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The Blessings of Liberty

During the greatest test of the durability of our Constitutional Union, President Abraham Lincoln offered a biblical metaphor to illustrate the intrinsic connection between the Declaration (an apple) and the Constitution (a picture of silver surrounding the apple). “The picture was made not to conceal or destroy the apple,” Lincoln proclaimed poetically, “but to adorn and preserve it.” The “apple” represents the certain unalienable “natural rights” identified in the Declaration, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Constitution is the picture of silver, whose purpose is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty.” The blessings of liberty, therefore, are the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence at the founding of our country: “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.” These blessings of liberty are the heart of the self-government enumerated by the Constitution and have been in contest since the founding.

As Catholics, we must understand the blessings of liberty, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” through the lens of our faith, and not the lens of a particular ideology or party platform, lest we misinterpret their meaning and our own obligation to our community. These “natural rights” are derived from man’s human nature as an inherently communal creature. Too often, “rights” language has devolved into artificial civil rights, unreflective
of human nature and damaging to community. Therefore a true understanding of the meaning of the blessings of liberty is required to ensure the preservation of the Union, as Lincoln encouraged. To achieve an understanding of the blessings of liberty, one must first examine how the American founders understood them and then compare the civil rights that use the language of the blessings of liberty to violate natural rights, and finally explore human nature and Catholic civic duty.

What did the Founders mean?

The Declaration and Constitution are influenced by an amalgamation of Christian principles and ancient and modern political thought, including John Locke, an influential 17th-century philosopher. Locke argued that natural rights of “life, liberty and property,” are endowed within man’s being and known through human reason and the “laws of nature” in which all are “equal and independent.”1 Modern social contract theory suggests man must enter into a social contract (form a government) to protect these rights, but the American founders did not present Lockean natural rights in the context of European Enlightenment, rather as part of a greater picture political thought and theology that influenced the founding of America.

The political thought of the American founders was formed by classical education in Greek and Roman political regimes, the English republican tradition in the common law and Magna Carta,2 and the natural law tradition from Medieval theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas and ancients such as Aristotle and Cicero.3 Even though early America was predominantly Protestant, there was an inclination of the Founders to the medieval centuries where Catholic theology dominated man’s understanding of human nature.4 With this in mind, it is clear the founders crafted a distinct American experiment, the first nation to ever be conceived as a self-government, centered on the blessings of liberty.

Natural Rights vs. Civil Rights

The Declaration refers to the blessings of liberty as “self-evident,” which means the natural rights of all mankind are provable within the nature of the human person.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The first two of these unalienable rights are “life” and “liberty.” According to Locke, from whom the language was borrowed, man is equal by nature and in a “state of liberty,” but not given license to take away another’s life or liberty.5 The third is “the pursuit of happiness.” The “pursuit of happiness,” distinct from Locke’s “property” right, stands as a more noble human end, and one based on “habits of virtue”6 according to Aristotle. Man is a political animal”7 meant for community and man is meant to pursue the good.8 American founder John Adams’ letter after the signing of the Declaration states: “All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.” The American appeal to independence with the blessings of liberty was not merely directed to particular circumstances with Britain, but to a universal and permanent standard of justice presented by the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” and founded on virtue as the path to “pursue happiness” in the good.

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Yet, in the 21st century, the blessings of liberty proclaimed by the founders and endowed by God are often confused with “civic rights” that result in gross violations of natural rights of others.

Modern political thought influenced by the European Enlightenment has led to a contemporary society where politics define the “blessings of liberty” in terms of independence from community and relationship with others. This sense of individual freedom is displayed grotesquely in the current abortion debate in America.

So-called “right to abortion” ballot propositions are in several states this year, including Colorado. Unrestricted and unregulated abortion for all 40 weeks of pregnancy on healthy mothers and healthy babies is not a right; it is a depravity of natural rights, particularly of the unborn child’s life, liberty and ability to pursue happiness. Furthermore, while parents do have a natural right over the care of their children, these abortion laws also remove the parental right to be notified if their minor has an abortion. This means “right to abortion” amendments could allow girls as young as 13 years old to have an abortion under the direction of their boyfriend or school counselor without their parents’ knowledge. This is not liberty, it does not embrace life and data show that it causes deep unhappiness for the mother and her family.

Human Nature

The misunderstanding of “natural rights” as arbitrary, man-given “civil rights” rests on a misunderstanding of human nature. A proper understanding of human nature considers man’s fallen nature and his communal nature. The American founders understood both.

In Federalist 51, James Madison wrote, “What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Because man is fallen, government is necessary. But government also has an opportunity to bring fallen men together and help form habits of virtue that lead to happiness, which is directed to the good. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, every human action is motivated by a desire for happiness directed by intrinsic human inclinations to the natural law. Some of these inclinations are shared with all animals (life, freedom, happiness), but man also has a natural inclination for the good, Aquinas says: “Thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society.”9 It is in society that man finds his deepest happiness, because he is a communal creature, created in the imago Dei (“image of God”), who himself is a communion of persons in the Trinity. This is what is means to pursue happiness as a Christian – a point that was not lost on many of the American founders who ecumenically shared faith in God.

The Blessings of Liberty and the Church

The American founders may not all have been theologians, but they did recognize human nature as fallen, inherently communal and possessing certain unalienable rights endowed by God. Because of these realities, Constitutional government is needed to secure and protect man’s natural rights – the blessings of liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution. There was no “wall of separation” between the founders’ faith and the work of government, other than to protect religious freedom from government encroachment.

Faith directs moral action and it is an obligation for Catholics to engage in public discourse from the vantage point of their faith. As Pope Pius XI stated in his address Quadragesimo Anno (1931):

“There resides in [the Church] the right and duty to pronounce with supreme authority upon social and economic matters. Certainly the Church was not given the commission to guide men to an only fleeting and perishable happiness but to that which is eternal” (41).

All three of the blessings of liberty, natural rights self-evident in man, are most fulfilled in God. Because of Christ, man has life (Gen 2:7, Jn 10:10); because of Christ, man is free (2 Cor 3:17); because of Christ, man can pursue happiness in his ultimate end in him (Jn 3:16). And, as faithful Catholics, we are called to defend these natural rights in public discourse for the common good of all. The blessings of liberty provide a just framework of government, but they do not point man to his ultimate end in God. That is the work of the Church and her duty to engage with the faithful in public discourse and point man toward “that which is eternal.”

 


1. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Sec 6 (1689).
2. Russel Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Delaware: ISI), 2003, p. 194.
3. Matthew Spalding, We Still Hold These Truths, (Delaware: ISI Books), 2010, p. 41.
4. Russel Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Delaware: ISI), 2003, p. 178.
5. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Sec 6 (1689).
6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1176b30.
7. Aristotle, Politics, 1252b1.
8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a.
9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, art. 2.

Brittany Vessely
Brittany Vessely
Brittany Vessely is the Executive Director of the Colorado Catholic Conference.
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