reported that many men survived largely on what were known as fire cakes (flour and water baked over coals). One soldier, Waldo wrote, complained that his “glutted Gutts are turned to Pasteboard.” The Army’s supply system, imperfect at best, at times broke down altogether; the result was misery and want.

But that was not always the case. So much heavy clothing arrived from France at the beginning of the winter in 1779 that Washington was compelled to locate storage facilities for his surplus.

In a long war during which American soldiers were posted from upper New York to lower Georgia, conditions faced by the troops varied widely. For instance, at the same time that Washington’s siege army at Boston in 1776 was well supplied, many American soldiers, engaged in the failed invasion of Quebec staged from Fort Ticonderoga in New York, endured near starvation. While one soldier in seven was dying from hunger and disease at Valley Forge, young Private Martin, stationed only a few miles away in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, was assigned to patrols that foraged daily for army provisions. “We had very good provisions all winter,” he would write, adding that he had lived in “a snug room.” In the spring after Valley Forge, he encountered one of his former officers. “Where have you been this winter?” inquired the officer. “Why you are as fat as a pig.”

IV. The Militia Was Useless

The nation’s first settlers adopted the British militia system, which required all able-bodied men between 16 and 60 to bear arms. Some 100,000 men served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Probably twice that number soldiered as militiamen, for the most part defending the home front, functioning as a police force and occasionally engaging in enemy surveillance. If a militia company was summoned to active duty and sent to the front lines to augment the Continentals, it usually remained mobilized for no more than 90 days.

Some Americans emerged from the war convinced that the militia had been largely ineffective. No one did more to sully its reputation than General Washington, who insisted that a decision to “place any dependence on Militia is assuredly resting on a broken staff.”

Militiamen were older, on average, than the Continental soldiers and received only perfunctory training; few had experienced combat. Washington complained that militiamen had failed to exhibit “a brave & manly opposition” in the battles of 1776 on Long Island and in Manhattan. At Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780, militiamen panicked in the face of advancing redcoats. Throwing down their weapons and running for safety, they were responsible for one of the worst defeats of the war.

Yet in 1775, militiamen had fought with surpassing bravery along the Concord Road and at Bunker Hill. Nearly 40 percent of soldiers serving under Washington in his crucial Christmas night victory at Trenton in 1776 were militiamen. In New York state, half the American force in the vital Saratoga campaign of 1777 consisted of militiamen. They also contributed substantially to American victories at Kings Mountain, South Carolina, in 1780 and Cowpens, South Carolina, the following year. In March 1781, Gen. Nathanael Greene adroitly deployed his militiamen in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse (fought near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina). In that engagement, he inflicted such devastating losses on the British that they gave up the fight for North Carolina.

The militia had its shortcomings, to be sure, but America could not have won the war without it. As a British general, Earl Cornwallis, wryly put it in a letter in 1781, “I will not say much in praise of the militia, but the list of British officers and soldiers killed and wounded by them...proves but too fatally they are not wholly contemptible.”

V. Saratoga Was The War’s Turning Point

On October 17, 1777, British Gen. John Burgoyne surrendered 5,895 men to American forces outside Saratoga, New York. Those losses, combined with the 1,300 men killed, wounded and captured during the preceding five months of Burgoyne’s campaign to reach Albany in upstate New York, amounted to nearly one-quarter of those serving under the British flag in America in 1777.

The defeat persuaded France to form a military alliance with the United States. Previously, the French, even though they believed that London would be fatally weakened by the loss of its American colonies, had not wished to take a chance on backing the new American nation. General Washington, who rarely made optimistic pronouncements, exulted that France’s entry into the war in February 1778 had introduced “a most happy tone to all our affairs,” as it “must put the Independency of America out of all manner of dispute.”

But Saratoga was not the turning point of the war. Protracted conflicts—the Revolutionary War was America’s longest military engagement until Vietnam nearly 200 years later—are seldom defined by a single decisive event. In addition to Saratoga, four other key moments can be identified. The first was the combined effect of victories in the fighting along the Concord Road on April 19, 1775, and at Bunker Hill near Boston two months later, on June 17. Many colonists had shared Lord North’s belief that American citizen-soldiers could not stand up to British regulars. But in those two engagements, fought in the first 60 days of the war, American soldiers—all militiamen—inflicted huge casualties. The British lost nearly 1,500 men in those encounters, three times the American toll. Without the psychological benefits of those battles, it is debatable whether a viable Continental Army could have been raised in that first year of war or whether public morale would have withstood the terrible defeats of 1776.

Between August and November of 1776, Washington’s army was driven from Long Island, New York City proper and the rest of Manhattan Island, with some 5,000 men killed, wounded and captured. But at Trenton in late December 1776, Washington achieved a great victory, destroying a Hessian force of nearly 1,000 men; a week later, on January 3, he defeated a British force at Princeton, New Jersey. Washington’s stunning triumphs, which revived hopes of victory and permitted recruitment in 1777, were a second turning point.

A third turning point occurred when Congress abandoned one-year enlistments and transformed the Continental Army into a standing army, made up of regulars who volunteered—or were conscripted—for long-term service. A standing army was contrary to American tradition and was viewed as unacceptable by citizens who understood that history was filled with instances of generals who had used their armies to gain dictatorial powers. Among the critics was Massachusetts’ John Adams, then a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In 1775, he wrote that he feared a standing army would become an “armed monster” composed of the “meanest, idlest, most intemperate and worthless” men. By autumn, 1776, Adams had changed his view, remarking that unless the length of enlistment was extended, “our inevitable destruction will be the Consequence.” At last, Washington would get the army he had wanted from the outset; its soldiers would be better trained, better disciplined and more experienced than the men who had served in 1775-76.

The campaign that unfolded in the South during 1780 and 1781 was the final turning point of the conflict. After failing to crush the rebellion in New England and the mid-Atlantic states, the British turned their attention in 1778 to the South, hoping to retake Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. At first the Southern Strategy, as the British termed the initiative, achieved spectacular results. Within 20 months, the redcoats had wiped out three American armies, retaken Savannah and Charleston, occupied a substantial portion of the South Carolina backcountry, and killed, wounded or captured 7,000 American soldiers, nearly equaling the British losses at Saratoga. Lord George Germain, Britain’s American Secretary after 1775, declared that the Southern victories augured a “speedy and happy termination of the American war.”

But the colonists were not broken. In mid-1780, organized partisan bands, composed largely of guerrilla fighters, struck from within South Carolina’s swamps and tangled forests to ambush redcoat supply trains and patrols. By summer’s end, the British high command acknowledged that South Carolina, a colony they had recently declared pacified, was “in an absolute state of rebellion.” Worse was yet to come. In October 1780, rebel militia and backcountry volunteers destroyed an army of more than 1,000 Loyalists at Kings Mountain in South Carolina. After that rout, Cornwallis found it nearly impossible to persuade Loyalists to join the cause.

In January 1781, Cornwallis marched an army of more than 4,000 men to North Carolina, hoping to cut supply routes that sustained partisans farther south. In battles at Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse and in an exhausting pursuit of the Army under Gen. Nathanael Greene, Cornwallis lost some 1,700 men, nearly 40 percent of the troops under his command at the outset of the North Carolina campaign. In April 1781, despairing of crushing the insurgency in the Carolinas, he took his army into Virginia, where he hoped to sever supply routes linking the upper and lower South. It was a fateful decision, as it put Cornwallis on a course that would lead that autumn to disaster at Yorktown, where he was trapped and compelled to surrender more than 8,000 men on October 19, 1781. The next day, General Washington informed the Continental Army that “the glorious event” would send “general Joy [to] every breast” in America. Across the sea, Lord North reacted to the news as if he had “taken a ball in the breast,” reported the messenger who delivered the bad tidings. “O God,” the prime minister exclaimed, “it is all over.”

VI. General Washington Was A Brilliant Tactician And Strategist

Among the hundreds of eulogies delivered after the death of George Washington in 1799, Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, averred that the general’s military greatness consisted principally in his “formation of extensive and masterly plans” and a “watchful seizure of every advantage.” It was the prevailing view and one that has been embraced by many historians.

In fact, Washington’s missteps revealed failings as a strategist. No one understood his limitations better than Washington himself who, on the eve of the New York campaign in 1776, confessed to Congress his “want of experience to move on a large scale” and his “limited and contracted knowledge . . . in Military Matters.”

In August 1776, the Continental Army was routed in its first test on Long Island in part because Washington failed to properly reconnoiter and he attempted to defend too large an area for the size of his army. To some extent, Washington’s nearly fatal inability to make rapid decisions resulted in the November losses of Fort Washington on Manhattan Island and Fort Lee in New Jersey, defeats that cost the colonists more than one-quarter of the army’s soldiers and precious weaponry and military stores. Washington did not take the blame for what had gone wrong. Instead, he advised Congress of his “want of confidence in the Generality of the Troops.”

In the fall of 1777, when Gen. William Howe invaded Pennsylvania, Washington committed his entire army in an attempt to prevent the loss of Philadelphia. During the Battle of Brandywine, in September, he once again froze with indecision. For nearly two hours information poured into headquarters that the British were attempting a flanking maneuver—a move that would, if successful, entrap much of the Continental Army—and Washington failed to respond. At day’s end, a British sergeant accurately perceived that Washington had “escaped a total overthrow, that must have been the consequence of an hours more daylight.”

Later, Washington was painfully slow to grasp the significance of the war in the Southern states. For the most part, he committed troops to that theater only when Congress ordered him to do so. By then, it was too late to prevent the surrender of Charleston in May 1780 and the subsequent losses among American troops in the South. Washington also failed to see the potential of a campaign against the British in Virginia in 1780 and 1781, prompting Comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French Army in America, to write despairingly that the American general “did not conceive the affair of the south to be such urgency.” Indeed, Rochambeau, who took action without Washington’s knowledge, conceived the Virginia campaign that resulted in the war’s decisive encounter, the siege of Yorktown in the autumn of 1781.

Much of the war’s decision-making was hidden from the public. Not even Congress was aware that the French, not Washington, had formulated the strategy that led to America’s triumph. During Washington’s presidency, the American pamphleteer Thomas Paine, then living in France, revealed much of what had occurred. In 1796 Paine published a “Letter to George Washington,” in which he claimed that most of General Washington’s supposed achievements were “fraudulent.” “You slept away your time in the field” after 1778, Paine charged, arguing that Gens. Horatio Gates and Greene were more responsible for America’s victory than Washington.

There was some truth to Paine’s acid comments, but his indictment failed to recognize that one can be a great military leader without being a gifted tactician or strategist. Washington’s character, judgment, industry and meticulous habits, as well as his political and diplomatic skills, set him apart from others. In the final analysis, he was the proper choice to serve as commander of the Continental Army.

VII. Great Britain Could Never Have Won The War

Once the revolutionary war was lost, some in Britain argued that it had been unwinnable. For generals and admirals who were defending their reputations, and for patriots who found it painful to acknowledge defeat, the concept of foreordained failure was alluring. Nothing could have been done, or so the argument went, to have altered the outcome. Lord North was condemned, not for having lost the war, but for having led his country into a conflict in which victory was impossible.

In reality, Britain might well have won the war. The battle for New York in 1776 gave England an excellent opportunity for a decisive victory. France had not yet allied with the Americans. Washington and most of his lieutenants were rank amateurs. Continental Army soldiers could not have been more untried. On Long Island, in New York City and in upper Manhattan, on Harlem Heights, Gen. William Howe trapped much of the American Army and might have administered a fatal blow. Cornered in the hills of Harlem, even Washington admitted that if Howe attacked, the Continental Army would be “cut off” and faced with the choice of fighting its way out “under every disadvantage” or being starved into submission. But the excessively cautious Howe was slow to act, ultimately allowing Washington to slip away.

Britain still might have prevailed in 1777. London had formulated a sound strategy that called for Howe, with his large force, which included a naval arm, to advance up the Hudson River and rendezvous at Albany with General Burgoyne, who was to invade New York from Canada. Britain’s objective was to cut New England off from the other nine states by taking the Hudson. When the rebels did engage—the thinking went—they would face a giant British pincer maneuver that would doom them to catastrophic losses. Though the operation offered the prospect of decisive victory, Howe scuttled it. Believing that Burgoyne needed no assistance and obsessed by a desire to capture Philadelphia—home of the Continental Congress—Howe opted to move against Pennsylvania instead. He took Philadelphia, but he accomplished little by his action. Meanwhile, Burgoyne suffered total defeat at Saratoga.

Most historians have maintained that Britain had no hope of victory after 1777, but that assumption constitutes another myth of this war. Twenty-four months into its Southern Strategy, Britain was close to reclaiming substantial territory within its once-vast American empire. Royal authority had been restored in Georgia, and much of South Carolina was occupied by the British.

As 1781 dawned, Washington warned that his army was “exhausted” and the citizenry “discontented.” John Adams believed that France, faced with mounting debts and having failed to win a single victory in the American theater, would not remain in the war beyond 1781. “We are in the Moment of Crisis,” he wrote. Rochambeau feared that 1781 would see the “last struggle of an expiring patriotism.” Both Washington and Adams assumed that unless the United States and France scored a decisive victory in 1781, the outcome of the war would be determined at a conference of Europe’s great powers.

Stalemated wars often conclude with belligerents retaining what they possessed at the moment an armistice is reached. Had the outcome been determined by a European peace conference, Britain would likely have retained Canada, the trans-Appalachian West, part of present-day Maine, New York City and Long Island, Georgia and much of South Carolina, Florida (acquired from Spain in a previous war) and several Caribbean islands. To keep this great empire, which would have encircled the tiny United States, Britain had only to avoid decisive losses in 1781.Yet Cornwallis’ stunning defeat at Yorktown in October cost Britain everything but Canada.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ratified the American victory and recognized the existence of the new United States. General Washington, addressing a gathering of soldiers at West Point, told the men that they had secured America’s “independence and sovereignty.” The new nation, he said, faced “enlarged prospects of happiness,” adding that all free Americans could enjoy “personal independence.” The passage of time would demonstrate that Washington, far from creating yet another myth surrounding the outcome of the war, had voiced the real promise of the new nation.

Historian John Ferling’s most recent book is The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon. Illustrator Joe Ciardiello lives in Milford, New Jersey.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story placed Kings Mountain in North Carolina instead of South Carolina. We regret the error.

Paprocki: Seminarians increased 37% in first year as Bishop

In this week's issue of the Catholic Times, His Excellency the Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki reflects on his first year as the ninth Bishop of Springfield in Illinois.

The text of his column follows, with my emphases and comments:

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,


This past June 22 marked the first anniversary of my installation as Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. It’s hard to believe the time has gone by so quickly. As they say, time flies when you’re having fun! Also, I guess, when you’re busy, which I certainly have been. In the past 12 months, I have visited 70 out of our 130 parishes and have administered the sacrament of confirmation 54 times (always singing in my homily as I do!).

My pastoral ministry as shepherd of this diocese has involved both of our Catholic universities, Quincy University and Benedictine University at Springfield, as well as the Newman Catholic Center at Eastern Illinois University and all six of our Catholic High Schools: Marquette in Alton, St. Teresa in Decatur, St. Anthony in Effingham, Routt in Jacksonville, Quincy Notre Dame, and Sacred Heart-Griffin in Springfield. As goalie coach for the Sacred Heart-Griffin Cyclones Hockey Club, it was indeed fun as the team won the Lincoln Land High School Hockey League Championship!

With great hope for its future growth and success, I gave approval for Father McGivney Catholic High School to open in the fall of 2012 in Maryville to share the gift of our Catholic faith with high school students in the southern area of Madison County. In addition, I visited several of our Catholic elementary schools. The education and formation of the Catholic faith of our young people is one of our most important responsibilities.

Care for the sick is also a sign of Christian compassion. It is inspiring to see the dedicated and compassionate care provided by our health care professionals. So far, I have visited three of our Catholic hospitals, St. Anthony’s in Alton, St. Mary’s in Decatur and St. John’s in Springfield — thankfully not for any hockey-related injuries, though!

Jesus taught that when we visit those in prison, we visit him, so I celebrated Mass at Taylorville Correctional Center, where I was warmly received by the warden, his staff and the offenders. They were grateful for my presence as a sign that God has not abandoned them [that was a very moving day].

St. Paul said that the mark of a true Christian community is its care for the poor and vulnerable. In this regard, I have sought to strengthen the work of our Catholic Charities and to protect our religious freedom to continue providing foster care and adoption services in accord with our religious beliefs. I have led our pro-life marches and prayers in front of abortion clinics in Springfield and Granite City.

One of my priorities is promoting vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life. Father Christopher House is the director of our Office for Vocations and Father Daren Zehnle is the associate director. Both of them have served as my Master of Ceremonies during this past year, and whenever we went to parishes to celebrate the sacrament of confirmation, we met with the confirmation candidates before Mass to talk about vocations. At their age, it is a matter of planting the seeds for the newly confirmed to think about how they will serve the lord as adult members of his church.

It is not just the bishop’s duty to find priests and nuns to serve in our parishes, schools, hospitals and other apostolic and charitable works. I have also been asking for everyone to support and pray for vocations. I like to say that religious vocations don’t come from the supermarket! Blessed Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (I Will Give You Shepherds) reminded the Christian faithful that the first support for priestly vocations comes from families, secondly from parishes. How many priests and nuns has your parish produced over the years? That’s a good question to think about. I can’t do this alone. We can’t do this without prayer and the action of the Holy Spirit, guiding us as we work together.

In this regard, I’m pleased to report that we are making progress. When I arrived last year, we had 11 seminarians. I ordained one of them, Father Brian Alford, in May. He was the very first priest that I have ever ordained. I said at the time that I’m glad his name begins with an “A” because I hope and pray that he will be just the first of many! Next year, we already have 15 seminarians on board and several more that are considering God’s call. That’s a 37 percent increase in one year! Please pray that they will have the courage to say yes and to persevere. There’s no good reason why a diocese of our size should not have at least 20 seminarians. I believe that is a realistic and achievable goal [Amen!].

When I was appointed to serve as your new bishop, I didn’t come with a pre-determined agenda, other than the mission entrusted to me by the pope as handed down by apostolic succession from Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. I have spent a good deal of time just watching and listening, learning new names and places, customs and traditions. I have also been surprised by developments that I never planned or anticipated. A good example of this is the Prayer to Saint Michael. I mentioned this prayer almost in passing during my homily at the Deanery Masses of Welcome last September as a way of fighting the onslaughts of the devil. The response has been positive and enthusiastic. In fact, as I visit parishes, many people continue to express their appreciation for this prayer. I see this, though, not as my doing, but as the work of the Holy Spirit.

It is not by coincidence that my Installation took place on the feast of my patron saints and namesakes, Ss. Thomas More and John Fisher. Please pray for their continued intercession for my ministry among you as the shepherd of souls here in central Illinois.

May God give us this grace. Amen.

You may have heard that Catholic Charities of the Dioceses of Springfield in Illinois, Joliet and Peoria have filed for a Declaratory Judgment regarding the recently signed Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act in the State of Illinois.

The litigation has received some media attention, though not too much from what I have seen.  And what I have seen has not been very accurate.

Two weeks ago Bishop Paprocki addressed the issue in his column in the Catholic Times, which I had forgotten to post here.  I have simply emphasized one sentence in the article because the piece is worth your reading in its entirety:

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,


Most people in Illinois are probably aware that the state legislature passed and the governor signed a new law that legalized civil unions effective June 1. Did you know that the full title of the new law is the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act? If not, you might be wondering why the Catholic Charities of the dioceses of Springfield in Illinois, Peoria and Joliet recently went to court to seek a declaratory judgment and an injunction to allow Catholic Charities to continue to provide foster care and adoption services as it has for decades. You might think that foster care and adoption services offered by religious organizations under contract with the Department of Children and Family Services should be forced to place children with civil union couples if you didn’t know that the new law was also designed to protect religious freedom.

In fact, since “Religious Freedom Protection” is mentioned before “Civil Union” in the title of the act, one could say that protecting religious practices from any adverse effects of permitting civil unions was the primary purpose of the act. True to the act’s title, Section 15 of the new act provides, “Nothing in this Act shall interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body.”

The legislative history of the bill bears this out. On the floor of the Illinois Senate on Dec. 1, 2010, Senator David Koehler of Peoria, sponsor of the bill which was adopted later that day, answering specific, explicit questions put to him by Senator William Haine of Alton, referred to a variety of religious practices on the part of “these institutions of faith of all denominations, Christian and Jewish [which] go to their various agencies providing social services, retreats, religious camps, homeless shelters, senior care centers, adoption agencies, hospitals, a wide gamut of things. So, that’s covered under the first sentence” of Section 15, he queried, to which Senator Koehler answered: “Yes. The — certainly the intent of Rep. (Gregory) Harris and I is not to at all, you know, impede the rights that religious organizations have to carry out their — what their duties and — and religious activities are.”

Catholic Charities seek a declaration from the court that their longstanding position of not accepting initial applications from non-married couples who live together — regardless of sexual orientation — is protected by the Illinois Human Rights Act, the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, and the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Catholic Charities also seek a court injunction against further action by Illinois government officials to the contrary.

A spokeswoman with the attorney general’s office said in response, “Unfortunately, instead of working with the state to ensure compliance with child protection and civil rights laws, the dioceses have opted to go to court.” First of all, Catholic Charities complies with all child protection laws. Also, religious freedom is itself a civil right. Moreover, Catholic Charities and Catholic Social Services agencies of the Illinois Catholic Dioceses, as well as other religious agencies providing adoption and foster care services, for months have implored the State of Illinois to confirm that religious-based agencies need not violate the moral teachings of their faith in their adoption and foster care programs. Unfortunately, the state has refused to do so in either the executive or legislative branches of government, so Catholic Charities had no other option left but to seek such clarification from the judiciary.

It must be noted that Catholic Charities denies no one any “legal benefit” by its religiously-based policy of not accepting or processing applications for adoption or foster care that come from same-sex or heterosexual unmarried couples. The civil unions law binds the State of Illinois, which dispenses and exercises the sovereign power of the state in 1) licensing social service agencies, and 2) licensing adoptive and foster care couples and parents. The only “denial” in terms of “equal treatment” of gays and lesbian applicants would occur if they could not obtain services anywhere from the state, and that is simply not the case. There are many, many social services agencies, acting on behalf of the Department of Children and Family Services and the State of Illinois, which would be only too glad to accommodate these applicants. Indeed, the state cannot point to even one couple whose applications couldn’t be accommodated, because there are none!

Catholic Charities have served thousands of children and families with top-quality, nurturing care since 1921 and handle about 20 percent of the cases in Illinois. Catholic Charities’ leaders are extremely concerned what will happen with those children and families if they are forced out of this work. Please pray that they be allowed to continue to care for these children in need according to our Catholic religious beliefs and practices.

May God give us this grace. Amen.

An unexpected surprise

If you browse through the Letters of the Editor of your local newspaper - be it large or small - you are likely to find few positive throughts expressed therein.  It has always been such, I suppose, that the editorial page has been used for more griping and blaming than for encouragement and counsel.

But every now and again a supportive letter finds its way first to paper and then to print.  Consider this letter recently published in the State Journal-Register regarding Bishop Paprocki's first year as Bishop of Springfield in Illinois:

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki was installed as our ninth bishop in the Springfield Diocese. The diocese covers 28 counties.


In his short time, he has already visited many churches in the diocese. He has been a true shepherd to his flock.

Bishop Paprocki has faced head-on many tough problems, including abortion, same-sex marriages and abuses in the church. He doesn’t bite his tongue on any issue.

One day in the future, I believe the bishop will return to Chicago and replace the cardinal when he retires. May God bless Bishop Paprocki and continue to guide him through the Holy Spirit.

Illuminations

The other day a friend sent along a link to illuminations from The Book of Knighthood written in the fifteenth century.  The medieval images are fascinating and right up my alley, the perfect treat to brighten a groggy Friday morning.

Here follow are a few of my favoriate renditions of chivalric activity:

Zimbabwe leads the way in AIDS reduction

Writing for The Catholic Thing, Matthew Hanley reflects on what the West can learn from Zimbabwe's approach to reducing the scourge of AIDS.  And it seems the Pope was right.

The text of his article follows, with my emphases:

The earnestness with which the worldwide media scrutinizes Church statements about AIDS can only mean that they are deeply interested in promoting what has been most responsible for major reductions in its prevalence. Right? Then why haven’t you heard about the plunging prevalence of AIDS in Zimbabwe? It dropped almost in half, from an astonishing 29 percent of all adults nationwide in 1997 to 16 percent in 2007, according to an important study published in February. The study was briefly summarized by the New York Times, but its findings generated little buzz because the decline did not occur the way it is supposed to.


In a nutshell, changes in sexual behavior – substantial reductions in casual, extramarital, and commercial sex – accounted for the drop in AIDS. Condom use did not shoot up during the same period; it had increased somewhat earlier but stayed rather constant while the precipitous declines in HIV transmission occurred – so condoms can’t explain this decline. Progress does not hinge, as commonly portrayed, on Vatican permissiveness about condoms.

Accordingly, the study authors argue that behavior changes deserve much greater policy emphasis. It is a tribute to them that they do so clearly and firmly, since the “risk reduction” philosophy is still king in public health circles – despite its prolonged and colossal failures to reverse AIDS and other epidemics. The study shows, however, perhaps a bit too much deference towards that philosophy by depicting Zimbabwe’s success as “surprising.”

Surprising? Zimbabwe fits the broad pattern of success: HIV declines in every one of a handful of other African countries are always most attributable to partner reduction. Indeed, condom promotion has not reversed any of the severe African epidemics, according to a rigorous review commissioned – and then scandalously ignored – by UNAIDS. In other words, if Zimbabwe’s AIDS prevalence had plummeted due to condoms, it would have been the exception to the rule.

The study also concludes that other factors long (though baselessly) viewed as impediments to HIV prevention, such as fear and diminishing affluence, actually played complementary roles in the decline. Acknowledging fear of AIDS has been fiercely discouraged; tapping into it, western activists maintained, would only create stigma and “drive the epidemic underground.” But it seems entirely reasonable and rational that personal exposure to the suffering and death of a loved one from AIDS might motivate people to greater prudence in matters sexual. Indeed, many Zimbabweans reported that to be the case.

Truth be told, forbidding a healthy fear of AIDS is just another manifestation of the modern secular (and imposed) belief that the behaviors driving HIV epidemics are to remain entirely free from any hint of disapproval. This, of course, is a tactic of moral intimidation, not a worthy instrument in the public health arsenal. Coddling ideologues, not capitalizing on natural fear, is what has really proven counterproductive.

Poverty, we also still hear, leads to more AIDS. But we’ve known for years that some of the poorest countries in Africa have the lowest AIDS rates, while some of the wealthiest countries have some of the highest AIDS rates. Even within high HIV prevalence countries, AIDS rates tend to be higher among the well off than among the poorer classes. This might seem counterintuitive, but without “disposable income,” people are less equipped to afford or sustain the multiple sexual partnerships that drive HIV transmission. The hardship and anxiety of Zimbabwe’s economic deterioration over the past decade, it turns out, had a silver lining. Economic collapse, thankfully, is not a precondition for behavior change.

The poverty of an uncouth and callous utilitarianism, however, in which the good is equated with the “safer,” and hope for another way of life remains at best an unwelcome afterthought, is another matter altogether. This intellectual and spiritual poverty, which reigns amidst widespread material sufficiency, saturates HIV prevention policy, but it has not proven to be nearly as protective against HIV as relative material poverty. Nonetheless, many public health leaders still seem convinced that economic improvement – by which is usually meant some form of redistribution – is a prerequisite for AIDS control. As Emory University’s Dr. Carlos del Rio put it recently: “You talk about ‘Can we decrease the HIV burden in the United States?’ I would say, ‘What can we do to decrease poverty in the United States?’”

No doubt he meant to express magnanimity of spirit and earned applause for this sentiment, but it actually reveals deeply unflattering philosophical presuppositions about human nature and capabilities. Are we really to assume that people below a certain material threshold are unable to control their behavior? (Or that no one is capable of changing and no one really should anyway, but that people, by virtue of being above an unspecified material threshold, will therefore comply perfectly with the technical recommendations, which have thus far failed to reverse HIV burdens?)

Persons are thus viewed as less than fully human – as objects dependent upon constantly supplied “services” – while much greater influences on human behavior remain deeply discounted. Had he meant to target a peculiar, mostly western form of poverty – the misery, squalor and despair characteristic of a modus vivendi rather than poverty as penury – he would have been on firmer ground.

Zimbabwe’s progress is heartening, but we should not find it surprising any longer. It reinforces the preponderance of evidence and obliterates any justification for shying away from emphasizing behavior change as the optimal means of avoiding AIDS. But it would be surprising, sad to say, if public health leaders actually executed that recommendation without apologies.

For people morally blinded by what they would like to be the case, even demonstrably poor ideas can seem too precious to give up.