Renewing the promise of America: A Catholic tribute this Fourth of July

As fireworks light up our skies and patriotic songs echo from sea to shining sea, Americans across the nation prepare to celebrate the birth of the greatest experiment in human freedom: the United States of America.

The Fourth of July is more than a commemoration of independence. It is a call to remember the sacrifices, the dreams, and the values that made our republic possible — and Catholics’ role in our great national story.

There is no better time than now for all Christians and men and women of good spirit to renew the great virtues that made our country the beacon that shines around the world.

Now, as Catholics recover from four years of a presidential administration actively weaponized against them, we must remember that we still have a seat at the table.

The first Thanksgiving — on what would become U.S. soil — was not a turkey dinner in Plymouth but a Mass. On September 8, 1565, in what is now St. Augustine, Florida, Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales celebrated the holy Eucharist, giving thanks to God for a safe voyage from Spain and the new beginning in this land.

It was a deeply Catholic expression of gratitude — a reminder that before America was a nation, it was already a place where the faith was planted.

That same spirit of courage and conviction continued through the Revolution. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence stood one Catholic: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a man of extraordinary education and faith. At a time when anti-Catholic prejudice was rampant in the colonies, Carroll’s signature was a bold testimony that Catholics were willing to risk everything — fortune, honor, and life itself — for liberty.

No group more embodied the pioneer spirit and resilience of the early republic than the Catholic sisters who took to the frontiers — not with muskets, but with habits, discipline, and love.

In 1727, the Ursuline Sisters opened the first Catholic hospital in New Orleans, 24 years before Benjamin Franklin founded the first one in the original colonies. Later, the Sisters of Charity would build dozens of hospitals across the expanding nation, including the Baltimore Infirmary in 1827. These heroic women served all: rich and poor, black and white, Christian and non-Christian.

Even legends of the Wild West intersect with this Catholic witness. The infamous Doc Holliday, once a gunfighter, died not in some saloon but in a Catholic hospital in the Rockies, attended by sisters and reconciled with God through the Catholic Church.

Sadly, forces have recently been at work to exclude Catholics from expressing our deeply held beliefs in the society we helped to build.

Under President Biden, the FBI authorized federal agents to spy on Catholics in their houses of worship and shamelessly persecuted pro-life advocates for speaking out peacefully about the dignity of human life. Meanwhile, the Biden FBI sat idly by while extremists carried out more than 500 attacks on Catholic churches across the nation, including upon St. Patrick Catholic Church in Wichita, Kansas, where statues were destroyed and glass shattered, preventing worshippers from attending Mass.

Under the Trump administration, however, a new Justice Department task force will fight anti-Christian bias. Moreover, recent Supreme Court victories — some secured by Catholic plaintiffs or attorneys — reaffirm not only that Catholics are entitled to the same religious freedom guaranteed to all other faiths, but also that Catholics are key players in defending the First Amendment freedoms that make our nation great.

Modern Catholic heroes like Grace Morrison, for example, prove that religious freedom is still worth fighting for and we must continue to restore religious toleration to the American lexicon. Grace bravely stood up against the Montgomery County School Board in Maryland, which revoked parental notification and opt-outs for age-inappropriate and over-sexualized LGBTQ course materials for children as young as 3. Joining other religious plaintiffs of diverse faiths, Grace fought for her right to opt her 12-year-old daughter out of the materials promoting radical ideologies antithetical to her family’s beliefs.

Just last week, the Supreme Court affirmed her First Amendment rights.

Thanks to courageous individuals and victories like these, Catholics, who came to America to build, can take up once again their shared dream of creating a society of ordered liberty and moral greatness. That legacy endures in stone and memory in the U.S. Capitol, where statues of Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, St. Junípero Serra, St. Damien of Molokai, Fr. Eusebio Kino, and Fr. Jacques Marquette quietly testify to the Catholic heart of the American story.

There is no better time than now for all Christians and men and women of good spirit to renew the great virtues that made our country the beacon that shines around the world.

This is not a time to merely celebrate the past, but to shape the future, to conquer the new cultural frontiers that Pope Leo, the first American pope, is calling us to take on with renewed energy, courage, faith, and hope, reclaiming the nobility of our founding vision — and ensure that this “one nation under God” shines with even greater brilliance for generations to come.