Today dawned bright and sunny, which is a sheer gift for July in San Francisco. Many July 4ths are fogged in here, with the bombs bursting in air invisibly above the fog layer. We hear the rockets, and we see their red glare, but we don’t see them. Today, however, I will join friends on a rooftop in North Beach to see the full splendor of Italian pyrotechnics. We Italians love fire!
At morning Mass, during the sermon, I read the first two paragraphs of our national Declaration of Independence. In fact, about three miles from where I write these words, another independence was declared on June 29, 1776: St. Junipero Serra established La Misión de San Francisco de Asis, and so began the City of San Francisco. Serra declared independence from sin and evil six days before John Hancock declared independence from King George and Great Britian. Both were courageous acts of human virtue.
And what, exactly, is the fundamental virtue in the American Declaration of Independence?
“When in the Course of human events,” it begins, “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” In this first paragraph, we feel the colonists’ agony in having to declare a separation from their mother country. But they appeal to the laws of “Nature’s God” which entitle them, and necessitate them, to declare independence. The virtue in the Declaration, therefore, is this appeal to a higher power. The new country’s source of rights would be the Laws of God rather than simply the will of the people.
And so the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We are entitled, and “endowed,” with certain rights not by ourselves but by our Creator.
I think most Americans still believe in the Declaration, although some would like to do away with “America” altogether. It’s remarkable, when you come to think of it, that 248 years after it was written, the Declaration still holds. I think it is holding on, however, only by a few threads. Those threads are its few appeals to “God” and “Creator.” The signers did not agree on what “God” meant beyond a power higher than themselves, but if we can hold on to that minimum of humility—that we did not make ourselves, and that we cannot sustain ourselves—our Republic will hold.
At morning Mass, during the sermon, I read the first two paragraphs of our national Declaration of Independence. In fact, about three miles from where I write these words, another independence was declared on June 29, 1776: St. Junipero Serra established La Misión de San Francisco de Asis, and so began the City of San Francisco. Serra declared independence from sin and evil six days before John Hancock declared independence from King George and Great Britian. Both were courageous acts of human virtue.
And what, exactly, is the fundamental virtue in the American Declaration of Independence?
“When in the Course of human events,” it begins, “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” In this first paragraph, we feel the colonists’ agony in having to declare a separation from their mother country. But they appeal to the laws of “Nature’s God” which entitle them, and necessitate them, to declare independence. The virtue in the Declaration, therefore, is this appeal to a higher power. The new country’s source of rights would be the Laws of God rather than simply the will of the people.
And so the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We are entitled, and “endowed,” with certain rights not by ourselves but by our Creator.
I think most Americans still believe in the Declaration, although some would like to do away with “America” altogether. It’s remarkable, when you come to think of it, that 248 years after it was written, the Declaration still holds. I think it is holding on, however, only by a few threads. Those threads are its few appeals to “God” and “Creator.” The signers did not agree on what “God” meant beyond a power higher than themselves, but if we can hold on to that minimum of humility—that we did not make ourselves, and that we cannot sustain ourselves—our Republic will hold.
Icon of St. Junipero Serra, painted by my friend Pavel Tikhomirov, who left the Soviet Union 40 years ago to find freedom in our country.
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