In the first few pages of this book, the author likens it to an opening statement in a courtroom trial, with the American founders as defendants. It is an apt warning.
Reilly argues for the proposition that the reason American culture is a mess is that the influential elite has strayed from the principals which undergirded the American experiment. The opposing proposition is that American culture is a mess because the seeds of its degradation were sown from the beginning by the founders and their documents, primarily the Declaration and the Constitution.
Note that both sides agree that American culture is a mess; the contention is all about whether we can blame the founders for laying a foundation which would inevitably lead to a loss of freedom and a top-heavy governmental apparatus, oron the other hand, the founders had the principles right, and that we would be okay if we had not allowed the principles to be violated.
Reilly begins his defense by arguing that the founders were guided by the principles that animated the Middle Ages, the philosophical underpinning being provided by such thinkers as Aristotle and Aquinas. The opposing view is that the founders were guided by the Enlightenment.
I think Reilly makes his case. (Although, we need to recall that this is his “opening statement
in the trial, and he does not present the opposing case in any detail.) Certainly, Reilly has no trouble in presenting evidence to support his claim. Surely, one could cite isolated instances that run counter to Reilly’s position. For example: The widely-known fact that Thomas Jefferson dabbled in Deism for a time, which is a “enlightened” fake of Christianity. But on the whole, one can not read study the writings of Madison, Adams, Carroll, and Jefferson without drawing the conclusion that the founders were informed more by Medieval philosophy and religion that by Enlightenment thought.
While wading through Reilly’s account, I kept asking myself: “What about slavery?” How does one account for what seems to be an half-hearted acquiescence on the part of the founders to put up with that institution – that institution which is totally alien to the Medieval way of thinking which was, according to the author. habitual with the framers.
Reilly winds up by saying that the acquiescence to slavery was a “prudential compromise” (p.335). It could much more accurately be called an “unprincipled compromise”. This is not just a semantic quibble.
Anyway, five stars for this book. It is in a sense a partisan book. He is pushing a point of view. But he does it honestly, by presenting the opposing view fairly, and not trying to stage a fake duel with a caricatur
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The Catholic Church and the Founding of the U.S.A.: “There is No Antagonism Between Them”
“We think we can claim to be acquainted both with the laws, institutions and spirit of the Catholic Church, and with the laws, institutions and spirit of our country; and we emphatically declare that there is no antagonism between them. A Catholic finds himself at home in the United States; for the influence of his Church has constantly been exercised in behalf of individual rights and popular liberties. And the right-minded American nowhere finds himself more at home than in the Catholic Church, for nowhere else can he breathe more freely that atmosphere of Divine truth, which alone can make him free. We repudiate with equal earnestness the assertion that we need to lay aside any of our devotedness to our Church, to be true Americans; the insinuation that we need to abate any of our love for our country’s principles and institutions, to be faithful Catholics.” ~ Pastoral Letter to the Clergy and Laity, issued at the close of The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, December 7, 1884 (1)Notes:1. Guilday, Peter, A History of the Councils of Baltimore (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), pp. 246-247.
