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All have heaven people in order to form a more
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tax
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to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
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When I was a kid, people often spoke of the American dream. It was usually described in terms of the hope that honest middle- class families could own
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a home, care for their loved ones, and leave their children better off than themselves.
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Many of my friends parents had lived through the Great Depression, and some fought in World War II. They knew privation, grief, and sacrifice. It
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shouldn’t surprise us that their understanding of the American dream was largely rooted in a sense of material security. And yet, I would suggest that
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this desire for economic security was undergurtded by something more profound, the aspiration for spiritual freedom,
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the freedom to live in accord with one’s conscience and to follow the teaching of one’s religious beliefs.
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This reverence for Americans religious convictions formed the bedrock of our country from the beginning.
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Some might say this notion of spiritual freedom belongs to the private sphere.
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It is a matter of personal practice and not of public affairs. Some might even argue that to debase matters of religion to those of politics is to muddy the
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waters of public discourse with pious sentiments.
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One of the most prominent voices of the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, a deist and one of the founders most influenced by the Enlightenment
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thinkers, Jefferson nevertheless wrote just 5 years after drafting the Declaration of Can the liberties of a nation be thought
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secure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God.
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And to that question, Jefferson and his fellow founders would have said, “No.”
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Rights as understood by the drafters of the Declaration and the Constitution are not conjured into existence by political
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consensus, nor are they granted by parliaments or princes. Our rights exist not on parchment alone, but on the
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immutable foundation of the laws of nature and nature’s God. That is to say that even if the drafters of the Constitution disregarded a fundamental
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right to life, the American people just like every people across history can claim a share of that right or that gift
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as Jefferson recognized because of the basic fact that life comes not from the government but from God.
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This is the animating principle behind what the founders called natural rights.
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rights inherent to the human person, not because of race or wealth or nationality, but because of the dignity
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bestowed by the creator. As Alexander Hamilton put it, one year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
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“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with
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a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
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In our day, I fear that we at risk of losing this metaphysical grounding of a person’s rights. There seems to be no
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limit to the number or kinds of rights individuals can claim. rights have become assertions of will, often severed
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from truth or justice. Sadly, deeply immoral acts are often defended under the banner of individual rights.
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But I would posit to you that this conception of rights is really a misconception.
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Rights do not exist just because we say they do. And here I call to mind one of my intellectual heroes, St. Thomas Aquinas.
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Quitus rarely spoke of rights in the plural. Instead, he referred to the Latin word yuse, which means the right.
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Understood not as a claim, but as that which is due to another. In mystic terms, a right is what justice demands,
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as measured by the divine order. By this, he meant something in accord with God’s design for mankind and the universe.
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This is a far more substantive and sobering understanding of rights. It places rights not in the realm of popular preference or ever evolving
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societal demands, but in the realm of respect for the human person and the common good.
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At the same time, the natural law tradition insists that these principles of freedom, justice, rights, and responsibilities are not hidden from us.
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On the contrary, these fundamental truths are accessible to all, discoverable by natural reason, written,
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as St. Paul says, in their hearts.
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This is precisely the claim made in the opening of the Declaration of Independence. that the American cause is justified not by majority will nor
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sectarian creed, but by the self-evident truth that all men are created equal,
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that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Importantly, the Declaration’s appeal to the British is not a democratic one. The columnists did not declare political independence from their ancestral
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homeland simply because the majority agreed.
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No, the appeal of the declaration was fundamentally moral and philosophical.
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It was a practical application of moral reason to political grievance.
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In the estimation of the signers of the declaration, British governance had devolved from stewardship into tyranny.
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In fact, they all agreed in the declaration that the crown involved itself in circumstances of cruelty and
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perity scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation. This
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claim is not for mere rhetorical flourish. Rather, it signals a moral judgment. The abuses of the crown were more than an inconvenience.
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They were a grave injustice.
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The signers of the declaration committed a revolutionary act, one that led to a devastating war.
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Yet they acted to restore the moral law that had been lost, the rights that we are given by God. And while it’s
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impossible for us to know the thoughts within the hearts and minds of men, I believe it was the conscience,
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the inner witness of the divine law that stirred many of the founders to affix their names to the declaration. That’s the paper again.
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Conscience is the key to understanding how the founders access the truths of the eternal law and applied them to their circumstances.
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The second Vatican council in Gaudium at Spez describes conscience as the most secret core and sanctuary of a man.
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There he’s alone with God whose voice echoes in its deaths.
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The founders’s defense of the colonist was not only an act of courage but one of justice.
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Prior to America’s founding, many nations only recognized the rights of a privileged few.
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But the declaration laid the foundation for recognizing the rights of all Americans. Now, this promise of liberty was not fulfilled instantaneously. It
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took a bloody civil war and many courageous abolitionists to end the sin of slavery and respect the dignity of all persons. But from the very
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beginning, our founders understood that rights do not exist within a vacuum.
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With every right comes responsibilities to our families, our fellow citizens, and our creator.
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In other words, the right to life,
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liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not render the political order neutral on questions of good and evil.
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It does not leave us in a naked public square, to use Father Richard John New House’s famous phrase. Rather, it
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presumes that citizens are moral actors capable of discerning the good and obligated to pursue it. The founding
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fathers anticipated that the American people would not passively receive dictates from the state as distant subjects, but that they would actively
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participate in moral and political deliberations as citizens.
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This is why George Washington famously said in his farewell address,
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of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.
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In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism,
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who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmst props of the duties of men and citizens.
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Today, nearly 250 years after the birth of our republic, we find ourselves the recipients of this great moral inheritance. For if our rights are real,
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then so too are our responsibilities.
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To be an American citizen is to be entrusted with the freedom to pursue the good, the duty to care for our neighbors
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and uphold justice, and the burden and the privilege of conscience.
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May we prove worthy of it.