In the latest episode of his Virtue of Patriotism video series, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke draws on the Fourth Commandment and the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas to argue that love of country is not mere feeling but a moral obligation rooted in the order God has written into creation.
The series is produced by the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and hosted on CatholicVote's Zeale for America 250 campaign page. New episodes drop every two weeks in the lead-up to July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — and registered members are notified as each becomes available.
The Fourth Commandment
"The love we render to our homeland is therefore not sentiment but piety," Cardinal Burke said, "the virtue by which we acknowledge benefactions received and respond with fidelity and generous service."
The episode, titled The Moral Order and the Defense of the Nation, opens with a reading of the Fourth Commandment, to "Honor your father and your mother," and traces how the Church has always understood that commandment to extend beyond the family.
Drawing on Aquinas, Cardinal Burke explains that after God himself, we owe our deepest debt to our parents and our country, because through them we receive "existence, nourishment, education, and the foundations of virtue."
That debt, he argues, is not discharged by a vague affection for one's homeland but by a serious commitment to justice, truth, and the dignity of every human person.
The episode closes with Cardinal Burke's Daily Prayer for America 250, a prayer that places the U.S. into the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the eve of the nation's 250th anniversary, asking that America "safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion."