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I Am a Political Animal

Issue Three / 2021

Since I am a political animal, my identity is inseparable from the polity to which I belong. But in which city do I live? The City of Man or the City of God? The choice is not between a visible and an invisible city, but between an unreal and a real one. The unreal city is the one most familiar to us, the one composed of fictional individuals bound to each other and to God by choice. It is the city that “secures our rights and freedoms” and keeps us “safe,” but only through an ever-increasing tyranny. The real city is the one populated by flesh-and-blood citizens: men, women, and children embedded in the prevenient natural order, bound by the common good, their innate restlessness for the real God ever incarnating in a form of common life for the sake of the world.

Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture & Science
Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
620 Michigan Ave. N.E. (McGivney Hall)
Washington, DC 20064