Michael J. Iafrate has posted an astringent commentary on "Memorial Day and the Religious Syncretism of the State." It's a good read, marred only by the broad brush with which he sometimes paints. He's correct, for instance, in noting that the Christian version of Memorial Day is celebrated on November 1 and 2, but wrong in dismissing (American) Independence Day as "celebrating the foundational acts of violence that founded this community of persons."
That, friends, is ahistorical cant, and its apparent endorsement by the Catholic Peace Fellowship doesn't do Iafrate's assertion (or the CPF) any favors. You want to commemorate foundational acts of violence, you'd do better to start your holiday list with Cinco de Mayo. It takes an act of will to glide right past the world of difference between a nation and a "community of persons," and Iafrete's curious phrasing hints strongly at where his sympathies lie.
Certainly Christ set us all free, but that was freedom from the tyranny of sin, not freedom from the tyranny of Caesar, as any one of thousands of early Christian martyrs could explain. Need we all be reminded that Jesus explicitly disavowed revolutionary work in the political sphere, and that it was in recognition of their political rights as free Englishmen that the revolutionaries of colonial times first fomented rebellion against what they regarded as the heavy hand of that German import on the Enlish throne, George III? Some of us seem to have forgotten.
Moreover and importantly, violence was incidental to the declaration of American independence, not foundational to it. July 4, 1776 is remembered as the date on which the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, a document whose famous preamble is nothing if not irenic in tone. King George could have let the colonies go without a fight, but chose not to.
Iafrete is right to look sideways at the unwarranted confluence of secular and religious holidays -- the church must never be coopted by the state, and it's good to be reminded of that on this birthday of the church. But the way Iafrete bungles his characterization of the Fourth of July makes me mistrust his Memorial Day misgivings. Mike Aquilina has a better take on the holiday.
2 comments:
Since I'm defending Mexico here, let me just state for the record that Cinco de Mayo commemorates the defeat of foreign imperialist French/Hapsburg forces(on May 5th, 1862)and their eventual explusion from Mexico - it was not "foundational violence," rather more an act of repelling foreign invaders.
Mexican independance from Spain was be achieved on the 15th of September, 1810 (9/15 being another nifty Mexican Holiday, btw) - 50 years prior to Cinco de Mayo. It was declared - like our own - in the middle of a war for independance that lasted until 1821.
Their war of independance & ours were thus very similar. Cinco de Mayo celebrates nationalism by commerating violence very similar in motive to that which inspired our National Anthem. The main differance was that we entered war with G Britain in 1812 with much less pure motives (not simply to protect our shipping, but more to fufill our manifest destiny, which is to say lust for Canada) than the Mexicans did in 1862, when Maximillian was forced upon them..
So, your jib at Cinco de mayo is rather inaccurate & unfair.
I agree with you that our 1812 war was not fought for good reason, Striker. I mentioned Cinco de Mayo as an explicit and comparatively well-known contrast to July 4, since Iafrete seems unfamiliar with the rationale for (American) Independence Day, and based on his other comments, would probably not know anything about September 15.
That the Mexicans beat the imperialist French/Hapsburg forces in 1862 is a good thing. I am, by the way, half Mexican.
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