Religion

We believe that it is absolutely impossible to disentangle Christianity not only from American identity, but from Western civilization itself. While it is certainly true that pre-Christian Greco-Roman civilization constitutes the “cradle of Western civilization”, the fall of the Roman Empire would have been its grave but for the sudden rejuvenation infused into it by the Christian enlightenment. Nothing other than its conversion would have enkindled the Roman Empires dying embers. Only Christianity had within it the power of unifying the simple and the learned alike. Great intellectual and cultural feats capable of synthesizing Hellenic wisdom with Hebraic Revelation were accomplished, preserved and cultivated by men like St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Boethius, and Bede the Venerable. These men and their legions of monastic followers kept the flame of civilization burning, while the hoards of invading barbarians were gradually lulled into cooperation by the Church's attractive ascetical practices, liturgical patrimony, and cultic veneration of saints and holy wonder workers. In time, Sts. Peter and Paul would replace Romulus and Remus, Constantine and Theodosius would replace Augustus and Nero, and the Fathers of the Church would replace the ancient Academy. For the next thousand years, Christianity and Western civilization would be so intertwined in practice as to be inseparable in idea. From our legal tradition rooted in Gratian principles, to the Christian roots of the scientific revolution, to the biblical roots of how we understand the role of the family in society, every unique societal contribution that Western civilization has brought to the world has been thoroughly rooted in the fruits that were borne out of the deposit of faith that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Logos of God, left to His Apostles and their successors. Since that time, Divine Providence has made sure that the Church which His only begotten Son founded would leave Her indelible mark in a special way upon those Western nations that She most intimately developed out of throughout the centuries.

It is this intellectual, spiritual, moral, and cultural patrimony that was passed on to the New World ever since Columbus. We maintain that American culture simply cannot be disentangled from this more ancient patrimony She received from Christendom and from Christendom alone. Even the framers of the Constitution, though they wrote from ostensibly secular premises, nevertheless would very adamantly balk at the notion that the new nation which they sought to forge could in any way be understood as alien to this Christian patrimony. They understood that a free society could only preserve its freedom in the measure that the people adhere to the natural, moral law which is but a reflection of the eternal law of God which is implanted in our hearts but also preserved and interpreted safely in the bosom of His Son's Mystical Body here on earth. In order to perpetuate, therefore, the constitutional principles of Jefferson, we must submit to the moral laws of the Gospel.

Therefore, no matter what political issue we are facing, we must as American patriots never forsake our God-given obligation to faithfully integrate our political initiatives and policy goals within the framework of the demands of the Gospels. We therefore must stand firm in rejecting any political ideology that would undermine any of the following values: the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, the ontological immutability of male and female and their respective domestic and social roles, the inviolability of the natural family as rooted in the indissoluble and fertile marital bond of one man and one woman, the subordination of economic development to the interests of the American family as an institution. In short, the political must stand in due subordination to the spiritual, the natural to the supernatural, and the practical to the moral. We therefore insist that any political activities we pursue be in harmony with this rightful ordering of priorities. America can only be put first if God is put first. This is because God is the origin and end of all things. Enjoyment of finite goods profits us nothing if this is done out of harmony with the Divine Good, just as it is ultimately future to enjoy the afterglow of a fire's warmth if the fire itself is put out. We must keep the flame of God's grace alive and at the center of every political action we undertake, and if this is followed scrupulously, God Himself will multiply the loaves and fishes that we offer Him.