As the nation prepares for yet another contentious election, it is hard not to feel dejected. For more than a decade, the already hyper-partisan state of American politics has accelerated into high gear. Cynicism and arrogance are now the hallmarks of our politics along with a disturbing increase in violence. For Catholic Americans, the increasingly unsatisfactory choices received a further boost when Pope Francis said the best one could do this election was choose the “lesser evil” between Vice President Harris and former President Trump. In such circumstances despair might seem to be the only option. In these dark times, Americans – especially Catholics – should look to the legacy of one of the greatest citizens in the history of the republic – James Cardinal Gibbons, the archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death in 1921.
He personally knew and met every president from Andrew Johnson to Woodrow Wilson (also, then President-elect Warren Harding) and vividly remembered seeing President Andrew Jackson as a boy. President Theodore Roosvelt called him the “…most venerated, respected and useful citizen in America.” The writer H.L. Mencken said he was “a man of the highest sagacity.” The Irish poet Shane Leslie said he was most important churchman from the New World.
In the truest sense of the words, Cardinal Gibbons was an American striving above all to speak for the whole nation outside sectarianism and champion justice for all. He fought for the civil rights of Black Americans and condemned lynching as “a blot on American civilization.” He railed against antisemitism and championed the working class. Upon his death more than 150,000 Americans of all classes, races and religions traveled to see the prince of the Church lying in state. For Cardinal Gibbons personally, his devout faith and patriotism were never in conflict. Instead, both were enhanced by the other.
In one of his last public addresses Cardinal Gibbons declared, “…I am more than ever convinced that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest instrument of government that ever issued from the hand of man…” He even saw in the American system a reflection of the governance of the Church. Internally the states were separated, but externally one united entity, E pluribus unum.
In 1892, during an election that initially seemed to mirror our own, with former President Grover Cleveland opposing the incumbent President Benjamin Harrison who beat him four years earlier, Cardinal Gibbons published in The North American Review “Patriotism and Politics” a work all Americans should read. Immediately the cardinal rebuked the charge that a churchman should say nothing about politics, an attitude that has increasingly appeared in our secular age, writing:
“…My rights as a citizen were not abdicated or abridged on becoming a Christian prelate, and the sacred character which I profess, far from lessening, rather increases, my obligations to my country. In answer to those who affirm that a churchman is not qualified to discuss politics, by reason of his sacred calling, which removes him from the political arena, I would say that this statement may be true in the sense that a clergyman as such should not be a heated partisan of any political party; but it is not true in the sense that he is unfitted by his sacred profession for discussing political principles. His very seclusion from popular agitation gives him a vantage-ground over those that are in the whirlpool of party strife…”
Cardinal Gibbons then discussed the importance of patriotism, a value that seems ever decreasing today, explaining, “Patriotism implies not only love of soil and of fellow citizens, but also, and principally, attachment to the laws, institutions, and government of one’s country; filial admiration of the heroes, statesmen, and men of genius… It includes, also, an ardent zeal for the maintenance of those sacred principles that secure to the citizen freedom of conscience, and an earnest determination to consecrate his life, if necessary, pro arts et focis, in defense of altar and fireside, of God and fatherland.”
One of the most important parts of Cardinal Gibbons’s analysis dealt with electoral fraud and undermining the confidence of elections. While acknowledging that most claims of election fraud were “the empty charge of defeated partisans…or the heated language of a party press,” the cardinal warned that Americans must be ever vigilant. Attacks on the electoral process are not limited to just fraud, but the excess of money and intimidation of corporations. Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, American elections have become exponentially more expensive with contributions by the powerful becoming harder and harder to trace. No doubt if the cardinal was here today, he would express grave concern at such developments.
Comparing the ballot box to the Ark of the Covenant, the latter being the oracle of God and the former the oracle of the people, Cardinal Gibbons warned that subversion of elections was one of the greatest crimes one could commit: “I hold that the man who undermines our elective system is only less criminal than the traitor who fights against his country with a foreign invader. The one compasses his end by fraud, the other by force.”
From the beginning Americans have compared themselves with the Roman Republic. The Founding Fathers were called “The Last of the Romans” and periodically warnings have been issued about a Caesar carrying the Star-Spangled Banner. Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has said America is “…in a late republican period” and that Americans must act if they want to preserve the republic. Cardinal Gibbons contributed to this tradition, warning Americans not to fall into the same traps as the Romans, avoiding avarice and ambition. Cardinal Gibbons also mentioned the degrading leadership of Roman statesman, the disregarding of oaths, and the spread of the philosophy of Epicurus, the hedonistic ancient Greek philosopher, amongst the populace. While it might not be the fairest reading of Epicureanism, the two principles that the cardinal found most objectionable, its materialism and pleasure-seeking, have only become more dominant in our time.
To combat these threats, Cardinal Gibbons laid out six solutions which he admits might seem trite to the educated but are timeless truths that people must rediscover and renew: Laws punishing bribery and electoral fraud, a free and independent judiciary, a vigilant and fearless press, a civic and patriotic education system that honors the nation’s past, greater relevance for our civic holidays, and a healthy party system.
There are no easy answers to the problems our country faces, but Americans should not lose heart. As the cardinal said, “…The American people are not prone to despondency or to political stagnation… They are cheerful and hopeful…” All who love this nation should look to the wisdom of Cardinal Gibbons, prince of the Church and prince of the Republic.
(Paul J. Macrae is a writer in the Washington, D.C., area.)
