In 1846, the American bishops proclaimed the “Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as the Patroness of the United States of America.” Patronages can sometimes be ironic. Is it conceit or coincidence that a saint who was conceived without sin is the patron of a country that believes the same about itself?
The belief that Mary had to have been sinless from conception to be the mother of God had developed over hundreds of years before it was declared church dogma in 1854. Similarly, the conviction that the United States was specially ordained by God precedes the nation’s founding, starting perhaps with the 17th-century Puritan John Winthrop preaching to his fellow settlers about creating a “city upon a hill”—uniquely blessed and therefore burdened with the responsibility to model virtue to the rest of the world.
In time, American exceptionalism became an academic subject, and Seymour Martin Lipset, one of its chief scholars, called it a double-edged sword. American freedoms and individualism bring opportunity, prosperity and a “high sense of personal responsibility,” he observed, but also problems like high rates of crime, litigiousness, poverty and “disregard for communal good.” In other words, Mr. Lipset argued, American exceptionalism means different, “it does not mean better.”
Is it conceit or coincidence that a saint who was conceived without sin is the patron of a country that believes the same about itself?
Except when it does. Except when it means best. For some, American exceptionalism has become synonymous with patriotism.
When the bishops named Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception as patroness, they were continuing a tradition of New World devotion. In 1792, the first U.S. bishop, John Carroll, had declared Mary patroness of his diocese—that is, the whole country at the time. Pope Clement XIII, in 1760, pronounced Immaculate Mary patroness of Spain and all its possessions, which included much of the Americas. In 1492, a man commanding a ship whose full name was Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción “discovered” the continent. Thus, those 19th-century bishops were not equating sinless Mary with the nation, in which anti-Catholic prejudice was rampant and which fostered such condemned principles as separation of church and state and freedom of religion. The bishops hoped U.S. Catholics would “practice the sublime virtues” of which Mary was the “most perfect example.” They might also have sought her intercession on behalf of their flock of second-class citizens.
The latter appeal to Mary appears to have succeeded. Catholics in the United States assimilated and gained influence but not without tension. In “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” their 2012 document on religious freedom, the U.S. bishops wrote, “To be Catholic and American should not mean having to choose one over the other.” Apparently, however, many U.S. Catholics seem to have chosen country over creed. A 2011 Gallup survey found 88 percent of U.S. Catholics identified “very” or “extremely” strongly with their country, compared with 55 percent who said the same for their religion. Other polls routinely show that American Catholics’ opinions mirror those of the general public, another sign of assimilation. Often seen as a swing vote, in most recent presidential elections the Catholic vote frequently matched the final outcome. In 2016, they swung both ways, either, according to exit polls, going 50 percent for Trump, in a margin smaller than the electoral vote, or on later analysis 48 percent for Clinton, in a slightly larger margin than the popular vote.
The bishops hoped U.S. Catholics would “practice the sublime virtues” of which Mary was the “most perfect example.”
A 2015 Gallup poll looked at assimilation from a different angle. When asked about their willingness to vote for a Catholic for president, 93 percent of U.S. adults said they would do so, the highest response for any candidate’s background tested in the survey, which included female, black, evangelical Christian, Muslim, atheist and socialist.
Not surprisingly, tensions remain—both between the church and society and within the church. The almost hedonistic American quest for personal satisfaction in nearly all pursuits—financial, material, sexual—frequently conflicts with Catholics teachings. At the risk of using convenient but overbroad labels, pro-life Catholics contend with widespread disregard for life, while social justice Catholics contend with a Darwinian economy. Adopting their nation’s polarities, Catholics often fail to meet on what should be broad common ground. Mirroring partisan flexibility, progressive opponents of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI now mock the traditionalist critics of Pope Francis who formerly attacked progressive Catholics. The opposing camps—or at least their principals—view each other with suspicion, seeing in the other a tolerance for, if not the outright embrace of sin. The certitude leaves little room for mercy, contrition or humility.
Should this surprise us? Humility today is heretical. America’s business, sports, celebrity and social media cultures demand self-promotion. Politics follows John Wayne: “Don’t apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.” Witness the criticism of U.S. presidents for actual or perceived apologies for this nation’s actions on the world stage. In 1988, then-vice president and presidential candidate George H. W. Bush said on the campaign trail: “I will never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” Donald Trump also said he is “not going to apologize for America.” Being exceptional means never having to say you’re sorry.
Would an American exceptionalist tolerate the United States adopting Mary’s humility?
Humility is central to the Scripture and tradition around Mary (her apparitions almost always occur to the lowly—her word). Would an American exceptionalist tolerate the United States adopting Mary’s humility?
And then there is the provocative Magnificat:
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.
Mary’s celebration of God’s justice and mercy should alarm the proud and powerful. (Lifted the lowly, filled the hungry, sent away the rich? What would Ayn Rand say?) The bold Magnificat seems to foreshadow Thomas Jefferson—“I tremble for my country when I recall that God is just.” Imagine a president saying that today.
Mary’s celebration of God’s justice and mercy should alarm the proud and powerful.
The United States cannot match Mary’s perfection, but we can aspire to her humility. Would the world—would we—be worse with an America that did “talk softly”? A dozen years after his father, George W. Bush as a candidate saw value in promising a “humble” America. Admittedly, what that means in practice is hard to imagine. What would a humble approach to Russia and North Korea or income inequality and racism look like?
Humility needn’t preclude boldness of conviction or action if informed by compassionate analysis. Imagine if, when considering competing and complicated interests in domestic and international affairs, our leaders not only considered polling data and troop strengths but the effects of this nation’s policies on the “lowly” and the “least ones”?
Humility is easier said than done, particularly by a nation-state. But the indispensable nation ought to have confidence in some fundamental principles—the rule of law, respect for sovereignty, democracy (provided the ground under them has not become too unsteady)—and employ them with more of the patroness’ humility. It is not unheard of.
Two decades after the bishops’ pronouncement in 1846, Abraham Lincoln was in the midst of the war foreshadowed by Jefferson’s “tremble” of four score years earlier. Despite his own conviction about the war’s justness, when asked if he thought God was on the side of the United States, this country’s greatest president had the temerity to say something that seems to complete Jefferson’s thought: “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Even defending a just cause, Lincoln had the humility to know that “our side” is not by definition “God’s side.”
Thank you for this reflection, calling on our national leaders to learn from the humility of Mary -- particularly humility before God, which she embodied and Abraham Lincoln called for. I want only to question the common claim, repeated here, that in speaking of the first American settlers in Massachusetts as building "a city on a hill," John Winthrop was necessarily proclaiming the new settlement as uniquely blessed. Here's the context for this phrase in his sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity": "[F]or we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world... we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us." A colloquial paraphrase might be: "Hey, we're really conspicuous out here -- if we mess this up, everyone will know, and God will be ashamed of us." Not arrogant exceptionalism, but a hope expressed in fear and trembling that the new colony would indeed live up to its ideals. Like Lincoln, Winthrop didn't claim God for our side but prayed that we would be on His. A more arrogant form of exceptionalism finds fewer limits in an age when belief in a Supreme lawgiver has faded.