Freedom

This weekend, our nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its establishment as an independent nation with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Though the writers of the Declaration were not Catholic, many of the ideas espoused in it of what a nation should be find their home in Catholic thought.

In 1883, the Bishops of the United States when gathered for the Council of Baltimore said, "We consider the establishment of our country's independence, the shaping of its liberties and laws as a work of special Providence, its framers 'building wiser than they knew,' the Almighty's hand guiding them." The bishops then explicitly endorsed celebrating America's founding, saying we "must keep firm and solid the liberties of our country by keeping fresh the noble memories of the past and thus sending forth from our Catholic homes into the arena of public life not partisans but patriots."

Our nation's founding is based upon many freedoms and rights intrinsic to humanity through our creation as children of God, but even the founders of our nation recognized that this freedom enshrined in the Declaration was a freedom of religion, not a freedom from religion. They recognized that their new nation needed God as its foundation.

Pope St. John Paul II had this to say when he visited Philadelphia in 1979: "These values [in the Declaration of Independence] are strengthened when power and authority are exercised in full respect for all the fundamental rights of the human person, whose dignity is the dignity of one created in the image and likeness of God; when freedom is accepted not as an absolute end in itself, but as a gift that enables self-giving and service; when the family is protected and strengthened, when its unity is preserved, and when its role as the basic cell of society is recognized and honored. When the Liberty Bell rang for the first time in 1776, it was to announce the freedom of your nation, the beginning of the pursuit of a common destiny independent of any outside coercion. This principle of freedom is paramount in the political and social order, in relationships between the government and the people, and between individual and individual... Free indeed is the person who models his or her behavior in a responsible way according to the exigencies of the objective good."

As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live. We have the opportunity and freedom to contribute to the well-being of humanity, starting with protecting and providing for our families, keeping them centered on Christ, who is the source of our strength in good times and in bad.

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." - Pope St. John Paul II