What Does July 4th Mean in Modern America?

Declaring our True Independence once again

The American ideal has offered a greater chance for dignity, hope and happiness for more people than any other system of government has ever offered its people. While we have not always lived up to that ideal,it must be preserved and cherished. The 4th of July inspires us to imitate the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence who risked all that the people of this nation could live free from tyranny and seek their Creator.

P>KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted in favor of independence from Great Britain. Two days later the Declaration of Independence, of which Thomas Jefferson is the primary author, was presented to the Congress where it was revised and approved that same day. We still honor and celebrate this July 4th event 235 years later. 

However, when we look at our country today, do we know what we are celebrating any longer? Our country is unraveling before our eyes. Our most cherished values are treated with contempt by many of those with influence and power. Our leadership and institutions are becoming increasingly corrupt and hostile. We have legally killed over fifty million American citizens in the womb; debased womanhood, fatherhood and the family; rejected God and embraced a base material existence; and we have traded many of our true rights and freedoms for transient pleasures and a false sense of security.

At this point, we might even wonder if this holiday holds any meaning. Some of the most fundamental truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence are not even accepted by many Americans today. These fundamental truths form the basis of who we are as a people. They also explain why we broke away from England and formed our own nation. We only have to look at the first paragraph to be reminded how far we have moved from these truths.

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

This paragraph specifically mentions God. For most our nation's existence, God has been understood as the foundation for our freedom. Today we are told that our belief in God infringes on liberty and must therefore be ejected from the public domain. It is in such soil that modern Western secularism is born. Secularism is not a benign ideology. It is not the absence of bias. It is biased; it is fiercely anti-religion and anti-Christian. Its goal is to supplant God and make the state into a god, and turn us into its subjects. The modern secular state is not the highest and final authority. We are not its subjects. The founding fathers of our country knew this, and they enshrined this understanding in the Declaration. 

It appears that many of the leaders of the secular, Western nations also want to do away with the natural law. The first paragraph of the Declaration specifically mentions the natural law. The natural law refers to rules of conduct or morality based on human nature. It also assumes that absolutes exist. This means that the order we see in the universe extends to human nature and behavior. Thus, it is universal and binding on all people and cultures throughout history. As such, we can know the difference between good and evil through the use of our reason, and we are responsible to seek out objective moral truth and submit ourselves to it. This makes us moral beings.

However, today we are led to believe that the natural law, universals, absolutes, or objective truth do not exist. Moral relativism has come to replace these truths which the Declaration either mentions or implies. Except for subjective feeling and consensus, both of which are shallow and fleeting, moral relativism enables our leaders to avoid natural limitations on their behavior and justifies immorality. It also encourages irrational, fundamentalist thinking. This is extremely dangerous, especially when it corrupts those in positions of influence or power. We can get some sense of this danger with the help of Blessed John Paul II and C.S. Lewis.

In his encyclical, The Splendor of Truth, Blessed John Paul II says that the most dangerous crisis which can afflict mankind is the confusion between good and evil. In a certain respect, I believe that this crisis can be summed up in two words--moral relativism--or simply "relativism" for short. Basically, relativism is the belief that morality is not absolute, that there are no objective moral standards or truths. Relativism is a dangerous belief.

Pope John Paul II says if politics is not guided and directed by absolute truth, then ideas and, I might add, people, can easily be manipulated. He also says that democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. In other words, there is a direct link between absolutes, universals, objective moral truths, and freedom. These realities protect our freedom. Relativism breaks this link and leads to the loss of freedom.

For C. S. Lewis, relativism seems to represent the final stage in our conquest of nature. In his book, The Abolition of Man, he says that the final stage in the conquest is when we obtain full control over human nature. When C. S. Lewis refers to "full control," he is referring to a relativistic world view where values are reduced to natural phenomena, and conditioning and propaganda are used to manipulate people and society. He also says that in such a world, people are necessarily divided into two classes, the conditioned and the conditioners.

The conditioners control the values. They do not obey them. They are above any value system. But what controls the conditioners? C. S. Lewis says that they are subject only to their impulses (subjective feelings). Under these circumstances, we can only hope that the conditioners will have benevolent impulses. But C. S. Lewis doubts that benevolence will prevail. He says he is pressed to find such examples in history. He believes that the conditioners will grow to hate the conditioned.

Perhaps this is the kind of thing that Pope Benedict XVI is referring to when he speaks about a "dictatorship of relativism." Once secularism embraces the murky world of relativism, it seems that secularists become just like C.S. Lewis' conditioners. There are many examples that substantiate what our beloved popes and C.S. Lewis are saying. I will mention a few examples from the United States and other secular Western nations.

Foremost in my mind is various Catholic charities around the country being forced to shut down their adoption and foster-care programs unless they reject Catholic belief and submit to the moral relativism of an all powerful immoral secular state regarding homosexual civil unions and cohabitating heterosexuals. This directly involved at least three agencies in the state of Illinois last month. The same type of thing happened to Catholic Charities in Massachusetts in 2006 and in Washington D.C. last year.

Secularist aggression against Catholics came on strong in 2010. The year began with the Attorney General for the state of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley, essentially saying that Catholics who believe what the Pope teaches about birth control should probably not bother working in an emergency room. Then in November 2010, a U.S. federal court ruled that Catherine DeCarlo, a Catholic nurse who was forced to assist in a late-term abortion, does not have the right to sue.

In another related example traditional values and the family were placed in secularisms crosshairs. In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that municipal employers had the right to censor words like "natural family," "marriage" and "family values" because that is hate speech and could scare workers.

It seems to be worse in other secular nations. Last year a local commission in England and Wales ruled that that the last remaining agency, Catholic Care, was not justified in its refusal to place children with same-sex couples because of its religious beliefs. And earlier this year the High Court ruled that a Pentecostal Christian couple, Eunice and Owen Johns from Derby, were not allowed to act as foster parents. The court essentially said the Johns' traditional Christian views regarding homosexuality is detrimental to the welfare of children, and that the rights associated with sexual orientation trump religious rights.

Bishop Fred Henry, of Canada was brought before a human rights commission in 2008 for upholding Catholic moral teaching. While the complaint was withdrawn, the bishop incurred thousands of dollars in legal costs. According to a report on the Catholic Exchange, he said, "The social climate right now is that we're into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police."

Based on these examples, we can see that secularism is not a benign ideology capable of bringing equality, fairness, tolerance, and peace into the world. It is an aggressive fundamentalist ideological movement with many different but related movements, the homosexual equivalency movement being just one. To the list we could add feminism and multiculturalism and Marxism, among others. On the other hand, Christianity gave us a highly pluralistic society and reflected true tolerance and equality.

With these thoughts in mind, we might wonder if this 4th of July we need to declare our independence from the modern secular state. We could begin by resurrecting the 1776 document and shaking off the dust that we have allowed to collect on it over the years. The ideas in the Declaration of Independence are just as true today as they were 235 years ago. All we need to do is live them. We already looked at the first paragraph of the Declaration, now let us look at the second. The first three sentences of the second paragraph state the following:

"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. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government. . . ."

Perhaps it is time for another revolution. I do not mean a violent revolution. Rather, the kind of revolution I am referring to is a revolution that begins with our own radical conversion and is followed by prayer, lots of prayer. We need to bathe this country in prayer. This will make it possible for Jesus to manifest himself to the world through us, and it will enable us to confront the evil in our country with a radical divine love. To begin a revolution in this country, we only need to live our faith. Jesus was the greatest revolutionary. While it is true that he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it, he also brought about the end of a world and ushered in a new world. He is still doing it, and we are called to be united to him and his revolutionary work, that is, the work of redemption and a new creation.

The American ideal has offered a greater chance for dignity, hope and happiness for more people than any other system of government has ever offered its people. And while we have not always lived up to that ideal, we know that it must be preserved and cherished. Consequently, we find that the 4th of July holds great meaning for us. It reminds us that the fight for independence is just as important today as it was in 1776; and it inspires us to imitate the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence who risked property, reputation and life so that the people of this nation could live free from tyranny and seek their Creator.
 
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Michael Terheyden was born into a Catholic family, but that is not why he is a Catholic. He is a Catholic because he believes that truth is real, that it is beautiful and good, and that the fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church. However, he knows that God's grace operating throughout his life is the main reason he is a Catholic. He is greatly blessed to share his faith and his life with his beautiful wife, Dorothy. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.

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