Declaration of Independence, John Trumbull, 1819
Dear Parishioners:
Happy 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Independence Day is an opportunity for every citizen, especially Catholic citizens, to reflect on important lessons at the heart of virtuous living and faithful citizenship.
I fondly remember the Fourth of July as a child with its cherished cookout complete with hamburgers, saugy hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob, and watermelon. Then came the sparklers and fireworks my older brothers had bought in Silver Lake. Finally, we made the trek from our house to Narragansett Bay by the RI Yacht Club to watch the giant blazing bonfire supervised by the Pawtuxet Volunteer Fire Company. They were happy times.
But an important lesson of Independence Day was imparted to us by our parents. Both had lived through the Great Depression, and my Father also served in combat in Italy during the Second World War. My mother worked at the Quonset Base during the war, and her three brothers all served in the Second World War. Their example calls us to remember that our freedom isn’t free, and good things are worth fighting for. Freedom is a fragile reality.
Our Catholic faith and the American experiment assert that freedom is our inheritance as the children of God. Of course, this requires that freedom be rightly and fully understood. Freedom is a summons placed within the heart of every human person to live a life of virtue, self-control, and goodness. Freedom is not the power to do whatever we want. It is the power to do what is right and good.
Freedom always runs the risk of captivity, however, either by our own fallen hearts through sin, or by governments and regimes that repress authentic liberty, self-determination, and a creativity born from virtuous living. St. Paul describes the struggle for freedom in our hearts in his Letter to the Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Mount Rushmore with the images of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln
These lessons are not only those of a young child living in Edgewood fifty years ago. They are the lessons that all people of goodwill are called to discern, discover, and accept. They are the foundational lessons that inspire, motivate, and sustain a healthy society and a virtuous form of representative government.
Unlike my parents and their peers of the “Greatest Generation,” our contemporary culture, which indulges in moral relativism on one side and new forms of socialism on the other, often misses the inner dynamics of how freedom and goodness interact in such a way that each needs the other. Freedom and moral goodness are beloved twins who enjoy and prosper best when they are together and in harmony with one another.
Our Founding Fathers rightly understood this 250 years ago when they signed the Declaration of Independence. They considered liberty and its exercise in pursuit of the flourishing of themselves, their families, and their communities. Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signatory of the Declaration of Independence, on the occasion of its 50th Anniversary, said:
Minute Man
“Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ our Lord, he has conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation, and upon myself in permitting me to live to the age of eighty-nine years, and to survive the fiftieth year of American independence and my approbation of the Declaration of Independence of which I am now the last surviving signer, I do hereby recommend to the present and future generations the principles of that important document, as the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them; and pray that the civil and religious liberties they have secured to my country may be perpetuated to the remotest posterity and extended to the whole family of man.”
Let us celebrate this hard-won liberty on the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which freed us from the shackles of English Royal Tyranny with gratitude, pride, and joy! God Bless the USA! Happy Independence Day!
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