By Robert Royal
In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo invokes the biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as a moving alternative to the Tower of Babel’s effort to reach Heaven without God. It is a good reminder, but of something more than the Pope indicated. In the days of walled cities, rebuilding the walls was a defensive measure, establishing a secure perimeter before the rebuilding of the city itself could take place. There were threats outside, and inside: “half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail… each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.” (Nehemiah 4:16-17)
And once the walls were rebuilt, Nehemiah had the priest Ezra publicly recite the Law of Moses before all the people, who renewed their commitment to the Covenant.
If I could have one wish on this anniversary, it is that we—at least many of us—come to realize that the United States must be defended as well as reconsecrated. We have developed an allergy to this truth because we do not want to seem “defensive.” But without a defense, those who are offensive—and they are legion—will do whatever they want with us and with many other nations.
This does not stop there. Defense exists so that we may build, and build abundantly—both in a physical and a moral sense—because time is always wearing things down. We must work not only to maintain what we have, but to extend it for ourselves and for those who will come after.
In a confused and contested time like ours, that seems impossible because our divisions are so deep that we cannot even agree on what rebuilding would mean.
But here is a proposal. Every year, for nearly a quarter of a century, I have been directing a Summer Seminar on the Free Society in the Slovak Republic, founded by the great Catholic and American, Michael Novak. In the closing session, I guide the students through “The Gift Outright,” a poem that Robert Frost read at the inauguration of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy (Kennedy had asked Frost to write something for the occasion, which he did, but the day was so sunny—and Frost’s aging eyes so weak—that he could not read the text, and instead recited this poem from memory).
It laments how Americans remained colonial, until they changed. It ends:
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
That transformation was not peaceful (“many deeds of war”), but it was felt, a free gift to an uncertain future; in short, the one thing that could renew us all, of whatever conviction, once again: an unconditional love for this land.
About the author
Robert Royal is editor in chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West, and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.