As with all Catholic social teaching, solidarity has deep biblical roots in both the Old and New Testaments. The author of the Acts of the Apostles summarizes those roots nicely when he says that God “made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:26–27).

—from St. Anthony Messenger’s “The Church’s Best-Kept Secret“
by Mark P. Shea

Intensified prayer, a fruitful reading of the Christian spiritual classics, and a growing hunger for the sacraments can characterize this phase, as well as a desire to practice the works of mercy or otherwise live out the virtues. 

—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “Five Steps to Deeper Discipleship“
by Mark P. Shea

This familiar story in Scripture illuminates the merciful nature of Jesus, even when we are sinners.

The story of the woman taken in adultery stands out in Scripture for a number of reasons. First and foremost, that it is considered Scripture at all makes it stand out. The story doesn’t have a fixed home in the Gospels. There is a lot of back-and-forth in the manuscripts of the New Testament about whether and where to include the story but, in the end, the Church simply could not bear to let it go.

So the story settles down to its place in John 7:53—8:11. Church officials seem to have never quite made up their minds about who the human author was (just as they never made up their minds about who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews). But they were quite fixed in their conviction that the Holy Spirit is the divine author and that it preserves a real memory of something Jesus did and said.

I can’t say for certain that John wrote the story, but I can say for certain that, if he did not, whoever did definitely has John’s talent for economy of words and his ability to cram a ton of meaning into a few terse sentences. Moreover, what interests me is what John shows us about the judgment of God and its unexpected paradoxes—and what that tells us about the judgment we may expect on the Last Day.

Jesus Is the Target

We know the story well—and for that reason we may be blind to it. Jesus’ enemies bring to him a woman taken in flagrante delicto (in the act of adultery). There is, in short, no question about her guilt. Nor do the ones bringing her to Jesus have the slightest question of what is to be done with her according to the Law of Moses.

But here is where things become interesting and, by turns, horrifying, astonishing, and beautiful. The men bringing this woman to Jesus have not the slightest interest in her. Indeed, in a certain sense they are not even interested in her guilt—only in her utility in entrapping Jesus. Notably, they have not brought the man with whom she was committing adultery. It is not clear if she has been cheating on her husband or he on his wife. But the law to which the mob are appealing is clear: “If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (Lv 20:10).

Read: How Jesus Avoided Burnout

That they have not bothered to bring the man makes clear that this kangaroo court is not really interested in pressing the demands of the Mosaic law but in finding some pretext to condemn Jesus. The woman was weak and easy to grab (and quite possibly not as fleet-foot as her paramour, or simply not as rich or well-connected in the good ol’ boys’ club that now gathers stones and awaits their chance for a kill). At any rate, they have nabbed her and let her lover go.

And now they are here, not to see justice done but to put this up-country Messiah in a bind from which he cannot escape. The bind is this: If Jesus affirms the Law of Moses and its command for death, then he usurps Roman authority, which alone can inflict the death penalty in occupied Judea. He becomes the leader of a lynch mob and can be handed over to the Roman authorities as a rebel. On the other hand, if he does not affirm the Law of Moses, then he is no Messiah since he rebels against the word of God. It’s a pretty puzzle, and it looks as if they have him dead to rights either way.

Jesus Addresses the Mob

So, what does Jesus do? He kneels and writes in the dirt with his finger. It’s a curious detail, and it’s worth noting. The evangelists are not like modern novelists. They are not interested in realism. So they do not, for instance, ever give us a description of Jesus’ appearance.

When they do include details, it is usually because something about the scene has a theological meaning. So, for instance, Luke carefully mentions Jesus being placed in a manger because he wants us to see the eucharistic significance of Jesus’ birth. A manger is a feed-box and the Bread of Life has just been born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread” in Hebrew.

Why then does the sacred author mention Jesus writing on the ground with his finger? Because God has done that before: When he “had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the commandments, the stone tablets inscribed by God’s own finger” (Ex 31:18). The finger of God wrote, “You shall not commit adultery.” Now God is writing with his finger again as he is asked to render judgment against an adulteress condemned by that very law.

When we think of God judging, we typically imagine him looking down on us and pronouncing our doom as we look up at him in supplication, pleading for mercy and dreading damnation. But this passage, in fact, shows us what the judgment of God looks like. God incarnate kneels before the woman taken in adultery. He places himself in a position where he must look up into her face.

Then he stands up, having written with the finger of God, and pronounces his first verdict, directed not to the woman, but to those eager to kill her, the image of God: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (Jn 8:7). They back away and drop their stones, the eldest first, and finally the youngest. So much for the clever trap. But judgment of the woman still awaits.

Jesus Addresses the Woman

Jesus kneels again, forcing himself to again look up into the woman’s face. If you are looking for a foreshadow of what Judgment Day will be like, this is virtually the only one we have in the New Testament where Jesus actually gives us, not a parable or an image, but himself rendering judgment against a sinner.

He addresses her as “Woman” (gynai in Greek). This sounds cold to the English-speaking ear, but we have to hear it in the context of Jesus’ own habits of speech, which are formed by the Old Testament. It is, in fact, an allusion to the woman Eve. It is also an allusion to Jesus’ habitual term of address to the woman of the New Testament, Mary, the new Eve.

Read: Jesus’ Extraordinary Treatment of Women

In short, it is not brusque, reductive, or dismissive but is something freighted with connotation that will, in later languages, amount to “My Lady.” He is, in fact, exalting her. That is what the gesture of kneeling means. And so he asks her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” (Jn 8:10) and she replies, “No one, sir.” So he sends her away, free, with the words, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin anymore” (Jn 8:11).

Unconditional Love

Jesus’ accusers have their minds filled with webs and stratagems. They see diagrams, not human beings. They do not see the woman except as a tool. They do not see the law except as a puzzle piece. They most especially do not see Jesus except as a thing they seek to destroy.

And Jesus? He appears to see nothing but the human being in front of him: the imago Dei (image of God). His answer to the mob is a prelude to the main goal—the liberation and healing of the woman. He sees her as he sees us, as beloved people, not as tools in a power struggle. The law he wrote with his finger was made for her, not she for the law. Jesus is there completely for her, as he is for each of us. His judgment is his mercy.

It can be as dramatic as St. Paul blinded on the road to Damascus or as invisible as a quiet resolve. It can be done by an atheist like Edith Stein declaring, “This is the truth!” after encountering Christ through Teresa of Avila or by a lifelong Catholic returning to his roots like Ignatius of Loyola. But however we arrive at it, that resolve to follow Jesus consciously and intentionally with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength is what the entirety of the Christian call to discipleship is all about. Once made, that choice will henceforth be the controlling factor that will drive and coordinate everything—absolutely everything—in the life of the disciple of Jesus Christ. When we make this choice, as Paul says, “We destroy arguments and every pretension raising itself against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive in obedience to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). Here begins the new life.

—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “Five Steps to Deeper Discipleship“
by Mark P. Shea

When some Catholics hear the word evangelization, they might not know where to start.
This author provides a road map to building and sharing our faith. 

Many Catholics are at a loss, not just about how to evangelize, but even about whether to do it, in no small part because they have never experienced evangelization themselves and therefore cannot relate to the experience of those encountering the Gospel for the first time. For many Catholics, especially older ones, the faith is to them as water is to a fish. It’s everywhere. It’s assumed. It’s the background and matrix of their whole lives. Stepping outside the world in which the faith is simply “the way things are” is next to impossible for many Catholics, as is relating to the process whereby somebody from outside that world really wrestles with the question of discipleship to Jesus. 

Indeed, even using phrases like “discipleship to Jesus” and “evangelization” strikes many Catholics as vaguely foreign and “Protestant.” You just go to Mass, say your prayers, and try to do the decent thing. Don’t push your religion on people like those TV preachers with big hair. What’s the big deal? 

But, in fact, the Church, as St. Paul VI said, exists to evangelize. And increasingly, many younger Catholics are showing us why it is necessary for Catholics to grasp this. For the demographic reality of the shrinking Church in the developed world (a reality that will only increase in the future if we do not act), is that the faith is no longer something you are born into and live out automatically like a sort of ethnicity.

It is chosen, particularly if you live in the United States, where all the most intimate and personal things about one’s identity are increasingly chosen. It is no longer simply assumed that “Because I am Irish or Italian or Hungarian, I am a Catholic.” More and more, we live in a world where, if Catholics are going to be Catholics (even the ones raised as Catholics), it will be because they have chosen to be disciples of Jesus Christ in the heart of his Church. 

Accordingly, if we Catholics are to bear witness to that faith, it is necessary for us to understand something of the process by which people typically come to faith in Jesus and his message. As people in medieval times understood, “That which is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.” So there is no point in Catholics demanding that non-Catholics or nonbelievers (or Catholics struggling with their faith, often in the teeth of great scandal and trauma) know our lingo or begin where we want them to begin in learning the faith. We must go to them and meet them on their terms, just as God himself did when he came to us in human form in the Word made flesh. 

Happily, Sherry Weddell’s book Forming Intentional Disciples helps us do exactly this. Weddell is the cofounder and director of the Catherine of Siena Institute, which is dedicated to helping Catholics pursue discipleship to Jesus more deeply and to helping them identify their charisms so that they can live that life of discipleship and apostolic mission to the full. In Forming Intentional Disciples, she addresses the central problem facing the Church: creating a culture in which all Catholics see themselves as intentional disciples of Jesus Christ, living according to his will and as apostles proclaiming him to the world. 

Weddell outlines five “thresholds,” or stages, of spiritual growth typifying the experience of conversion. These five stages of growth in discipleship are not law. It is not inevitable that one will pass through them consecutively, nor that one will pass through them all, nor that one will not regress or dither among them, nor that one will not leap over a stage or two. Complicating factors like ignorance or trauma can throw wrenches into the process too. 

Nor is conversion, in the Church’s experience and thought, simply for non-Catholics. It’s for everybody. “Cradle Catholics” like Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Blaise Pascal, and Teresa of Avila also had profound conversion experiences that transformed them. So must we all. 

What are these five thresholds? 

Stage 1: Initial Trust 

Many people, believer or not, have some positive emotional association with Jesus Christ, the Church, a Christian believer, or something identifiably Christian. This primitive form of trust is not the same as active personal faith in God or Christ. But it is a bridge people can cross to move closer to God, and without such a bridge, nothing short of a miracle can lead to further growth. 

An example of initial trust is shown in the experience of a young unbelieving college student, sick with flu, who was visited out of the blue by a Christian on his dorm floor, brandishing a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and announcing: “I heard you were sick. I brought you this.” 

It’s been over 40 years, but I have never forgotten that. With that one act of kindness to a stranger, done simply out of generosity, she won my trust. And eventually, by the integrity of their lives as Christians, the rest of the fellowship of Christians on her dorm floor did likewise. 

Such small acts of decency and integrity are profoundly important to forming the matrix of trust in a culture that can lead to witness later. Whether in the story of an Egyptian Muslim who was taught by nuns and never forgot their kindness to her, or (to use Jesus’ example) simply giving a cup of cold water to the thirsty, or any one of a thousand other tiny ways in which Christians can show love, kindling a tiny flame of trust in a human heart is the indispensable first step that can lead to a profound conversion. Not for nothing does Jesus warn us of the awesome responsibility of not causing a little one to stumble. And not for nothing does he likewise rejoice that the fields are ripe for harvest and urge us to serve the Lord of the harvest in small things as well as great in anticipation of abundant fruit. 

Lives lived in joy, generosity, and integrity—not for show, but for the glory of Christ—can and do break down walls of distrust and give off a sweet aroma of beauty that people follow. 

Stage 2: Spiritual Curiosity 

Spiritual curiosity is born when a person is intrigued by or desires to know more about Jesus or some aspect of the Christian faith. This can range from mere awareness of a new possibility to something quite intense and proactive. It does not, however, equate to openness to personal change. This step, though an advance from mere trust, is still essentially passive. 

Often in fits and starts, the curious begin wanting to know more about Jesus, the Church, the Bible, or the “Catholic thing.” This can be a long and complicated period of learning that can be highly idiosyncratic, since the questions will tend to revolve around the issues and challenges unique to each person’s experiences. Such persons will not dismiss “God talk” but will typically not initiate such conversations. They will quietly “take it in,” browse the Internet privately, tune in to Catholic radio or TV, or wonder about some theological question prompted by chance encounters. 

Interestingly, Jesus’ pedagogy with the curious is often to raise questions. “Why do you call me good?” (Mk 10:18). “Who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15). “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mk 10:51). “Was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin?” (Lk 20:4). “Whose image is this and whose inscription” is on this coin (Mt 22:20)? He understands that the word educate means “to draw out” and that we learn best by coming to truth ourselves rather than merely being forced to repeat rote answers. 

If they make the choice to follow their curiosity, then exploration, not fear and worship, is typically what happens next. Moses at the burning bush was not afraid or worshipful, but curious. Worship only began when he learned who was there, not when he didn’t know who was there. In short, wonder is the common root of all art, philosophy, science, and religious experience. 

But it is not the flower. More has to happen. 

Stage 3: Spiritual Openness 

Openness is the critical point when a person moves from passive curiosity to acknowledge to him or herself and to God that they are open to the possibility of personal and spiritual change. This is often a difficult transition for a nonbeliever, as it can feel dangerous, crazy, and out of control. It is not commitment to change, but merely openness to the possibility of change. It is a kind of crisis because it represents the point in the spiritual journey where serious choices need to be made. The dawning and dreadful possibility emerges that God might not merely be an abstract what or why—a topic we can study abstractly like a book we put back on a shelf—but a being who is here, present in the room with us and calling to us with incalculable demands and desperately beautiful promises. We start to realize that Jesus Christ is seeking relationship with us and may indeed require something of us. 

As we accompany those struggling to open themselves to God’s will, we can offer nonjudgmental truthfulness, speaking plainly of the places in our own lives where the Gospel challenges us. This is what the apostles did, detailing their cowardice, dullness, and even betrayals of Christ. Indeed, they go so far as to report Jesus’ own struggles to do God’s difficult will in the Garden of Gethsemane. Thus do we support one another in our struggles by modeling perseverance in weakness. 

This phase can often be the time when it dawns on a person that because grace builds on nature, and it is Christ who chooses us first and not we him, he has always been at work in us and through us, already used us in some way for the good of others, given us gifts, or put us on the path we only now realize we are on. Helping people at this inflection point understand that God is not a threat to our freedom, but the ground of it, can help them get past the fear of openness. 

Relatedly, it is sometimes beneficial to encourage those struggling with openness to ask God for a sign to direct them or to encourage them to profess to God their openness to pursuing him. We also can suggest that they enter into regular prayer, both private and communal. Moreover, this is often the time to invite them to Mass or to begin reading the Gospels or even to consider joining the inquiry phase of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. 

Stage 4: Spiritual Seeking 

Once past the crisis of openness, people often find they are no longer able to simply wait for the tide of life to send them a message. They become active spiritual seekers. A seeker is one who moves from passivity to actively seeking to know the God who is calling him or her. Seekers ask, “Are you the one to whom I will give myself?” The seeker is engaged in an urgent spiritual quest to know whether he or she can commit to Christ and his Church. 

Weddell describes seekers as “dating with a purpose.” They are no longer merely passive participants in a relationship with religion or theology. Rather, they seek God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. All other priorities are beginning to be seen in relation to him as the center. Indeed, part of the work of this phase consists of discovering which earthly hopes, desires, and priorities we are tempted to put in preference to him and whether we are really prepared to treat Jesus as our lord and savior. 

If you are mentoring a seeker, this is the perfect time for them to enter the catechumenate. If you are yourself a seeker undergoing a deeper conversion as a Catholic, this is a good time to undertake a closer study of the faith, specifically with the goal of using the gifts of the Church (especially the sacraments) to seek the guidance and grace of the Holy Spirit. 

Ask the Spirit to help you cultivate your gifts and offer them (and yourself) to Christ with greater and greater freedom so as to make your acts of obedience to the Father fruitful for both yourself and for others. At the core of this stage of conversion is the experience of a soul that, like the psalmist’s, “clings fast to you” (Ps 63:9) and can no longer be content with passivity or neutrality. Active works of attempted obedience to God’s will (even if they turn out to be mistaken or failures) are what the Spirit calls us to. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Virtue—even attempted virtue—brings light; indulgence brings fog.” 

Intensified prayer, a fruitful reading of the Christian spiritual classics, and a growing hunger for the sacraments can characterize this phase, as well as a desire to practice the works of mercy or otherwise live out the virtues. 

Stage 5: Intentional Discipleship 

Intentional discipleship is the decision to “drop one’s nets”: to make a conscious commitment to follow Jesus in the midst of his Church as an obedient disciple and to reorder one’s life accordingly. The image comes from the story of St. Peter dropping his nets—leaving behind his former life and livelihood, his social connections, his home, and even his family—and choosing to follow Jesus Christ wherever he went, come what may (see Lk 5:4–10). It is the single most important decision a person can possibly make (which is why Jesus calls us to count the cost). But it is the goal of the Christian life—not only converts, but all Christian lives. 

It can be as dramatic as St. Paul blinded on the road to Damascus or as invisible as a quiet resolve. It can be done by an atheist like Edith Stein declaring, “This is the truth!” after encountering Christ through Teresa of Avila or by a lifelong Catholic returning to his roots like Ignatius of Loyola. But however we arrive at it, that resolve to follow Jesus consciously and intentionally with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength is what the entirety of the Christian call to discipleship is all about. Once made, that choice will henceforth be the controlling factor that will drive and coordinate everything—absolutely everything—in the life of the disciple of Jesus Christ. When we make this choice, as Paul says, “We destroy arguments and every pretension raising itself against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive in obedience to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). Here begins the new life. 

A growing movement seeks to blur the line between Church and state by imposing Christian values on others, which goes against the teaching of the Church and poses a threat to democracy. 

We live in an hour when a significant minority in the US Church—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—increasingly believes that the way to save both the American Church and America itself is to embrace Christian nationalism. Many American conservative Christians, feeling themselves threatened and even victimized by something called “secularism,” seek a champion who will defend them from it and give them power to fight it and whatever else they believe threatens our Christian heritage. The thinking goes that the Gospel calls us to bring Christ to the world as Lord, so let’s have an America controlled by Christians and make the state impose that even (and perhaps especially) on those who do not acknowledge the Gospel. To question that is to exalt godlessness over God. People who subscribe to this thinking believe that if we will only give the state the power to impose “Christian values” on what they perceive to be an increasingly godless society, then all will be well, and America will be great again. 

Accompanying this is typically a notion of America as being somehow “chosen” by God in such a way as to set it above and against other nations. This seemingly justifies our right to protect our border from an alleged “invasion” by desperate refugees as well as to purify the nation from so-called enemies within. 

The promise, to many, seems to be simplicity itself. Once upon a time, America was full of prosperous, hard-working Christians who reverenced family values. Then the sexual revolution, the welfare state, scary minorities who kneel at the national anthem and say their lives matter, and godless liberals took over and America lost its greatness. All that can be restored if we make the state the protector of Christians and weaponize it against the forces of godlessness. 

The Roots of Christian Nationalism 

It is not a new idea. At the outset of Jesus’ ministry, he deliberately went into the wilderness to face exactly this temptation to impose the kingdom by law, blood, iron, force, and fear. As Matthew reports: 

“Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, ‘All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.’ At this, Jesus said to him, ‘Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve’” (Mt 4:8–10). 

Several factors contribute to the confusion that leads many Christians to fall for Christian nationalism. 

The first, as is always the case with false teaching, is that it exploits and exaggerates real Catholic teaching (just as the devil did when he quoted Scripture in the effort to get Jesus to sin during the temptation in the wilderness). 

Specifically, it exploits and exaggerates the second greatest commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We may well ask, “What could possibly be wrong with loving your neighbor as yourself?” 

Nothing—as long as we clearly understand what is meant by “neighbor.” Because one of the temptations we face is to limit “neighbor” to a particular category of persons. And if we give that idea its head, we can (and have many times in history) come to the dark spiritual place where a particular class of neighbor becomes the only class that matters, while others are categorized as outsiders, foreigners, enemies, and even subhuman vermin fit only for extermination. “Love your neighbor” gets whittled down to “Love your kind,” and loving your kind becomes the pretext for oppressing, jailing, exploiting, enslaving, and even exterminating those who are not our kind. 

This is why the command to love one’s neighbor is the second, not the first, greatest commandment. The love of neighbor must be subordinated to the love of God, precisely because God commands us not merely to love those we call neighbor, but those he calls our neighbor: namely, everyone, including even our enemies. 

This is not to deny the legitimacy of loving one’s own kind. The Church teaches us that the love of family is perfectly legitimate. Indeed, it teaches us that the family is the “‘the domestic church,’ a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1666). The Church has long insisted that the union and fruitfulness of marital love are a sacramental image of and participation in the life of the Holy Trinity and that the family is the basic building block of civilization. 

But here’s the thing: Building blocks are for building. Specifically, they are for building the kingdom of God. And so Jesus, living in a culture that takes for granted the primacy of family ties, national pride, and blood relationship, shockingly declares: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). 

He does not, of course, mean that we are to wish harm and damnation on our family or ourselves. Rather, he means that nothing, not even the love of one’s own kind, is to take priority over the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God takes priority over the family, and the family exists as a kind of preschool for the kingdom. Disobedience to God on this point can be seen in such things as clan warfare in Romeo and Juliet, in bloody gang struggles on the streets of Los Angeles, and in slaughter between the Hatfields and the McCoys. 

A Healthy Patriotism 

The Church likewise commends the virtue of patriotism, the love of one’s people, native land, and culture (which is simply the love of family extended). This particular species of the love of neighbor is also normal and healthy and can engender all sorts of virtues as it teaches us to be grateful, not only for our family and loved ones, but also for the enormous gifts of love we have received from our community and our ancestors, who gave us everything from a state of ordered liberty instead of chaos or tyranny to an infrastructure we could never have invented ourselves that provides us with everything from pencils to penicillin, water to waffles, literacy to lettuce.

To be grateful for and loving toward those who have, by their pains and sacrifices, given our country so much, whom we can never repay except with thanks, is perfectly fitting. Such love is right and proper and honors God as well as family and country. 

But such patriotism is the dead opposite of nationalism. For nationalism is to healthy patriotism in a people what the satanic sin of pride is to the virtue of healthy self-love in a person. The command is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Pride is the will to exalt yourself as you despise your neighbor, which in the end is to exalt yourself as you despise God. And multiplied by millions of hearts and minds and endowed with billions of dollars and the force of arms, it can and has resulted in some of the most immense bloodbaths in human history.

Not unrelatedly, as White Christian nationalism was germinating in the years after 9/11, one of the arguments many conservative Christians made was that America was facing something called “demographic winter.” The claim was that Muslims were outbreeding the godless sexually libertine West. So it was essential that those who reverence “Judeo-Christian values” boost their numbers in America or be swamped by a tide of Islam. 

But then, suddenly, the argument shifted. At about the same moment, a Black Christian with a foreign-sounding name was elected president under the completely false accusation that he was not a real American citizen and a Muslim to boot. The discourse shifted sharply among conservative Christians to the supposed deadly peril of refugees “invading” America’s southern border. 

Virtually all these refugees were Christians, seeking only a chance to work, to raise their families, and to practice their faith—the very stuff that Christian nationalists said would restore our country’s greatness. But they were Black and Brown, speaking languages that made Christian nationalists uncomfortable. And so the lie was revealed: The issue was not that they wanted more Christians, but more Whites. The goal was not to “defend the Gospel” but to defend White privilege. 

Not a Chosen Nation 

And that brings us to the central internal contradiction of Christian nationalism: It is a complete oxymoron, like “married bachelor.” The fundamental nature of the Gospel is that it is intended for all human beings, that there is no preferred nation, that pride is a sin and love is a virtue, and that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). 

America is not a chosen nation. It is a human invention. To be sure, it has many virtues, much to be grateful for, and many good people. But it is, like all human things, fallen and afflicted by sin, and its people are, like any other, in need of salvation. Any greatness we possess should be an occasion for humble gratitude to God, not for swollen pride that we are the authors of our greatness, superior to all other people. The Gospel arms us to do battle with our own sins, not with the least of these, the poor, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. 

God, in short, is not Caesar’s servant, and Caesar is neither God’s savior nor ours. To be sure, Caesar has a God-given role in the affairs of human beings. As Paul says: 

“[T]here is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer” (Rom 13:1–4). 

The state exists, therefore, to ensure that justice and the common good are upheld, and, insofar as it does that, it does God’s will. But ensuring justice does not mean “ensuring White Christians are always top dog, no matter what” for the very good reason that all human beings, not only the White Christian ones, are made in the image and likeness of God. 

But the issue runs deeper than that because the attempt to make Caesar the savior of Christianity is, in the end, an act of idolatry by its very nature. The Church already has a Savior. The attempt to use the might of the state to impose the Gospel on the “godless” is guaranteed to fail. For the Gospel itself teaches that we are saved, not by the law, but by grace working through faith in Christ. Its very essence is freedom because “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). To attempt to force a population of unbelievers to live by Christian values that are completely the fruit of Christian faith in Christ is not only impossible [since, as Jesus himself says, “I am the vine, you are the branches” and “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5)], but it is guaranteed to create a backlash as Caesar tries to force people to do what is impossible for them for reasons they cannot for the life of them understand. 

And, of course, all this is further complicated by the question “Whose Christianity is to be imposed on the ‘godless’?” Some argue, for instance, that some Christian theology is so fundamental that it must be imposed on all and civil punishments visited on those who do not practice it (this is common among those who want civil laws to punish certain pelvic sins). But there are things far more foundational to Christian teaching than sexual morality or the dignity of the human person: namely, the dignity of God, whom we are commanded to love with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Shall we punish atheists? Muslims? Jews? Non-Trinitarians? Pagans? For Catholics, the Eucharist is God the Son, fully present in his body, blood, spirit, soul, and divinity. Shall Caesar, as savior of Christianity in America, punish those who fail to adore the Eucharist? Or if Caesar is Protestant, shall he punish Catholics and other apostolic Christians as idolators? 

In the end, every attempt to make Caesar the savior of the Church is like the attempt to use the One Ring to save Middle Earth. Caesar is neither God’s savior nor ours. He is, at best, God’s very imperfect servant. That is why the Catechism warns (676): “The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the ‘intrinsically perverse’ political form of a secular messianism.” 

And it is also why the Church, having rejected the Americanist heresy over a century ago, went on to give us the Decree on Religious Liberty at Vatican II. 

“For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come” (Heb 13:14).