Quote of the Day (John Courtney Murray, on the “Great Truth” Behind the Republic)

“It was the force of a great tradition that launched our republic, and I suppose one of the problems . . . is how does this tradition fare today. . . . Back there you did have this extraordinary agreement on basic truth . . . certainly one great truth that lies behind this statement of political purpose—the truth to which customarily refer by saying in Lincoln's words ‘that this is a nation under God’—that political life has a premise beyond itself, a premise that is theological, the existence of God, and then joined with that there is the other truth about man, the essential truth about man, namely that man is a sacredness. . . .”—John Courtney Murray, “The American Proposition” (Transcription of an interview on The Catholic Hour), Commonweal, Jan. 20, 1961

Notice the date when the above quote first appeared in the pages of Commonweal, the venerable journal of liberal Catholic opinion: it coincides with John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. In fact, if not for the work of this “second John” in furthering the notion of compatibility between American constitutionalism and Roman Catholicism, far more obstacles might have been placed in the path of the election of America’s first Roman Catholic President.

John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit, would not only write one of the seminal discussions of American religious liberty, We Hold These Truths, but was also the driving force behind Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom. His life work was significant enough to earn him the Time Magazine cover story (whose image accompanies this post), and did much to counteract a poisonous pseudo-intellectual, bestselling screed of 1949 whose title alone practically screamed anti-Catholic paranoia: Paul Blanshard’s American Freedom and Catholic Power.

The Web site of America Magazine,the national Catholic weekly magazine published by the Jesuits, contains an excellent 1985 article by Fr. Charles Whelan on the career and beliefs of Murray. Particularly relevant for the often-rancorous discussions of religious freedom and the place of faith in the public square, Fr. Whelan explains how Murray’s philosophy demonstrated why “Social necessity, not secularism or Baptist theology, fathered the First Amendment.”

Among the factors underlying religious freedom guarantees in the Bill of Rights, Fr. Murray showed, were the presence of both multiple denominations and multiple numbers of unchurched. Without the protection of religious toleration, the Founding Fathers recognized, American life would have become "disruptive, imprudent, indeed impossible," in Fr. Murray’s words.

At the same time, Fr. Murray underscored the major assumptions behind American notions of religious freedom, including the subjection of everything human to God and eternal law.

His notions of the development of religious freedom—one of America’s great contributions to the world—are subtle, nuanced but practical—qualities that, more often than not, have gone missing in current discussions, by both right and left, of the First Amendment clauses concerning separation of church and state and free exercise of religion.