True Freedom

In 1776, the Founding Fathers of the United States signed the Declaration of Independence, which contains these famous words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” 

In 1796, George Washington said “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… Where is the security for life, for reputation, and for property if the sense of religious obligation desert? …Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?” 

In 1798, President John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson wrote: “(Jesus) pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man, erected his tribunal in the regions of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.”

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Fast Day. He wrote, in part: “…the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has… requested the President to designate… a day for National prayer and humiliation… it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, …and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord…

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! …It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Again, we have “forgotten God.” Citizens have become more materialistic and inverted the God-Man-government hierarchy prescribed in the Declaration. In the words of Fulton Sheen: “Once God is denied as the Source of rights, the State sets itself up as an absolute.”  In 1936, Msgr. Sheen said “If the world continues to get so far away from fundamentals, a day may come when the Church will go out in defense of the truth that two and two make four… that snow is white… that every citizen… is a person.”  That has happened. The State declares that unborn human beings aren’t persons, that men can become women, that two of the same sex can “marry.”

In 1959 he said, “…when men lose the conviction of the immortal soul, there is a decline in a respect for the human. Man without a soul is a thing; something to be used, not to be reverenced… The courtesies… that one man ought to have for another are neglected once man is no longer seen as bearing within himself the Divine Image.”  Our nation’s increases in crime and incivility have proven Washington right: “Where is the security for life, reputation, and property if the sense of religious obligation desert? 

Despite our nation’s many faults, ours is still a great country. We have, relative to others, been “preserved in peace and prosperity.”   Still, we need to recall the principles from which we sprung, and Lincoln’s admonition that we “humble ourselves, and pray to the God that made us!”  The bishops of the United States recently did this, when they consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This means they prayerfully surrendered the people of the United States to the love, mercy and guidance of Jesus.

To quote Bp. Sheen: “It is our solemn duty as Catholics to be conscious of our duty to America, and to preserve its freedom by preserving its faith in God.” This means choosing political candidates based on their moral worth, voting, speaking the truth in charity, promoting strong monogamous nuclear families, prayer, and by recognizing that society cannot be improved except by reforming the individuals who make it up. This begins with each of us, personally, who should radiate the joy of someone who trusts in God and is trying to do His will.

True freedom and independence follow from the recognition of our dependence on God.

In God We Trust. Happy birthday America!