Our greatest hope for freedom lies in the Cross of Jesus Christ and the founding principles represented in the flag of the United States of America.
The ideas of liberty and individual rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America are not unlike arguments found in Catholic thought for centuries leading up to the American Revolution and long after it.
The Declaration of Independence reads, “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.”
Through Baptism, Catholics become sons of God and identify with Jesus, the only One who can provide true freedom.
Each year on July 4, Americans celebrate their freedom on the anniversary of when the United States of America declared independence from Great Britain in 1776.
Freedom of the human person:
One nation, under God, indivisible:
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.”
Galatians 5: 13-14
Influential Catholics during America’s founding:
The blessing of equal liberty:
Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.
Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Journey to the United States of America, October 8, 1995
Freedom is not a work of men alone:
Freedom is a surrender to God:
https://youtu.be/v435YIs6LZE
Wisdom and virtue are required:
Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1731
A prayer for America:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
America’s Catholic Church:
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