Historical Influence of Catholicism in America

It is the same spirit that led 56 Americans to pledge their lives,

fortunes, and sacred honor to each other in

the cause of independence two and a half centuries ago.

Catholics in the colonies flocked to join them,

enlisting to fight for the patriots at a

rate far exceeding their share of the population.

In 1790, George Washington wrote to the

Roman Catholics of America to thank them personally

for the patriotic part which you took

in the accomplishments of the Revolution.

It is popular today to claim the founding

was merely a brainchild of the Enlightenment,

but the Revolution was not a radical rupture with the past.

It was a renewal of an older inheritance,

fitted to the unique experience of a free Christian people

in the New World.

That inheritance draws upon the ancient liberties of the English Constitution

and common law, but it roots these traditions upon a fixed and unchanging moral order,

governed by the laws of nature and nature's God.

This fundamental truth endows man with not just rights,

but with duties.

It conceives of freedom and virtue as inseparably linked.

We see this in the structure of our political order itself,

built not to sanction license,

but to restrain passion,

check ambition with ambition,

and secure the common good.

It is true, of course, that most of the men

who wrote our founding documents were not Catholics themselves,

but the system that gave us belongs to the same civilizational tradition

that produced the towering cathedrals of Rome and the philosophy of Augustine and

America was a gift,

where the church and the civilization it made was reborn,

discovering itself anew in the wilderness.

It is that once modern and ancient,

the men who settled and founded our country were the architects of a great rebirth,

renewing the deferred dreams of the old world and the possibilities

of a virgin continent.

It has been 250 years since a new people declared themselves to the world.

At the time, less than 2% were Catholic,

but the nation they built would come to serve as one of

the proudest and most enduring testaments to the eternal truth of our faith.

To look upon the history of this golden land

is to see the face of God.