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Patriotism and the Life of the State
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2024
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There must be many to-day whose minds are troubled because they find it impossible to accept without reservation the opinions and the policy which have been generally adopted with regard to the war, and because, in consequence, their patriotism—their love of their patria and desire to serve it—cannot find, at least without much self-searching, the outlet which the majority have accepted. Are they to resign themselves to the idea that this mental tension is inevitable; to the idea that they must seem, and be, less patriotic than those who can accept the situation without any misgivings or detachment of mind?
The question, if it is considered adequately, reveals itself as a very large and very deep one; for it involves far more than the particular problem of war, and leads back to the ultimate principles of human society. Before attempting such a general consideration, however, we may note two particular preliminary points, since they seem to show that the presence even of the complete non-participant is not without its value to a nation in days such as these.
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- Copyright © 1940 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The phrase ‘good citizens’ may be noted : it will recur later.
2 The ‘law-element’ may henceforth be referred to, for the sake of brevity, as ‘law’ simply; but includes (a) positive laws; (b) all the established conventions, etc., which go to make up the standard of normality in society.
3 There are, of course, numbers of individuals who combine, in varying degrees, the characteristics of social and extra-social types-just as, for that matter, there are individuals who are of mixed social and anti-social, or extra-social and anti-social, types. (To speak of types at all is inevitably to approximate, because ultimately individuals defy classification.) Such individuals, then, often make sufficiently adequate leaders or rulers ; but the individual who combines, perfectly, the qualities of social and extra-social types, though he is certainly to be found, would seem to be extremely rare.
4 It is of course a simplification to speak of two points of view in a matter in which there is an almost infinite variety, and gradation, of views. But such a simplification is unavoidable, and must be excused ; the more especially as in the present context what is of immediate relevance is less the precise character of the views held than the personalities-rather, the general attitude of mind, and therefore the type of character in general-of those who hold them.
It may be added that in this confrontation the moral theologian, in the narrow sense, does not appear. As a person he will belong to the one camp or the other; precisely as moral theologian, his office is to inquire into and elucidate the nature of a present problem as present, to examine the incidence of general principles on particular facts. He may, indeed, find himself ranged, as theologian, on this side or on that; but it will be not as moral but as dogmatic theologian, as a Christian thinker concerned with die life of the Church.
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