Because of what Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, is doing for America’s 250th birthday on July 4, I keep getting the question: Is America really something Catholics should be celebrating?
Here are the 250 reasons my answer is “Yes!”
Reasons 1-5 are from the U.S. bishops.
For the 250th birthday, the U.S. bishops consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart and released an America 250 video series celebrating America for its: Founding, Immigration, Devotions, Healthcare, and Military Chaplains.
Reason 6: The founding principles have a Catholic source.
As my colleague Kevin Vance explains, the founding principles rose above their Enlightenment roots thanks to the scholarship of a Doctor of the Church, Robert Bellarmine.
Reason 7: In 1883 the bishops called our founding principles a work of God.
The Baltimore Plenary Council declared: “We consider the establishment of our country’s independence, the shaping of its liberties and laws as a work of special Providence, its framers ‘building wiser than they knew,’ the Almighty’s hand guiding them.”
Reasons 8-11: Four popes praised our founding documents.
Pope John Paul II called the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights America’s “great bulwark” against atheistic moral relativism.
Pope Benedict XVI said these documents are “based on the dominion of God the Creator.”
Pope Francis quoted the Declaration to the U.S. Congress, telling its proclamation of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness puts politics “at the service of the human person.”
Pope Leo XVI accepted the Liberty Medal, praying that “the lofty ideals enshrined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence may continue to guide the flourishing of the nation,” speaking at length about the founding principles.
Reason 12: Pope Leo XIV’s motto echoes America’s.
In 1776, E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one” became America’s motto. In 2025, Pope Leo took his episcopal motto as his papal one: In illo Uno Unum, “In the One we are one.” This phrase of St. Augustine’s about Christ has much in common with America's motto, since ...
Reason 13: Our founding principles allow us to welcome immigrants.
Generations of immigrants have been able to make America their own because our nation is based on a common set of ideals rather than a common ancestry.
Reasons 14-16: Three black civil rights heroes celebrated the founding documents’ power to self-correct.
Formerly enslaved man Frederick Douglass said, “The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles.”
Martin Luther King Jr. called them “a promissory note” that had come due.
Even the more radical activist Pauli Murray saw a Black military guard at the National Archives, and said, “It was Black America who was safeguarding the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”
Reason 17: July 4 is a day to celebrate the right to life of the unborn.
Declaration signer John Witherspoon noted, “Some nations have given parents the power of life and death over their children” and rejected that. Original Supreme Justice James Wilson said the right to life starts in the womb.
Reasons 18-20: Three new civil rights heroes applied the right to life in our day.
Last year, Benedictine College gave honorary degrees to the three legal experts hailed as “The women who toppled Roe v. Wade.”
Reasons 21-51: At least 31 states quote the Declaration’s right to life wording in their constitutions.
Reasons 52-56: America’s founding principles make a “new politics” possible.
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori’s pastoral letter on the 250th says American principles encourage a new politics which:
- Resists the idolatry of ideology.
- Honors human life from conception to natural death.
- Protects the vulnerable and marginalized.
- Engages in dialogue rather than accusation.
- Places the common good above partisan loyalty.
Reason 57: America’s founding documents demand we evangelize.
Archbishop Lori further quotes John Adam’s saying American self-government is “only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Reasons 58-233: Catholics are in key positions in the three branches of government.
Not long ago anti-Catholicism made it unthinkable that Catholics would rise to the highest levels of U.S. government. Our principles of equality self-corrected that, and the U.S. Congress has averaged about 160 Catholics over the past decade. The Supreme Court includes six Catholics. News reports list at least 10 Catholics in Executive Branch leadership positions.
Reasons 234-243 are the 10 reasons Catholics can celebrate America’s presidency.
… including the Catholic-friendly Mount Rushmore presidents.
Reasons 244-247 celebrate five Catholic wins that happened on July 4:
- 1776, Charles Carroll, a Catholic, signed the Declaration.
- 1817, in Rome, New York, Catholic immigrants began building the Erie Canal, bringing economic transformation.
- 1941, Fulton Sheen, the newest of our American saints or blesseds, published his Declaration of Dependence.
- 2012, the U.S. bishops completed their first “Fortnight for Freedom” prayer response to threats to religious freedom. It worked.
Reasons 248-250 are three Catholic heroes who kept America free — plus thousands more.
At the U.S. bishops’ website Harvard’s Brownen McShea celebrates Catholic war heroes, including Commodore John Barry and Colonel John Fitzgerald in the Revolutionary War; and convert William Rosencrans, who carried his rosary into key Civil War battles.
Happy Birthday, U.S.A!
