In the 6th Chapter of Mark, we find a sad verse, “He could do no mighty deed there because of their lack of faith.” We must all be cautious of that attitude Our Lord found in his own town. I speak of that stubbornness to reject something or someone who is sincerely trying to help us. 

Since we just celebrated America’s Independence Day, it will do us well to consider what our modern culture today is rejecting from the Founding Fathers of America. Obviously, these men including Washington, Adams and Hamilton were not all saints. But there was something that the majority of them believed. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was written for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other.” Charles Carroll, another Declaration signatory and the only Catholic, said, “They who are destroying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure.. are undermining the best security for the duration of free governments.” 

There are far too many examples today where Christian ethical principles are rejected like the folks of Nazareth throwing Jesus out of town. It’s quite common to hear Americans say things like, “The country is falling apart.” or “How did all this insanity come about?” We can, of course, concentrate on the radically anti-Christian forces that do their damage to young and old alike. But in the spirit of really appreciating the founding principles of America a more subtle problem needs fixing. 

In Timothy Gordon’s book “Catholic Republic” he points out the fact that the key principles in the founding documents of America come from Catholic thinkers more than Protestant thinkers. Wisdom from St Thomas Aquinas, St Robert Bellarmine, and Francisco Suarez make these Catholics the true fathers of our Founding Fathers. These were the teachers who packaged the world- saving moral lessons of Christ into what the modern world grew to love and which we still today call, “natural law”. 

We must not forget that one of those moral lessons is “Hate the sin while loving the sinner.” But this precept is what so many in society want to throw out. Just like the folks in Nazareth, many can’t even see that the wonderful world they live in would not exist if not for the underpinning of such solid Catholic morals. Unlike Nazareth, today the teachers of morality are not so much exiled as they are silenced, frequently under the culturally revered banner of tolerance. Yet this is not loving the sinner. The desire to kick Jesus out of Nazareth echoes in today’s society as the desire to kick moral teachings out of the public square. With nowhere to apply these moral principles, they are effectively also removed from our churches. Although the wonderful American Spirit recognizes Thomas Jefferson’s principle of the separation of church and state, we must be leery about such thinking because it can easily be construed to mean “keep Catholic morals out of our lives.” Pray our nation begins to embrace good morals as we open our hearts to Christ.