Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.

That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

We may wonder at the choice of Israel and Rome as the archetypes of the new nation, in view of the long history of suffering of the former and the decline of the latter. We may wonder that our ancestors over-looked the darker days of those earlier nations. They did not. They hoped to construct a republic on principles to sound that if we should decline in piety and public virtue we would meet the inexorable fate of nations, which are as but dust in the hands of God.

We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love and learning.

We have to treat others as part of who we are, rather than as a 'them' with whom we are in constant competition.

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

The central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but in our animal, biological past.