A lot has changed in 250 years. The cultural assumptions that grounded American civic life in 1776 are largely gone. As the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, the representatives of the Second Continental Congress could assume that the citizens of this new country would be raised by intact, two parent families; that they would receive a training in democracy through civic institutions and organizations; that they would personally know the men who represented them in the government; that they would be deeply involved in their local communities; that they would worship God in churches organized according to the classic lines of Protestant Christianity.

          250 years later, the civic institutions that formed the habit of democracy in Americans young and old are largely empty. The clubs, legions, and councils that held elections, conducted business by Roberts Rules of Order, allowed members to make and discuss motions, and generally taught us civility and order are shutting their doors. America’s phenomenal growth means that we are necessarily governed by those we have never met. The rise of the entertainment industry leads us to occupy our time with being entertained instead of building something together. And the majority of those who do attend church do so either in non-denominational churches that would have been completely unrecognizable to the American founders, or as Catholics.

          Catholicism was long seen as antithetical to American democracy because of the allegiance Catholics owed to a “foreign power” in the Vatican and because of the monarchical structure of Catholic religious authority. But only 50 years after the country’s founding, an influential voice argued otherwise. In 1831, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States. He was supposed to be writing a report on the US prison system for the French government. But he ended up being fascinated by American democratic government, and wrote the influential Democracy in America, through which Europeans were first exposed to the nature of democratic life in the America, and through which their stereotypes of Americans as rude, uneducated frontiersmen were dispelled.

          Tocqueville also argued that Catholics were the most natural participants in a democracy, because Catholicism uniquely levels all men before God. All must adhere to the same creed, all most humble themselves before the judgement of the Church and at the foot of the same altar, all are alike before God.

          By the 1830s, Catholicism was in an incredible growth phase in the United States, as immigrants from Catholic Europe began to flood the rapidly expanding country. The original English settlers began to be outnumbered by Germans, Irish, Scots, Italians, Poles, and many others. At the same time, though, Catholicism was struggling, as the Church fought to retain all those new Catholics in a society that lacked the structural support for Catholic faith that they were accustomed to in Europe. As Catholics established schools and universities, though, they became more credible to the American Protestant religious establishment. Tocqueville could even observe in 1835 that, “At the present time, more than in any preceding one, Roman Catholics are seen to lapse into infidelity, and Protestants to be converted to Roman Catholicism. … our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two parts – some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Church of Rome.”

          Nearly 200 years after Tocqueville’s observation, that division hasn’t quite taken place, but there are signs that it could. One important evangelical thinker, Aaron Renn, wrote last year that “the problem with the Evangelical elite is that there isn’t one.” While Catholicism is shrinking in raw numbers of adherents, its status and influence among American religion has grown to heights unimaginable 250 years ago, in terms not only of the high offices held by Catholics, but the degree to which Catholic theology and philosophy hold the most prestige among religious Americans. The “thought leaders” of American Christianity are no longer at Yale, Harvard, and Chicago. They’re at Notre Dame and the Catholic University of America. Even if Tocqueville’s prediction of the division of American society into those relinquishing Christianity entirely and those becoming Catholic has not come to pass on the popular level, on the intellectual and cultural influence level, it almost has.

          As we consecrate ourselves and our country to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus today, we stand at a pivot-point in the history of our country. In a deep irony, the Catholic faith is more influential than ever, yet Catholic pews are emptier than ever. What does consecrating ourselves the Sacred Heart mean in this particular moment? The heart of Christ yearns first and foremost not for cultural or intellectual influence, but for love. “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.”

          The Heart of Jesus yearns for love. The true measure of our love for our country is not in how many American flags we fly, but in our willingness to bring the people of this country to the Heart of Christ, which beats for love of them in the Eucharist. If we love one another, we will make spreading the Catholic faith the priority of our lives. “The love of Christ compels us” to bring more and more people to this love, to bring Catholics who have drifted back to this love, to bring new life into the world to encounter this love, to make the love of His Heart the rock and anchor of our lives.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, A.D. MMXXVI