Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines of the Quines.

Sometimes people will ask me, hey, Father Gregory, which church do you think is the best?

Or Father Gregory, do you think the American church is the healthiest church you know currently on offer?

And by church we mean like local church or you know kind of regional expression or national expression of ecclesial life.

And I think it's an interesting question. Mind you, I think it's a quintessentially American question because we just love making comparisons of just such a sort.

And but I think it's an interesting question because it helps us to focus on what we have and maybe the strengths of the way that Catholic life has lived here in the United States.

But it also brings out some of the things that we don't or weaknesses to the way in which Catholic life has lived here in the United States.

So even while it is a bit over the top, let's go ahead and think about it. Here we go.

So I think that nationalism or patriotism is a natural expression of love.

So when you're from a particular place, I think you tend to love that particular place and you also want others to love that particular place.

Now mind you in Western Europe that's more complicated because of you know the 20th century and like the ravages of totalitarianism and the many people who died.

Nationalism has kind of a bad name and an awkward fit. But yeah, in a lot of places throughout the world, there's still that vibe, that kind of nationalistic patriotic vibe without necessarily the negative associations that others will have of it.

And so people, you know, they typically love their place and they want you to love their place and that's true even among Catholics.

They like ask you, you know, so what did you think of like the liturgy and what did you think of the young adults and what did you think of the vibe at the retreat or this, that of the other thing, which is cool.

And I think that you can respond to that question without having to be a super scientific or super exhaustive and say like, well, I may like an Excel spreadsheet and a macro to calculate the respective strengths and weaknesses of all local should say, no, just take it easy.

I think you can just say that you love a thing because it's yours and that you can appreciate other people's things because you see the way in which they love them and you can enter into that love.

So like a mother, for instance, will tell you that her kids are just the best kids in the world. And when she says that, she's not saying, yeah, like all other kids are worse or I did an exhaustive study of all kids in the world and mine came out on top.

She's just saying, I love my kids a lot, right? And I wouldn't trade them for anything, which is cool. Now I think we can do something similar with the church in its local expression.

So I want to just highlight a couple of things about the American church, which I really love and which I really appreciate and then turn at the end to places in which we can improve or ways in which we can be more conscious of limitations of the expression of Catholic life in the United States and how we might push through.

Okay. So one is, I think that we in the United States have just kind of gotten through a rough patch.

So it's no secret that the appropriation of the Second Vatican Council was not straightforward and was in many cases not good.

So in Europe, everyone has the date 1968 in mind because it was a big student revolt slash protest, manifestations, whatever you call them. And a lot of that was anti-clarical and anti-aclesial.

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