As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, we thank and praise the Lord for the gift of our country and the ideals it represents.  

The dignity of the human person, the inherent rights of man, the necessity of freedom, and equality of opportunity, all rooted in natural law, are the bedrock principles of our nation’s founding and go far to explain the longevity of our Constitution.

As a country, we have not always lived up to the ideals we embrace — the evil shadows of oppression against the Native peoples, the inhumanity of slavery and racism, and the tragedy of abortion speak of an incongruity between what we espouse and what we actually do.

Yet, despite these sad failures, our nation still stands as a beacon of liberty and opportunity for millions, as the greatest governmental experiment in history.

A tale of two revolutions

Shortly after the American Revolution, France experienced the upheavals of its own revolution, which was largely inspired by the ferment towards freedom and equality seen across the Atlantic.

The vast majority of the French lived in abject poverty, worn down by oppressive taxes, ruled by a dysfunctional government and a distant monarchical aristocracy.

The French Revolution began with the same idealistic principles that were guiding America, as evidenced by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, written by the Estates General.

Yet, in just a few years, the revolution in France took a dramatically bloody and divergent turn from the American path of freedom.

The bloodbath of the Terror, in which tens of thousands of people, including the royal family, aristocrats, priests, Nuns, faithful Catholics, and anyone else the butchers had turned upon were guillotined, was a horrifying violence unseen in America, even against those who remained loyal to England.

I would argue that the American and French Revolutions took radically divergent paths because of their attitude towards religion.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson roots the existence of human dignity and rights in the will of God and the natural law enshrined in the mind and heart of man.

Appeals to Divine Providence grounded the great American experiment in the bedrock of religious faith and moral conviction.

In the aftermath of the ratification of the Constitution, John Adams opined that this new government could only work if the people were religious and moral.

Deists many of the Founding Fathers may have been, but they held firmly to a divine will and order as the rational basis of their political assertions.

The French Revolution, on the other hand, violently rejected religion, particularly Catholicism, with a vicious hatred.

The radicals threatened priests with death if they did not pledge loyalty to the state, burned churches, desecrated Notre Dame with a statue of the goddess of reason on the main altar, and declared France to be an atheistic state.

Because the French did not ground their longing for freedom and rights in a transcendent order of faith and morality, their revolution devolved into a bloody massacre which made a twisted joke of their lofty Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Take away religion in the pursuit of a spurious human freedom, and guillotines, gulags, death camps, gas chambers, and genocides are the result.

Religion is the great and authentic guarantor of political freedom, the common good, and human flourishing.

When the revolutions on both continents had spent their course, the French ended up with the Emperor Napoleon and endless wars.

The Americans received President George Washington, who stepped down after two terms in office, and ushered in an age of relative peace.

A return to the vision

The cultural crisis the United States currently finds itself in is due, in large part, to the eclipse of the moral law, which is grounded in the truth of the divine order and the truth of human nature.

Our country, both in its laws and its mores, has sadly substituted license for freedom.

We see the destructive consequences of this fundamental mistake in the legality of abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage, and the promotion of transgenderism.

America has always been at her best when she has fused justice and mercy, truth and love.

Such a vision finds its fullness in Catholicism, which always upholds human dignity, especially the dignity of the poor, the vulnerable, and the disenfranchised.

May the breathtaking vision of our Founding Fathers flourish again, not in the guise of a superficial hyper-patriotism, but in a solidly based love for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

God bless America!