04 July 2026
Five for the Fourth Now for Outright Love for This Land by Robert Royal Now 250 and Counting by Brad Miner Now for Living What We Claim to Believe by Francis X. Maier Now for 'Built Wiser than They Knew' by Michael Pakaluk Now for An Archipelago of Holiness and Truth by Joseph Wood
The Catholic Thing
About
By Robert Royal and Brad Miner and Francis X. Maier and Michael Pakaluk and Joseph R. Wood
In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo invokes the Biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as a poignant alternative to the Tower of Babel's effort to reach Heaven without God. It's a good reminder – but of something more than the pope indicated. In the days of walled cities, rebuilding walls was a defensive measure, establishing a safe perimeter before the reconstruction of the city itself could take place. There were threats outside – and within: "half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. . . .each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other." (Nehemiah 4:16-17)
And once the walls were rebuilt, Nehemiah had the priest Ezra publicly recite the Law of Moses before the whole people, who pledged themselves anew to the Covenant.
If I could have one wish on this anniversary, it's that we – at least many of us – will come to realize that America must be defended as well as reconsecrated. We've developed an allergy to this truth because we don't want to appear "defensive." But without a defense, those who are offensive – and they are legion – will have their way with us and many other nations.
It doesn't stop there. The defense exists so that we may build, and abundantly – in both a physical and a moral sense – because time is always wearing things down. We must work not just to keep what we have, but to extend it for ourselves and those who will come after.
In a confused and contested time like ours, that seems impossible because our divisions run so deep that we cannot even agree on what rebuilding would mean.
But here's a proposal. Every year for almost a quarter century, I've been running a Summer Seminar on the Free Society in the Slovak Republic, founded by the great Catholic and American, Michael Novak. In the concluding session, I lead students through "The Gift Outright," a poem that Robert Frost read at the inauguration of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy (Kennedy had asked Frost to write something for the occasion, which he did, but the day was so sunny – and Frost's aging eyes so weak – that he couldn't read the text, and instead recited this poem from memory).
It laments how Americans remained colonials – until they changed. It ends:
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
That transformation was not peaceful ("many deeds of war"), but it was heartfelt, a free gift to an uncertain future, in short, the only thing that might renew us all, of whatever persuasions, yet again: outright love for this land.
I don't remember much about Mesopotamia, but they say it's where civilization began. As has been the case throughout history, it was good for those on top but not for the rest. This was true of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, although, unlike Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt, the Greco-Roman legacy remains very much with us. It has always been true.
You can see that legacy in the Constitution of the United States. You can also see there the Fall of Man, after which no civilization has been or could be a City of God. I'm thinking here of the Three-Fifths Compromise, a deal with the Devil if ever there was one.
But name a society before the U.S. that was able to correct its trajectory in less than two centuries, and to restore amity.
We know we'll never be perfect. Still, as G.K. Chesterton wrote about America, ours is the "only nation in the world that is founded on a creed":
That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independe...
In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo invokes the Biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as a poignant alternative to the Tower of Babel's effort to reach Heaven without God. It's a good reminder – but of something more than the pope indicated. In the days of walled cities, rebuilding walls was a defensive measure, establishing a safe perimeter before the reconstruction of the city itself could take place. There were threats outside – and within: "half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. . . .each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other." (Nehemiah 4:16-17)
And once the walls were rebuilt, Nehemiah had the priest Ezra publicly recite the Law of Moses before the whole people, who pledged themselves anew to the Covenant.
If I could have one wish on this anniversary, it's that we – at least many of us – will come to realize that America must be defended as well as reconsecrated. We've developed an allergy to this truth because we don't want to appear "defensive." But without a defense, those who are offensive – and they are legion – will have their way with us and many other nations.
It doesn't stop there. The defense exists so that we may build, and abundantly – in both a physical and a moral sense – because time is always wearing things down. We must work not just to keep what we have, but to extend it for ourselves and those who will come after.
In a confused and contested time like ours, that seems impossible because our divisions run so deep that we cannot even agree on what rebuilding would mean.
But here's a proposal. Every year for almost a quarter century, I've been running a Summer Seminar on the Free Society in the Slovak Republic, founded by the great Catholic and American, Michael Novak. In the concluding session, I lead students through "The Gift Outright," a poem that Robert Frost read at the inauguration of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy (Kennedy had asked Frost to write something for the occasion, which he did, but the day was so sunny – and Frost's aging eyes so weak – that he couldn't read the text, and instead recited this poem from memory).
It laments how Americans remained colonials – until they changed. It ends:
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
That transformation was not peaceful ("many deeds of war"), but it was heartfelt, a free gift to an uncertain future, in short, the only thing that might renew us all, of whatever persuasions, yet again: outright love for this land.
I don't remember much about Mesopotamia, but they say it's where civilization began. As has been the case throughout history, it was good for those on top but not for the rest. This was true of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, although, unlike Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt, the Greco-Roman legacy remains very much with us. It has always been true.
You can see that legacy in the Constitution of the United States. You can also see there the Fall of Man, after which no civilization has been or could be a City of God. I'm thinking here of the Three-Fifths Compromise, a deal with the Devil if ever there was one.
But name a society before the U.S. that was able to correct its trajectory in less than two centuries, and to restore amity.
We know we'll never be perfect. Still, as G.K. Chesterton wrote about America, ours is the "only nation in the world that is founded on a creed":
That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independe...