Chicago Studies Spring/Summer 2019

recognition that all economies must serve justice comprehensively, with special care for the poor.

Finally, invoking the legacy of Martin Luther King, Pope Francis urged the nation’s political leaders to deepen America’s heritage as a land of dreams: “Dreams which lead to action, to participation, to commitment. Dreams which awaken what is deepest and truest in the life of a people.”

The Catholic vision of national greatness lies in a country’s capacity to build these spiritual and moral elements of social and political life so as to serve human dignity and the common good.

And the most important element of exceptionalism which we might claim flows from the reality that we as a people are tied together not by connections of blood, but rather by the set of aspirations which our Founders set forth in 1776 and which they both succeeded and failed to attain. Thus, the Catholic vision of patriotism for us as American is an aspiration renewed in every age by understanding the noble elements of our nation’s birth and the defects of its original vision. And our patriotism is not a foundation for pride, but an ever-deepening challenge to ennoble our culture, society, government and world. Such is the enduring nature of greatness for America. And therein lies our third errand into our country’s present political wilderness.

We as a nation are lost in a moral and spiritual wilderness that is deep and broad. But our nation has been there many times before. Like the preachers of Massachusetts in the l660’s, we must be unflinching in seeing the problems that confront us, but never despairing that we will find a way out. With all Americans, we are called to new errands into the wilderness to reforge our political culture. And as a Catholic community we take up those errands with a unique heritage of faith, a vibrant ecclesial community of diversity and breadth, and an optimism which is at its heart profoundly Catholic.