{"id":45792,"date":"2026-04-14T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/nieuws\/catholic-scholars-reflect-on-the-american-experiment-at-250\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:00:00","slug":"catholic-scholars-reflect-on-the-american-experiment-at-250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/en\/nieuws\/catholic-scholars-reflect-on-the-american-experiment-at-250\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic scholars reflect on the American experiment at 250"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEndowed by Their Creator: Catholicism, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Experiment at 250\u201d was the subject of a conference this month at The Catholic University of America (CUA) featuring a bevy of Catholic academics, jurists, and public intellectuals.<\/p>\n

Co-hosted by CUA\u02bcs Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition<\/a> and Carroll Forum for Citizenship and Public Life<\/a>, along with the University of Notre Dame\u02bcs Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government<\/a>, the conference included a video address<\/a> by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighting Catholics’ presence and influence on the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,” Rubio, himself a Catholic, stated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rubio recalled a 1790 letter <\/a>from the nation\u02bcs first president, George Washington, to the country\u02bcs first Catholic bishop, John Carroll, in which he spoke of the \u201cpatriotic part\u201d American Catholics played in the accomplishment of the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

In that same letter, Washington also anticipated that \u201cAmerica, under the smiles of a Divine Providence, the protection of a good government, and the cultivation of manners, morals, and piety, cannot fail of attaining an uncommon degree of eminence, in literature, commerce, agriculture, improvements at home, and respectability abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summing it up, Rubio said: \u201cTo look upon the history of this golden land is to see the face of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Catholic Social Thought and the American Experiment\u2019<\/h2>\n

One of the symposium\u02bcs central panels was titled \u201cCatholic Social Thought and the American Experiment\u201d and featured Russell Hittinger, executive director of the Institute for Human Ecology<\/a> at CUA; Kenneth Grasso<\/a>, professor and department chair of political science at Texas State University; Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center<\/a> (EPPC); and CUA professor Sarah Gustafson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grasso focused his presentation on the late Father John Courtney Murray, SJ<\/a>, an American Jesuit priest and theologian known for his work on the reconciliation of Catholicism with American democratic pluralism and religious freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cMurray in some sense was a celebrant of the American experiment, admired the Founding Fathers, somebody who celebrated America\u02bcs success; he also thought that America was in deep trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moral tradition \u201cprovided the justification and substance of the American experiment and had been the source of its success,\u201d Grasso said. However, Murray also saw that \u201cthe very moral tradition which made American democracy compatible with Catholicism no longer lives in the minds and hearts of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as a result, he worried that America was on the verge of becoming a mass democracy,” he said. “Murray approaches this crisis from three different dimensions.”<\/p>\n

Murray\u02bcs first approach was how \u201cthe Church and Catholic thought played a critical role in creating a new tradition in political thought,\u201d Grasso said. Murray referred to the tradition as \u201cthe Western liberal tradition.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Western liberal tradition is committed to a government that\u02bcs limited in scope, subject in its operations to a rule of law, and which acknowledges the sovereignty of God and its duty to conform its actions with the universal moral law, which includes protecting the rights of the person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray\u02bcs second approach was \u201cpolitical or sociopolitical,\u201d Grasso said. Murray argued \u201cthere is a limit to how much, and what kinds of, pluralism a pluralist society can stand while remaining a functioning body politic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have different religious groups holding different convictions about the nature of man, about the precepts of morality, it\u02bcs going to be hard to form that underlying consensus that the body politic needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Murray\u02bcs approach was \u201ctheological in nature,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018Is America an example of the modern political experiment?\u2019 Yes and no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs America evolved more and more we retheorized our public life along the dimensions of modern political experiment. At the heart of the American experiment, or rather the modern political experiment, is secularity.”<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsent Christian revelation\u201d and \u201cmodern culture\u02bcs rejection of the Christian mode of existence” have created a spiritual vacuum “that will be filled by an explicitly non-Christian mode of existence. This mode of existence will manifest itself in violence … a violence that threatens to destroy freedom, order, and justice,” Grasso said. <\/p>\n

“The American experiment will not long survive the revelation that was its ultimate inspiration. Where does this leave us? Murray says it leaves the body politic in a grave crisis,\u201d Grasso said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness\u2019<\/h2>\n

The EPPC\u02bcs Ryan Anderson focused his remarks on the contemporary application in America of Catholic social teaching (CST).<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are four fundamental basic principles of Catholic social thought,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cHuman dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church<\/a> \u201ctalks about the \u2018imago Dei\u2019 … so there\u02bcs a transcendent source of our dignity, but it also talks about a transcendent orientation. We\u02bcre all created for friendship with God. And so it\u02bcs both the origin and the end of the human person that explains the nature of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a Catholic account for this that is distinct from the secularist or the Enlightenment. This should easily, whether working from within the Catholic social thought perspective or the Declaration perspective, speak directly to the abortion issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recognition of the right to life<\/h2>\n

\u201cPublic opinion has gone really, really badly for the pro-life side in the past decade after having been stable for relatively 30 or 40 years. In the past decade, we\u02bcve seen wide divergences,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u02bcs too quick to say that American political culture has nothing to do with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to social thought and the Declaration regarding \u201cthe account of liberty and religious liberty in particular,\u201d there are \u201ctensions\u201d between the two, Anderson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u02bcs also surprising overlap and harmonization between the account that [James] Madison gives us in [\u2018Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments<\/a>\u2019], in which he says \u2018the reason that we have rights to religious liberty is because we have duties to the Creator.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he says, \u2018before any man can be considered a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the universe.\u2019 Nice rejection of any secularism,\u2019\u201d Anderson noted.<\/p>\n

Today, the matter of religious liberty has become a major issue. While on the president\u02bcs Religious Liberty Commission<\/a> for the past year, Anderson said he has heard “horror story after horror story during our hearings for the past 12 months,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most heated religious liberty issues\u201d often affect Catholics and Christian values. Anderson specifically mentioned the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne<\/a>, who \u201chave pursued the state of New York because they are forcing them to engage in transgender nursing homes for the elderly who are dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lastly, Anderson discussed the pursuit of happiness in regard to the family unit. Marriage and the family, \u201cfrom a Catholic social perspective, is the basic cell of civilization and is the source of some of the deepest happiness and contentment for most people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you read through some of the scholars of the founding of what they thought about marriage and the family, there\u02bcs virtually no daylight between the founder\u02bcs vision for marriage and the family and contemporary Catholic social body\u02bcs vision for marriage and the family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a man, woman, husband and wife, mother and father, a nuclear family, extended family. Yes, there are going to be disagreements about contraception, but that\u02bcs much later,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cThere\u02bcs a huge agreement on the nature of the human person, nature of human family.”<\/p>\n

Today there are now developments that have altered this understanding of the family. Anderson highlighted the effects of Obergefell<\/a> and the overturning of Roe v. Wade<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Next steps <\/h2>\n

In addressing these issues impacting human dignity, Anderson laid out several next possible steps for the nation.<\/p>\n

He referenced the Craddock article<\/a>, which outlines a federal legislative strategy for banning abortion and argues that in “the original public meeting of the 14th Amendment, the word \u2018person\u2019 would apply to every human being and that would include the unborn child in the womb.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a \u2026 proper understanding of the 14th Amendment, this would empower Congress to pass legislation under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to protect the unborn. I don\u02bct see Congress doing that,” he said.<\/p>\n

Therefore, \u201cmore immediately, the Trump administration could simply reinstate the safety provisions for the abortion pill that were in existence throughout the entirety of the first Trump administration that Biden got rid of,” he said.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers are \u201cafraid that if they do anything bold on life right now, it will hurt them in the upcoming midterms,\u201d Anderson said. But, he explained, \u201cthere\u02bcs not a single pro-life elected official who has lost reelection.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also explained the need for marriage, because \u201cthe root cause of abortion is not the cost of diapers, nor is it the cost of childbirth,\u201d but rather it is premarital pregnancies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u02bcre the child and you\u02bcre conceived outside of marriage, 40% of the time you\u02bcre going to die of an abortion. If you\u02bcre conceived inside of marriage, 4% of the time,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cMarriage is the best protector of the unborn.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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