Robert Barron | – God, Equality, and the Founding of America


Friends, we are in a time of profound cultural convulsion. There are deep concerns about the nature of justice and politics. But what makes for a just social order? The fundamental understanding of “unalienable” and God-given human rights. When we take belief in God out of that equation, the foundation of our liberal democracy gives way.

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Bishop Barron on the Canonization of Junípero Serra: [support us];t=428s

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About The Author

Bishop Robert Barron These are brief and insightful commentaries on faith and culture by Catholic theologian and author Bishop Robert Barron. The videos complement his weekly sermons posted and podcasted at WordOnFire.org.

Comment (48)

  1. Created. With inalienable rights. What is alien-able? Alien? Alien is an outsider. So, inalienable rights? Are they rights that cannot be removed? Endowed? "God given". Created with these rights that are so endowed so as not to be removed. The pursuit of happiness? Economic structures are so contrived that they deny the pursuit of happiness for most people. Consider that with inflation, the cost of our necessities so increases that for these nominal prices, we have added a zero every thirty years. This while the wages have gained very little in the same time or the same work that was paid $20.00/hour 30 years ago would command $200.00/hr. today. Yet, a home that was sold for $100,000.00 in 1990 might sell for $1,000,000.00 today. Labor always lags inflation.

    The best way to leverage against that trend is to buy a home, then, start a business. By these steps, one may pursue the happiness which is endowed by our creator. Otherwise, there continues to be more time spent working required to achieve the same standard of living. Or maybe one will win the lottery.

  2. Meticulously articulated! God is the conscience of our Democracy. To alienate God inevitability results in totalitarian regimes. Unfortunately, America has garnered a herd-like-mentality. The apparent tolerance of popular culture extends so far. The moment God is mentioned…animosity, indifference and suspicion subsists. Therefore, it is avoided altogether, but to our own demise. God is the remedy to America’s problems. Time and time again, legislation has failed, amendments repealed and orders overridden. Without God, we’re wayfarers. He is this country’s consistency. This is the conscience of Our Founding Fathers and Mothers, who were accustom to the inconveniences of the British Crown and the corruptions of the Church of England, but who intuitively knew the unalterable rights endowed by God to all men and the importance of a God-conscience in the interpretation of a political system. The popular monomania of secularism is unprecedented, weird and in a word: inhuman.

  3. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson was basing his ideas on the gospel words of Jesus Christ when he spoke about judgement, and whatever is done to "the least of these?" Meaning that even someone that might be considered the lowest of the low in society, such as a homeless begger, must also be treated with a certain degree of respect, concern, and dignity? Right?

  4. The "convulsion" is actually world wide it is multifaceted ,
    It has been brewing for sometime and is currently coming to a head.
    As a parent I have to convince my Children that there is only two genders,
    They have been taught that gender is ultimately a decision that one must make.
    The reason I bring this up is that it is a good example of the conflict.
    If I tell my kids there are only two genders they think I am a hater, If I tell them that having biological males competing in women's sports is unfair they think I am a hater.
    The point is we understand the physical world by giving names to things so we can categorize and order things in our minds . By doing this we get to better understand our physical world.
    When you disrupt this process and teach people that the only category of reality is the one you have in your mind , it is easy to manipulate these people because all you have to do is to introduce a concept of reality to them that suits your purposes.
    What I see in the world is a conflict between two groups of people, one group that operates largely from emotion that do not question their belief systems .
    They operate largely from their mental category and are easily manipulated.
    The other group is conservative they like data, and are more critical thinking.
    Some people say that comunism has infiltrated western ideology and that it has been sowing the seeds of confusion
    For along time.
    I think they are probably correct.
    if you look at what happened in the cultural revolution in China the first thing they did was to dismantle 5000 years of Chinese culture. They needed to demoralize the population before they could gain control of them. America has gone through a process of demoralization and is now rip for the picking.
    The concept that people have been taught is that we must first think of ours selves as part of a group identity , race sex, etc . The concept of our individuality comes second.
    We are no longer unique individual creatures created by God.
    These groups can be pited against each other by labeling some oppressors and some the oppressed, which may have elements of truth in it.
    But as they say the Devil will take your past sins the ones you have committed and the ones that have been committed against you, he will repurposed them and use them to destroy you.
    Some people call this scapegoating, there has been alot of this going on.
    Forgiveness is no longer part of the vocabulary.

  5. How does the view that some of our founders were Deist square with the intent of the Constitution if they did not believe in religion? I do not hold that view but I don’t know enough to refute the argument. Bishop Barron can you help me with this with some talking points?

  6. Thank you. This was good and useful.
    Please continue to give us tools to understand our present situation.
    We, the laity, also need practical advise on how to meet and cope with the hostility Catholics face today. You mentioned Catholic Action in your latest article… maybe something like that could be helpful in "such a time as this"?

  7. "Serra's evangelism, at least indirectly, is the ground of the principles Jefferson is talking about."

    What would be correct is to say that Serra and Jefferson are operating within a common cultural and ideological space (Christian Europe in the late 18th century). It is confusing and misleading to imply that Jefferson's work stands on Serra's work when there is no causal connection (such as a statue stands on a pillar, the pillar causes the statue to be in the place it is).

    Your remarks here, Bishop, appear to create a mood affiliation between the evangelical work of St. Junipero Serra and the democratic egalitarian project of Thomas Jefferson (at least as exists in the Declaration of Independence). This affiliation feels extremely specious given that the California Indians were seen as legal children (and treated more poorly than Spanish children). How can you compare that project to the project of creating legal equality among all peoples?

    Would Serra's methods and effects stand up to the teachings of Church on evangelization and proselytizing as made more clear in the 2nd Vatican Council? I think a clear-eyed assessment would say "no, the Church would forbid such a project today." I favor a theology of continuity with the Council, and so the teaching laid out there can be applied in any age.

    Furthermore, if we judge Serra's project by the work of his contemporaries, how do we explain his decision not to follow the example of the Jesuits in Paraguay who had managed a peaceful Catholic republic for a century prior to Serra's work and whose achievements in South America were written about by famous writers like Montesquieu. Serra made choices with the knowledge he had. These need to be explained in light of the suffering and death his choices caused.

  8. The idea of equality is relevant only in the context of law and order in civil society. And the concept makes sense only when reciprocal legal obligations are met.
    Individuals in organised society subject themselves to a higher power (the state) to address inequality, without denying it. When law and order is compromised, inequality reasserts itself. There is no doubt the bible denies equality. It recognises that the vanquished are automatically enslaved for instance, which today still holds true in Islam.
    A similiar collorary could be drawn from Western imperialism. It was couched in missionary zeal but exercised in military might and in search of markets and strategic outposts. The Church extended legitimacy to the colonialists but did not exercise any adjudicative function, so much so that colonial subjects were forced to live under inequality. The New World could not have implications of a free world. Globalisation on the pretext of alleviating poverty, a christian ideal, asserts a new kind of slavery.
    Unless we return to the biblical expositions, the ideal of equality remains elusive. When Christs says the poor will always be with us, he first recognises inequality and by implication, establishes a christian duty to ameliorate inequality. Only at the end of our lives are we all equal, equal before God, judged equally according to our works. In the meanwhile, we continue to pretend rights and equality inalienable, and legitimise the proposition with christian ideals.

  9. Thomas Jefferson was not the luminary in his time, he is today. Benjamin Rush comes to mind. Another thing I would point out. The declaration of independence is a piece of propaganda, the ideals expressed in it to the extent they are taken do not work. These ideals lead to the articles of confederation. But I do agree , taking The Lord out of the picture dose lead to tyranny and a searing of ones consciense.

  10. I am reading Gary Willis book on Jefferson, so I am sure he will enlighten me on this. However, when we consider that we were "created" equal — obviously, he isn't talking about our bodies or our individual political power or wealth. He is talking about us as people created identically. The church would call that our soul. I think Jefferson was thinking of us as equal citizens — in the abstract.

  11. Bishop Barron has a beautiful mind with the capacity to make a topic relate to all levels of thinking human beings…children, teens young adults and older adults. His art is giving beauty to conversation as a model for all of us across the globe. Thank you Bishop as I now think, see and relate to the beautiful again as I knew as a child from my father, who saw and showed me the beautiful that leads to Truth.

  12. Fascinating; human equality comes from God…so does human freedom (otherwise our molecular structure would determine everything), likewise the Rule of Law and Human Rights. Religious beliefs, Christian or Judeo Christian, perhaps others, are the foundations of our democracies and systems of justice. Neutrality to these religious beliefs is nonsense.

  13. I stand with modern Natives who tore his statues down. Through missionary work he assimilated Native Americans to European culture and Catholicism, by promising protection from Spanish Army brutalizations, whoever followed was treated well if they didn't die from foreign spread disease (similar to what happen to Natives on the east coast) and whoever didn't listen where basically at the whim of the army. And when the rest of his argument is how Thomas Jefferson said we were all CREATED equal – yes it was such a powerful message – I agree it is. However Thomas Jefferson enslaved over 600 GOD CREATED HUMAN BEINGS through out his life and also brought about the Trail of Tears (forcing relocation of 60,000 Native Americans from their land they've had for hundreds of years) so I think there is an extreme paradox in both these men's lives that isn't being told and as much as I agree that saying we are created equal I also think history tells us we use religion to tell people who don't have the same beliefs that they are savages and that they are wrong therefor we deserve their bodies as labor and their land as our own. Which is not right.

  14. If you do a rudimentary search of the life of Jefferson you'll find he is very religious, granted evangelical protestant not catholic. In fact every single one of the founders was; half were graduates from seminaries. One of the great thinkers who influenced that document was John Locke, if you look at all his writings it's clear he was a theologian. America is a Christian country without a state controled religion.
    We used to know this. Go to Wall Builders and learn our history.

  15. Agreed but, but, but…belief in God and the proper interpretation of the US constitution are, indeed, “mutually implicative” but not exclusive. There are many systems of government over the centuries that have been supported by sincere Christians – think Joan of Arc and Bossuet on the French monarchy, Martin Luther on German princes, the Holy Roman emperors, post Constantine Roman emperors etc.

    The Pauline and Augustinian views of government are that they are divinely ordained to punish and reform and seem fairly agnostic on what shape this takes. I don’t believe in the US constitution because man was created in man’s image but because, in the words of CS Lewis, I “believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.” Once it’s done that – one among many systems – it’s done its job.

  16. As a woman, it can be difficult to accept we are not equally beautiful. Sure beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Some women, for whatever reason, naturally attract more men based on their appearance alone. I can also to see how intelligence is not evenly distributed. It is difficult to accept your limitations without feeling envious towards those who have more than you or do not share your limitations and flaws.

  17. The United States was founded on the idea of a "New Order" replacing the "Old Order" of the Catholic Monarchy. It is founded on the principles of the Freemasonic Enlightenment which is a DIRECT ENEMY of Catholicism!… yet our Bishops (our "generals") seem to be the only ones who are so blinded by their corruption and sin that they cannot see this obvious fact. Shame on you. The absolute death and destruction this ideology has had on the Church are innumerable. One thousand times… Shame on you…May God have Mercy on your Souls, and may Our Lady bring us the Prophetised Grand Monarch soon.

  18. The "god" of the United States is the god of the Enlightenment. According to the writings of the "fathers" of the country, It is Lucifer and the "goddess Reason" …The United States in a 100% MASONIC enterprise whose main purpose is the destruction of the Catholic Monarchy and Church! One only needs a few minutes of research to realize this! It is NOT the Trinity!…STOP fooling yourselves and the children of God with the Heresy of "Americanism"!… It is so frustrating when our leaders are so absolutely blind!

  19. The problem is sin for both a democracy and the Church. In a democracy, we should be able to decide (by majority rule, obviously) what is the LOWEST acceptable standard we will tolerate as a diverse society. The Church calls us away from all sin. So in essence, it is the job of the Church to maintain the highest standard while a democracy maintains…ostensibly…the lowest standard of behavior. Those who cannot accept the lowest standard must go to jail or suffer some other rejection from general society.

  20. To corroborate what you're saying, before I started going back to church (baptist) I found great delight in people watching, disparaging folks based on the way they looked, hating people who did things that impede me, looking down on people who are different from me in any way.
    I found God (still working on finding Jesus) and now, I can't do any of that anymore. Every once in a while I might start judging folks in my head, but it no longer gives the catharsis it once did. It's just an old habit, bubbling up, easily squashed. I get no joy from looking down on others, but I get great comfort from acknowledging that they are people just like me, who through the many varied experiences that we all endure, the choices we make and the consequences of those choices, have perhaps taken very different paths to become just like me: broken, imperfect, struggling to find something more.
    We all possess a tiny piece of God within ourselves, a spark of the divine that makes us truly equal.

  21. People are created equal because they are rational animals – they have a body and a soul. Of course, everyone's body is different, but the objective moral standard is the same for everyone. That said, there certainly are differences in status. For example, a child must obey its parents, and the parents in turn have a duty to care for and raise the child.

    This is somewhat more speculative, but there is a good argument that one could accurately describe normal human beings as having one of two distinct natures: male and female. This follows from the undeniable biological and psychological differences between the sexes. According to what I have read, it was believed back in the Middle Ages and St. Thomas Aquinas seemed to have shared the opinion that men naturally dominated women and vice versa. Marriage was seen as a special case of a more general phenomena where the rights and duties (including those concerning what was in the past called "the marital act") of the spouses were clearly defined by the fact of the newly created statuses of husband and wife. This is suggested by an older definition of the the word "husband:" a prudent, thrifty manager.

    While I agree with and will defer to those more familiar with Aristotle's philosophy that Aristotle thought that that there were certain natural orders, he also thought that the only basis for truly comparing human beings was by their behavior (good vs. bad). A good man is a good person, and a bad man is not. This distinction has no regard for social status or office. This truth certainly is consistent with Catholic doctrine.

    Liberal democracy is a bad form of government. Leaders can be chosen democratically, but the rule by majority vote is a vehicle for injustice and unjust laws. It is a big mistake. This is not surprising because this conception was started by the Protestant modern philosopher John Locke.

  22. I trust Bishop Barron vs. those formal catholic theologians and formal, catholic philosophers (formal, meaning w/ a degree related to those disciplines). Bishop Barron will be a doctor of the Church, most likely.

    God bless, Revelation 21:4

  23. Lol, TOTALLY off-base!!!
    Christian colonialists killed probably nearing 100 million non-Christians around the world and took their lands in the name of gold, Manifest Destiny, and the Doctrine of Discovery. The latter of which stated non-Christians were essentially non-entities, and thus their lands were considered "vacant" and could be taken freely.
    Yes, despite the fact that they had been there and sustainably stewarded their lands with great respect for thousands and thousands of years…unlike their ruthless conquerers.
    https://www.newsweek.com/native-americans-impact-landscape-europeans-1483235

  24. Furthermore:
    https://www.nomadseed.com/2020/06/healing-the-divided-states-of-america/
    "The so-called United States of America is founded on three original sins: the genocide and dispossession of native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, and the early compromisation of our emerging democratic government, which damaged our ability to be unified by denying voice to women, children, the poor, and nature.

    Onondaga leader named Canassatego, who brought to the colonists at the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744 the inspiration for democracy, based on the Haudenosaunee confederacy of the Six Nations who the Onondaga represented.

    Whereas among the Haudenosaunee representational voice was given to women, as well as to children, animals, and nature (symbolized by the concept of the Seven Generations), the founding fathers chose to leave these voices out."

    IOW, the Founding Fathers copypasta'd the more egalitarian aboriginal law…but stripped away all the rights from women, children, and Nature…to squander all to themselves.
    So, they didn't give more rights, they actually took them away…

  25. You're talking about civil law vs. natural law and you leave out the republic. There's nothing liberal about democracy. Democracy is a crowd shouting Barabas. Nowhere does it state democracy or liberal in the founding documents. How do you square that? You sound very confused.

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