Patriotism is Both a Natural Attachment and a Moral Obligation. Patriotism has significant emotional components, but centrally it should be a volitional love: the steady willing of the true good of one’s nation. The Catholic Church teaches that Patriotism is a duty. People, of course, have an analogous duty to will the good of their local community. Patriotism primarily bears on the underlying, large community and only secondarily on the state, which politically organizes the large community for the pursuit and protection of certain aspects of its common good.
Patriotic feelings must be shaped by sound judgment and good will. Provided it is integrated with the steady willing of the true good of the community, emotional attachment to one’s nation is a powerful motive for fulfilling the responsibilities of authentic patriotism. Unless patriotic feelings are shaped by sound judgment and integrated with an upright will, however, they easily lead to moral failings of various kinds. Some people mistakenly think emotional attachment suffices to make them patriots, although they fail to fulfill their essential responsibilities to the community. Others allow themselves to be swept along by nationalistic feelings into supporting injustices toward other communities or violating the rights of some members of their own community, for example, by joining in the persecution of those who legitimately criticize commonly held opinions and widely accepted practices.
Catholics should be patriots, loving their country’s true good. Catholic teaching makes it clear that patriotism, in the sense of love for the true good of one’s nation, is a grave obligation.
Using patriotism as a pattern for the love which Catholics should bear toward the Church, Leo XIII teaches: “The natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land.” Again, he holds that patriotism, like love of the Catholic faith, is a duty “of paramount importance, and from which, in this life, no man can exempt himself.” Pius XII clearly articulates the ground and character of the obligation of patriotism: faith not only teaches that love should extend to every human being but that “we must follow a God-given order, yielding the place of honor in our affections and good works to those who are bound to us by special ties.” And Pius supports this point by citing the example of Jesus’ attachment to his own country, a bond he manifested by weeping over the coming destruction of Jerusalem.
St. Thomas explains that patriotism belongs to a virtue akin to religion; this virtue, which he calls “pietas,” disposes one to dutifulness, gratitude, and reverence toward one’s parents and native land. For humans depend on their parents as procreators and their homeland as the source of their cultural and historical identity in ways somewhat analogous to that in which they depend on the Creator for their very being and every other good they enjoy (St., 2-2, q. 101, a. 1).Germain Grisez, Living a Christian Life, Chapter 11: Patriotism, Politics, and Citizenship.