Sacred Liberty

Dignitatis Humanae: Declaration on Religious Freedom:

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Pope Paul VII December 7, 1965 Vatican II issued this important document, which shifted the Catholic Church’s approach to religious freedom, embracing the American approach. The statement had been pushed hard by American Cardinals and academics. Dignitatis Humanae was used later by reformers within the Catholic Church who were fighting Communism and other tyrannies. Pope John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel, argues that he owed his effectiveness, as both archbishop of Krakow and pope, to this Madisonian document. “Absent Dignitatis…

Read More Read More

John F. Kennedy’s speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

John F Kennedy September 12, 1960 John F. Kennedy decided he needed to address the Catholic Issue directly. He did so during a speech in Houston. Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck, I’m grateful for your generous invitation to speak my views. While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until…

Read More Read More

President Eisenhower: ‘And I don’t care what it is’

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

President Dwight Eisenhower December 22, 1952 In comments at the Waldorf Astoria hotel on December 22, 1952, Eisenhower described an encounter with Georgy Zhukov, a top Soviet official. It became a famous explication of the modern approach to combining piety with pluralism. I must say that in just a matter of immediate dialectic contest, let’s say, I didn’t know exactly what to say to him, because my only definition was what I believed to be the basic one, the basic…

Read More Read More

Dwight D. Eisenhower First Inaugural Address

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

President Dwight D. Eisenhower January 20, 1953 In his first Inaugural Address, President Eisenhower called for religious renewal. My friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate to this moment, would you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own. And I ask that you bow your heads: Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates in the Executive branch of Government join me in beseeching that…

Read More Read More

Statement by President Eisenhower Upon Signing Bill to Include the Words ‘Under God’ in the Pledge to the Flag

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

President Dwight D. Eisenhower June 14, 1954 From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than to contemplate this rededication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country’s true meaning. Especially is this meaningful as we regard today’s world. Over the…

Read More Read More

Report of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 1921

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization 1921 WARSAW. Concerning the general characteristics of aliens emigrating to the United States from Poland and the occupation or trade followed by them, reports Indicate’ such to be substantially as follows: (a) Physically deficient. (1) Wasted by disease and lack of food supplies. (2) Reduced to an unprecedented state of life during period of war as the result of oppression and want. (3) Present existence in squalor and filth. ( b ) Mentally deficient…

Read More Read More

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

US Supreme Court 1943 The Jehovah’s Witnesseses had been looking for a test case to demand more expansive religious liberty. They found it near Charleston, West Virginia. In 1942, the state board of education had issued a rule requiring kids to salute the American flag—“in the spirit of Americanism”—and declared that refusal “would be regarded as an Act of insubordination.” Ten-year-old Marie and eight-year-old Gathie Barnett, the children of a pipe fitting helper at a local DuPont factory, refused to…

Read More Read More

Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Education by Horace Mann

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Horace Mann 1844 Education reformer Horace Mann argued that the Bible by itself—when presented without commentary—was pure and universal, making “the perfect example of Jesus Christ” lovely in their eyes. But he opposed Catholic proposals to allow both Protestant and Catholic translations of the Bible to be taught. Here he explains why: And by allowing and enforcing two different religions, the government proclaims its own absurdity, for both cannot be right. Two opposites may both be wrong, but, while truth…

Read More Read More

Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Catholicism in the United States

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Pope Leo XIII January 6, 1895 “It would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity…

Read More Read More

“Yes, the Klan Has No Catholics”

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Klu Klux Klan Song Book A couplet from “Yes, the Klan Has No Catholics,” one of the anti-Catholic songs in the Ku Klux Klan Song Book: Source(s): Jacobs, “Co-Opting Christian Chorales,” p. 370; Danny O. Crew, Ku Klux Klan Sheet Music (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), p. 207.