January 5: America's Most Useful Citizen

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is January 5th, and our story is America's Most Useful Citizen. By October of 1917, six months after America entered into the fray of World War I, Catholics constituted less than 17% of the country's population.

Despite that, they accounted for 35% of new army recruits. Credit for those numbers belonged largely to one man, Baltimore's Archbishop James Cardinal Gibbons. The Baltimore-born Irish-American prelate had served as a Union chaplain at Fort McHenry, Baltimore, during the American Civil War, and was almost as strong a believer in the United States and the virtue of patriotism as he was in the tenets of the Catholic Church.

That support was evident in April 1917, on the eve of Congress's declaration of war against Germany, when Gibbons issued the following statement to the press. In the present emergency, it behooves every American citizen to do his duty and to uphold the hands of the President and the Legislative Department in the solemn obligations that confront us. The primary duty of a citizen is loyalty to country. This loyalty is manifested more by acts than by words, by solemn service rather than by empty declaration.

It is exhibited by an absolute and unreserved obedience to his country's call. For his support of America's military in World War I, including initiating the founding of the National Catholic War Council, the forerunner to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which coordinated spiritual, medical, and material support for U.S. troops, Gibbons earned nearly universal praise from top government officials. No praise, however, touched that of former President Theodore Roosevelt, who, even before America entered the war, wrote to Gibbons on January 5, 1917, saying, Taking your life as a whole, I think you now occupy the position of being the most respected and venerated and useful citizen in our country.

Cardinal Gibbons showed that faith and patriotism are not opposed, but deeply intertwined when rooted in virtue. His leadership inspired Catholics to serve their nation with honor while keeping their eyes fixed on heaven. True citizenship flows from a love of God that seeks the common good. Today, offer a prayer for our nation's leaders and for those serving in the armed forces.

Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Join us tomorrow, January 6th, for another story of faith and courage in America.