By Francis X. Maier.
But first a note from Robert Royal:
Friends, There was a widespread Internet hiccup yesterday morning, which knocked out sites way beyond TCT. So if you got an error message when you tried to read Professor Gallagher's very fine column on the things that are Caesar's and the things that are not, I recommend seeking it out. It will clarify a lot of what's going on in the Church these days. I'm happy to say that service was restored before noon and even more happy to say that the tech glitch did not stop many of you from being generous during our end-of-the-year fundraiser, now underway. And just look at today's brilliant column by Fran Maier. If you value work like this, please show it. It's easy enough. Click the button below. Send a check. It all helps advance the mission of The Catholic Thing.
Now for today's column...
We're just weeks from 2026, and just months from America's 250th birthday. We're also just days from Advent, a season of self-examination and hope for Christians in preparing for the central event of human history: the birth of Jesus. It's a beautiful, serious, reflective time of year. Which makes it a perfect time for some awkward thoughts about who we are as a believing people and the character of the "American Experiment," the nation we call home and help sustain. So, let's begin.
On the place of religious faith and traditions:
1. The American Founding is a child of Biblical and Enlightenment thought. But the Enlightenment itself is a child of the Biblical framework - its anthropology and morality - from which it developed and tried to outgrow. To oversimplify: no Bible, no Enlightenment, no United States. At least, no United States as its Founders originally understood and intended it.
2. Despite more than a century of anti-Catholic prejudice and occasional violence, Catholics could successfully fit into and contribute to a deeply Protestant country because we shared a "mere Christianity" despite our theological and ecclesial differences. From the start, Jews too have shared in the country's Biblical roots. To put it even more forcefully: A Christian-inspired understanding of man and his purpose, and therefore his civic life, makes no sense outside its grounding in the Judaism from which it emerged. Thus, Christian anti-Semitism is a uniquely ugly form of blasphemy. Jesus and his mother were, after all, Jews.
3. Because of the above, other religious traditions can sometimes have difficulty integrating here. They must either adjust themselves to the Founding's original framework and "soul" (not an impossible task), or change them into something else, i.e., diminish the Christian and Biblical dimension of public life. The latter course has largely succeeded, conducted by a secularized, progressive leadership class. This accounts, in part, for the negative revisionism in American history and civics education during the past half-century. Note especially that Islam has an anthropology and view of the state and society very different from Christian and Enlightenment thought. This has obvious implications for public life. Note current conditions in Europe.
On Jefferson's "wall of separation":
4. Religion and politics make ripe ground for conflict. On the one hand, the "wall of separation" between Church and state appears nowhere in the Constitution. The phrase came from an 1802 letter by then-President Thomas Jefferson. Established Churches can work. Various U.S. States had an officially recognized church in the early years after independence. The last, in Massachusetts, was disestablished only in 1833. But history shows that they're a bad idea. Establishment usually benefits the state more than the Church, which too often becomes a dependency of, and a chaplaincy to, political power. Thus, the separation of Church institutions from the state is, in principle, a sound idea. But it can easily be abused by excluding religious institutions from public activity and appropriate collaborative s...
