July 4, 2026
Today, we in the United States celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from England, establishing a country where we can enjoy freedoms that no other country at that time got to enjoy. Today we have the opportunity to reflect on our freedom and the costs we have paid to have that freedom.
I still remember vividly my first visit, with my mother, to the Gettysburg National Battlefield in Gettysburg Pennsylvania. The National Park Service has restored the land of the battlefield, as much as possible, to the way it looked in 1863 when the battle took place. The Battlefield is not only a sacred memorial to our soldiers and our history, but also an area of wonderful natural beauty.
While on the battlefield, wherever you looked, it was easy to fall into contemplation, remembering the American kids, husbands and fathers, shop keepers and farmers, the cadets and graduates of military schools, who fought a decisive three-day battle that ended 163 years ago yesterday. Every American should be familiar with the names: Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Pickett’s Charge and President Abraham Lincoln’s masterful Gettysburg Address.
As I walked around the Battlefield, I watched my fellow tourists as they experienced a place and time that can easily be considered the location of one of the most defining events in American History, in World History. Gettysburg is a place where approximately 51,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or captured. Americans fighting Americans. Gettysburg is a place where the flame of liberty never came closer to forever being extinguished. And I wondered, as I watched my fellow tourists, if we as Americans appreciate the freedom that we enjoy – if we fully grasp the privilege that we have been given to live in a country –highly criticized by many today– that affords us so great a gift as to live in freedom.
The people of the United States, especially in the 19th century, were fond of quoting a line most believed attributable to Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and our third President. But the words actual origin was an Irish Catholic politician, John Philpot Curran who died in 1817. Curran wrote and many prominent Americans have quoted:
“The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”
In other words, Curran warned mankind that the loss of liberty would be so catastrophic that he considered a lack of vigilance and its consequence a crime and servitude the price we should pay for our guilt.
Today, Americans celebrate Independence Day, a day that affords us a great opportunity to consider the freedom we enjoy today – and many so often take for granted. How many men and women have given life and treasure to purchase for us our right to liberty? And, reminded by Curran, we must be vigilant, guarding that freedom, or we might very well find ourselves punished by losing that right and being subjected to dehumanizing servitude.
Our American rights are specifically guaranteed by our Constitution, and in specific amendments to our Constitution:
- Freedom to worship and practice our religion
- Freedom of speech and the press.
- The right to assemble.
- The right to petition government.
- The right to form a militia and to keep and bear arms.
- The right not to have soldiers boarded in our homes.
- Protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
- Protection from being tried for a serious crime without a formal indictment (accusation) by a grand jury.
- The right to a speedy trial, to legal counsel, and to confront their accusers.
- No one can be forced to testify against herself or himself.
- No one can be punished without due process of law.
- People must be paid for property taken for public use.
- People have the right to a jury trial in civil suits exceeding $20.
- Protection against excessive bail (money to release a person from jail), stiff fines, and cruel and unusual punishment.
- Prohibition of slavery.
- The right to vote for all U.S. Citizens, women and men, who are at least 18 years of age.
One of the most precious freedoms we enjoy as Americans is the Freedom to worship and practice our religion according to our personal beliefs. But today that freedom is at risk. People of faith are pressured, using “separation of church and state” arguments, not to talk, in the public arena, about their beliefs. “Keep your religion to yourself. Religion is a private affair. What you do behind the walls of your church is your business, but there is no place for you in the public square where discussion of religious values, other than the values of the religions called “atheism” and “humanism”, and “secular individualism” is barred.”
If you do not believe me, listen to modern politicians and you will hear this subtle change everywhere today. In the past decade, we have seen many assaults on religious liberty. The examples are too numerous to detail here, but here are a few:
- A few years ago, there was a push in the California State Legislature (California, where the Order of St. John Paul II is headquartered) to require Catholic priests to break their seal of the confessional and require them to report to the police specific sins they hear in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
- Religious colleges, which are required by law to be accredited, are facing more and more challenges by accrediting commissions.
- The Catholic Church and its charitable organizations are forced to endure continual and costly legal challenges for being loyal to the tenets of their faith and acting accordingly.
- The entertainment industry has, with wicked cleverness, produced a constant stream of anti-Christian propaganda, as has the print and electronic media.
- Catholic hospitals that provide health care to many of the poorest areas of the country are “being portrayed as an alien and malignant force” by the media when they hold themselves up to high moral standards.
- The United States Government recently reduced the amount of money one is allowed to donate to a church organization and receive a tax deduction.
- During a recent Presidential administration, Christian symbols on the White House “Holiday Tree” were expressly forbidden.
- Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on June 24, 2022, many churches have been attacked by pro-abortion demonstrators. I don’t recall any abortion clinics being the targets for attack by pro-life demonstrators after the 1972 Roe v. Wade decision.
Francis Cardinal George, the late Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, saw this developing persecution years ago. In a speech he made in Rome, he warned,
“In this culture, the Gospel’s call to receive freedom as a gift from God and to live its demands faithfully is regarded as oppressive, and the Church, which voices those demands publicly, is seen as an enemy of personal freedom and a cause of social violence. The public conversation in the United States is often an exercise in manipulation and always inadequate to the realities of both the country and the world, let alone the mysteries of faith. It fundamentally distorts Catholicism and any other institution regarded as “foreign” to the secular individualist ethos. Our freedom to preach the Gospel is diminished.”
Moloch is alive and well.
But Independence Day is not a day to worry and be filled with anxiety. It is a day to celebrate a country in which we are so privileged to live and the freedom we know so well. All the same, it is also a time to renew our “eternal vigilance” before everything we know is taken away from us. Just as Jesus Christ died to give us true freedom, so many of our countrymen have died to give us the liberty that we possess and enjoy and so often take for granted.
The disciples and by our baptism, YOU and I, have received a mandate from the Son of God, and, by his authority, nothing will stop us from fulfilling that mandate. Jesus told us yesterday, emphatically, “Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way. Whatever town you enter, and they welcome you, say to them, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand.’”
We have been commissioned.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!