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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

  1. hace 19 h

    The SSPX and the French Revolution

    By Msgr. Thomas G. Guarino As everyone knows by now, the ordination of bishops carried out by the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has resulted in the automatic excommunication of the six bishops involved. No matter how it may spin its canonical status, the Society is now definitively outside of the Catholic Church. Insofar as the SSPX denies the authenticity of Vatican II, this outcome was inevitable. After all, Pope Leo himself has been uniting the Church around the Council, devoting his weekly audiences to examining, and profusely praising, conciliar teaching. One cannot cogently argue, as the SSPX does, that Vatican II was not a legitimate council. (Subsequent developments, of course, can be debated, and are – within the Church.) In fact, the great synod bears every mark of an authentic ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. What are these marks? • The Council was formally convoked by the bishop of Rome, John XXIII. • Ahuge number of bishops, over 2,500 from the entire world, was gathered at the Council for debate and deliberation from 1962-1965. • All bishops could speak freely or, if desired, submit written comments (which were then carefully examined by the Theological Commission). • The Theological Commission (where the conciliar documents were drafted or reviewed) was composed of a mixture of more conservative and more progressive bishops and theologians. A review of their journals reveals that even the smallest points were debated freely and at great length. • Anyone who studies the texts of Vatican II will see the extraordinary care and balance achieved by the documents – which underwent numerous drafts before final voting. • Paul VI always insisted that the concerns of the (more conservative) minority be adequately addressed. To cite only two examples: At the last minute, Paul mandated nineteen changes to the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) in order to satisfy those bishops who wanted a stronger accent on the truth mediated by Sacred Tradition. Secondly, Paul insisted on the Nota Explicativa Praevia appended to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium). This interpretative note was added to ensure, in juridical-canonical language, that papal primacy was in no way jeopardized by episcopal collegiality. • Each one of the sixteen conciliar documents was approved by an overwhelming majority vote. • Each of the documents was formally promulgated by the Bishop of Rome, Paul VI. In truth, one could more easily marshal questions about the First Vatican Council, held in 1869-1870. At that council, episcopal speakers were occasionally shouted down, and some seventy bishops left Rome so as not to vote "non placet" on the infallibility of the papal magisterium. The argument against the legitimacy of Vatican II, made by the founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, is straightforward. He and his movement contend that the most recent council fulfilled the long-standing dream of liberal Catholicism: marrying the Church with the French Revolution. The Council allegedly betrayed the ancient Catholic faith by incorporating the three chief principles of the revolution of 1789: liberté, égalité and fraternité. The conciliar declaration on religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) is little more than the "liberty" of the revolution – leading inexorably to indifferentism in religious matters, thereby undermining Catholic truth. And in promoting episcopal collegiality, Lumen Gentium made common cause with the revolutionary notion of "equality," speaking as if all bishops were equals, thereby corroding papal authority and primacy in the process. And the revolutionary "fraternity" may be found most clearly in the Decree on Ecumenism, wherein the SSPX argues that contemptible heretics are now facilely called "separated brethren." Also central to the SSPX argument is a statement by Yves Congar, one of the important theological experts at Vatican II. In October 1963, the Council took several votes in order t...

    7 min

  2. hace 1 día

    Pope Leo and Catholic Education

    By Randall Smith Magnifica humanitas has been widely discussed for its approach to artificial intelligence. Pope Leo emphasizes the importance of the schools for training people to retain their humanity in the face of these challenges. If we took the encyclical as a guide to education, what sort of education would that be? An essential goal would be to educate students about the dignity of the human person and what is required for the integral development: body, soul, and spirit. It would teach students that, "elevating any single dimension of human existence to an absolute is always a mistake." The university would have to model this respect for dignity in its own actions and in the rules governing the community. A Catholic university would teach its students not only about rights, but also about their responsibilities and duties. Such an education would consider the nature of the common good and our obligations to it. Given the pope's comments, an authentic education would be one in which "a love for truth" is fostered. "When people come to believe that nothing is genuinely true and that principles are hollow," he writes, "when questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective," the bonds of trust needed for democratic life are weakened. And so, "we are in need of a healthy realism that avoids both political idealism and cynicism," and avoids any ideology that, "in order to preserve its own worldview, tends to choose facts selectively, distorting and renaming them," whose proponents "eventually, inhabit a reality constructed to fit their own convictions." But in addition to avoiding the error of assuming there is no truth, or that there is just "my" truth and "your" truth, students should also be taught to avoid the error of assuming that reaching truth is relatively easy. Students should learn, writes the pope, that authentic education is "a long journey requiring patience and therefore needs time for development and for engagement with reality beyond appearances." They should be taught how "truth is often distorted in order to serve particular interests and communication strategies." Students should learn the value of technology, but also how "technology shapes those who use it." And they should be taught to avoid succumbing to the dominance of the pervasive "technocratic paradigm." Computers and cell phones would not be a ubiquitous presence. A "genuinely healthy" community would integrate "rhythms that incorporate silence, in-depth study, reading and judicious analysis, for without these elements inner freedom may be compromised." Universities should take care that a "culture fostered on the internet does not become an instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance." Rather, they should establish settings "in which inner freedom and critical thought can mature." Attaining such "inner freedom" and the ability for "critical thought" require the virtues, intellectual and moral, and a university fails if it does not inculcate them. So too, the pope speaks repeatedly of the importance of dialogue "to establish a set of basic agreements that enable the creation of a shared vision, upon which everyone can move forward together." Dialogue of this sort is not easy; it requires patience, discipline, and skill and "an attitude that seeks to forge bonds of fraternity built on listening, an open demeanor, making time for each other and even wasting time together." "As knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented," he warns, "it becomes difficult to grasp reality as a whole, to ask profound questions about meaning, or to develop authentic, critical and creative thought." Thus, a "principal challenge" for universities "lies in the integration of knowledge," hence they must cultivate in their students "both the capacity to connect and synthesize knowledge in order to grasp complexity, and the skills necessary to verify facts." "Many educat...

    6 min

  3. hace 2 días

    Hillbilly with a Rosary

    By Michael Pakaluk When J.D. Vance's memoir of his path back to Christianity, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is described at a high level of generality, we see immediately that it is a book of the highest importance. Here is a leader on the world stage who grasps, and is not afraid to say, that Christianity has been the source of social unity for European – that is, Western – civilization, and also for that nation we call the United States, and even for neighborhoods and families. The only two realities that unite us across disparities of wealth, race, and creed are the military and the Church, he likes to say. Economic bonds – trade agreements and business relationships – are insufficient. So too are procedural constructions of "international order" and human rights. Rather, these systems risk dissolving subsidiary unities; and when they become "global," they serve only to unite the elites of various countries, rendering them incapable even of understanding the concerns of common working men and women. Now add that this perceptive world leader has embraced Catholicism as that realization of Christianity that he regards as best. I don't think that commentators who anticipated a "Catholic moment" thought it could take this form. Also working at a high level of generality, we can say that Vance converts to Catholicism because of a neglected transcendental. Some have seen Christianity as the source of Beauty (Kenneth Clark). Others, as the source of knowledge, science, and our grasp of Truth (Pierre Duhem). Still others, for its fostering of holiness, the virtues, and the Good (Tom Holland). But Vance correctly sees it as the glue that can make us, across our differences, in various ways One. In this he is closely following Vatican II, which in Gaudium et spes taught that the Church, "thanks to her relationship with Christ, [is] a sacramental sign and an instrument of intimate union with God, and of the unity of the whole human race." (n.42, quoting Lumen gentium n.1) But this is at a high level of generality. The book is a memoir and begins, again, with Vance's "hillbilly" roots in Appalachia, with tales of Mamaw and her crass bits of wisdom and guns. True, the book is interspersed with mini-policy papers on Catholic social teaching – immigration and other topics you'd expect from a potential presidential candidate – that are not always very accurate or well-grounded. But what keeps the book moving are anecdotes and tone of a tent-revival testimony. Therefore, it must ultimately be evaluated for that testimony and, as a Catholic's memoir, whether it witnesses well to Catholicism. The man giving witness is appealing and good-hearted. He shows real self-knowledge about the pointlessness of his ambitions as a young man. He wants above all to be a good father. He puts being a good father above his career. He sees that being a good father means caring for the character of his children above all. Although highly credentialed, he wants to stay united with ordinary workers, like his dad, who was a welder. He strives to consider himself no better than they are, to regard their work as having equal dignity with his own. He has a generous love of the religious pluralism distinctive of America. In this, he is like a mainline Protestant from the 1950s. He's a Catholic who loves Charlie Kirk, and who can also get along with progressive Christians in supporting the labor movement. He loves the generically Christian American civic religion of the 1950s. But when I consider the book as the story of a Catholic convert, I find multiple shortcomings, and one very disturbing and scandalous chapter, which together make this a book that I cannot recommend to young persons or inquirers. This is a shame, because these shortcomings could easily have been repaired. The scandalous chapter is entitled "My Favorite Year," which describes how he and Usha shacked up in Cincinnati, bought two dogs, and lived like the secular elites Vance loves to ...

    7 min

  4. hace 3 días

    America Must Not Become a Land of Hate

    By Msgr. Charles Fink There are terrible injustices in our country. There are people in jail who don't belong there and people on the street who belong in jail. But there is no country on earth where one is likely to get a fairer trial or where one will have a better chance of having a wrong righted or an injustice undone. There are glaring inequalities in our society. There are very rich and very poor, and there are people who need help who don't get it. But there is no society on earth where anyone – no matter his race, religion, or ethnic background – has a better chance of raising himself up and improving his lot. There is too much corruption in our government, in business, and even in our churches. Bad, weak, and foolish people rise to high places and destroy confidence in institutions. But there is no nation on earth where corruption is more likely to be exposed in all its ugliness to the light of day, thence to be, if not eliminated entirely, at least ameliorated. There is a lot that is cheap, licentious, and obscene in our culture. But no culture on earth is more open to such a variety of expression as ours; none is more creative; and no one in this land is forced to engage in any cultural activity he finds offensive. When our military personnel are sent overseas to fight wars, they sometimes kill innocent people, and their morals have not always been exemplary. But no military establishment on the planet works harder at avoiding civilian casualties, and none expends more energy and resources on humanitarian aid – by miles. Compared to Heaven or Utopia or Shangri-La, ours is a dreadful, wicked, misbegotten country. Compared to any other nation on earth that ever existed or currently exists, it is the best human beings have managed to produce. Criticism, if it is constructive, can be helpful, but one often gets the impression that America's critics, at home and abroad, seriously believe that the world would be a better place if the United States ceased to exist as a nation. Or that, if tomorrow, there were no United States of America, the next day or week or month, a year or so at the outside, Heaven would descend upon earth. This is to ignore all of history, to be blind to the present state of the world, to be blissfully ignorant of human nature, and to imagine that civilization can be torn down and rebuilt overnight. Torn down, maybe. How easy it is to destroy. But rebuilt? When it comes to civilizations, that takes centuries and great good fortune, perhaps even the grace of God. The naïve belief in quick and easy "fundamental change" may be understandable and forgivable in the young, by which I mean children and teenagers. Among those of voting age, it spells disaster for our future. How we've arrived at a state of affairs in which large numbers of our populace – many in their twenties and thirties, some elected officials in our local, state, and federal governments – can speak and act with utter disdain for our nation while looking approvingly at other nations in which they would be silenced, or worse, for espousing some of their opinions or living openly their alternate lifestyles is beyond comprehension. It gives credence to the suggestion that a kind of "mind-virus" has afflicted our citizenry, rendering many of them incapable of rational thought or contact with reality. None of this is to say that the United States is the New Jerusalem prophesied in the Bible. It is not. But it is still the country to which more people from more nations come, or want to come, than to any other nation on earth. Why is that? And why do so few critics of America, including those who are forever threatening to leave the country whenever an election doesn't go their way, actually leave? Because such talk is cheap, childish, and churlish. If people want something better than the USA as it currently exists, there are plenty of ways to work towards that goal, but trash talking isn't one of them. Neither is electing those who support...

    5 min

  5. hace 4 días

    Five for the Fourth Now for Outright Love for This Land by Robert Royal Now 250 and Counting by Brad Miner Now for Living What We Claim to Believe by Francis X. Maier Now for 'Built Wiser than They Knew' by Michael Pakaluk Now for An Archipelago of Holi

    By Robert Royal and Brad Miner and Francis X. Maier and Michael Pakaluk and Joseph R. Wood In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo invokes the Biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as a poignant alternative to the Tower of Babel's effort to reach Heaven without God. It's a good reminder – but of something more than the pope indicated. In the days of walled cities, rebuilding walls was a defensive measure, establishing a safe perimeter before the reconstruction of the city itself could take place. There were threats outside – and within: "half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. . . .each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other." (Nehemiah 4:16-17) And once the walls were rebuilt, Nehemiah had the priest Ezra publicly recite the Law of Moses before the whole people, who pledged themselves anew to the Covenant. If I could have one wish on this anniversary, it's that we – at least many of us – will come to realize that America must be defended as well as reconsecrated. We've developed an allergy to this truth because we don't want to appear "defensive." But without a defense, those who are offensive – and they are legion – will have their way with us and many other nations. It doesn't stop there. The defense exists so that we may build, and abundantly – in both a physical and a moral sense – because time is always wearing things down. We must work not just to keep what we have, but to extend it for ourselves and those who will come after. In a confused and contested time like ours, that seems impossible because our divisions run so deep that we cannot even agree on what rebuilding would mean. But here's a proposal. Every year for almost a quarter century, I've been running a Summer Seminar on the Free Society in the Slovak Republic, founded by the great Catholic and American, Michael Novak. In the concluding session, I lead students through "The Gift Outright," a poem that Robert Frost read at the inauguration of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy (Kennedy had asked Frost to write something for the occasion, which he did, but the day was so sunny – and Frost's aging eyes so weak – that he couldn't read the text, and instead recited this poem from memory). It laments how Americans remained colonials – until they changed. It ends: Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. That transformation was not peaceful ("many deeds of war"), but it was heartfelt, a free gift to an uncertain future, in short, the only thing that might renew us all, of whatever persuasions, yet again: outright love for this land. I don't remember much about Mesopotamia, but they say it's where civilization began. As has been the case throughout history, it was good for those on top but not for the rest. This was true of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, although, unlike Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt, the Greco-Roman legacy remains very much with us. It has always been true. You can see that legacy in the Constitution of the United States. You can also see there the Fall of Man, after which no civilization has been or could be a City of God. I'm thinking here of the Three-Fifths Compromise, a deal with the Devil if ever there was one. But name a society before the U.S. that was able to correct its trajectory in less than two centuries, and to restore amity. We know we'll never be perfect. Still, as G.K. Chesterton wrote about America, ours is the "only nation in the world that is founded on a creed": That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independe...

    16 min

  6. hace 5 días

    Jefferson and the 4th of July

    By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza In the early days of July 1826, Thomas Jefferson "marshalled his will toward the realization of one last mission: He wanted to survive until the Fourth of July." So writes Jon Meacham in his marvelous biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Jefferson did, repeatedly asking in his final agony in the evening hours of July 3: "This is the Fourth?" He finally heard the twelve chimes of midnight on his bedroom clock; he lingered, drifting out of consciousness, but knowing it was the Fourth. He died at ten minutes before one o'clock that afternoon. Five hours after the third president died at Monticello, the second president, John Adams, died in Quincy, Massachusetts. His famous final words were false: "Thomas Jefferson survives." Both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, two hundred years ago. (The fifth president, James Monroe, would die on the Fourth in 1831.) It's the great anniversarial coincidence of the Founding Fathers. The reaction to the twin presidential deaths on the fiftieth anniversary of the first Fourth was that Providence was at work, not unlike how Catholics consider miracles in the causes of saints. John Quincy Adams, president at the time of his father's death, styled the coincidental deaths "visible and palpable marks of Divine Favor, for which I would humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the Ruler of the Universe." The junior President Adams issued an executive order in memory of the senior Adams and Jefferson: A coincidence of circumstances so wonderful gives confidence to the belief that the patriotic efforts of these illustrious men were Heaven directed, and furnishes a new seal to the hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence. In early August 1826, with President Adams present, Daniel Webster was more fulsome at Faneuil Hall in Boston: Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits. Webster continued: If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine Providence. . .[that] the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care? The Declaration of Independence, signed fifty years before Adams and Jefferson died, professed a "firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence." Now, it seemed to their contemporaries that Providence had vouchsafed a final protection, calling Jefferson and Adams home on the anniversary of their great work. Meacham wrote that Webster "painted an indelible portrait of Jefferson's and Adams's ascent to the American pantheon." Catholics do not have a pantheon, but there are the saints. Catholic saint-making – or saint-recognizing, strictly speaking – has two broad parts. First there is the human judgment, after a painstaking examination, that the candidate lived a holy life, culminating in a declaration of "heroic virtues." The second is the celestial confirmation, the requirement of a miracle, understood to be divine evidence, as it were, that the candidate is in heaven, interceding before God. The Fourth in 1826 was something like a miracle for the secular canonization of the nation. What the founding generation of Americans knew by experience – and aspiration – had apparently been confirmed by Providence. They knew the heroic virtue of the young republic; now a divine benediction had been granted. Organizers of the golden jubilee of the Declaration had greatly desired to have Jefferson in Washington, but he was too ill to travel. He wrote a letter f...

    7 min

  7. hace 6 días

    SSPX: Schism and Excommunication

    By Fr. Gerald E. Murray The canonically illegal consecration/ordination (the terms are interchangeable) of four new bishops by two Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bishops who were themselves illegally ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre 38 years ago is a renewed wound upon the Mystical Body of Christ. This schismatic act of disobedience carried out in direct defiance of Pope Leo XIV's public warning has resulted in the incurring by the six bishops of latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication. While claiming to uphold the traditional faith of the Catholic Church, the newly excommunicated bishops boldly cast aside what the Catholic Church has always taught her children, namely that the hierarchical nature of Catholicism includes the dogmatic teaching that the pope is the Supreme Authority to whom all Catholics owe obedience. That obedience, needless to say, includes not ordaining bishops when the pope forbids such ordinations. Simply stated, the pope is the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ. He governs the Church. Obedience to his decision about who may or may not receive episcopal ordination is necessary if one is to remain a faithful Catholic. The Holy See instructed the SSPX earlier this year to desist from carrying out on July 1 the illegal ordination of any new bishops. The SSPX rejected this instruction. This defiance of Pope Leo is an act of grave disobedience that the Holy See judges to be a schismatic act that involves "the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff" (canon 751) by carrying out an act forbidden by canon law, namely the ordaining of bishops without a papal mandate (canon 1387). These episcopal ordinations involve not simply the absence of a papal mandate, but clear disobedience in direct defiance of Pope Leo. On the eve of the illegal consecrations, Pope Leo wrote to the Superior General of the SSPX, Fr. Davide Pagliarani: With a paternal heart, and aware of the responsibility entrusted to me by the Lord as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, I address you and, through you, the bishops, priests, seminarians and faithful connected to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X. . . .[F]illed with Christian affection, I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back! I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the Sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification. The pope has the authority to determine what constitutes a schismatic act, and he has done so. The SSPX has no authority to gainsay or ignore this papal judgment. Fr. Pagliarani responded: "Paradoxically, in the present circumstances, we believe it to be our very duty to do everything possible to mend Christ's seamless garment, torn by forces and pressures incompatible with a truly Catholic spirit." Paradoxical indeed! The SSPX Superior General incredibly claims that the SSPX will "mend Christ's seamless garment." No, it tears that garment by committing what he knows the Holy See has deemed a schismatic act. This is akin to an army claiming it has to destroy an enemy-held village in order to save it. Why did this happen? The SSPX wants to continue ordaining priests who celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) while refusing to return to full communion with the pope and the Church. The Society claims that a state of necessity in the Church permits them to ordain new bishops blamelessly. They need some younger bishops, they say, to allow them to continue ordaining new priests in the years to come. If it were in full communion with the Church, any number of bishops would be willing to ordain the seminarians of the SSPX. Instead, the SSPX has deepened its embrace of a dangerous separatist spirit. Ordaining new bishops against the will of the pope is a necessary action for providing new priests for the SSPX only if it plans to continue operating apart from th...

    8 min

  8. 1 jul

    Our Hunger for the Right Things

    By Francis X. Maier The historian Henry Adams once described politics as "the systematic organization of hatreds," and that's often where we seem to be in these last days before our nation's 250th birthday. As a Wall Street Journal column noted earlier this week, chronic Democratic hatred of Donald Trump, along with Trump's own many "genuine sins and imagined ones, handed the left permission to come unglued," with the result that "radical, dangerous, and merely stupid [ideas] are not only permissible but mandatory" on the growing port side of the Democratic party. Our need to escape from today's constant political hysteria is one of the reasons we bury ourselves in entertainment. We'd all like to find a safe and quiet place to live, even if its name is Fantasyland. Alas, as Christians we can't simply ignore politics. We're supposed to be leaven in the world. So we can't just retreat to the hills as St. Benedict did. Living our faith in the real world means that we need to help build a better society. And in 2026, that's harder than ever. What a Christian means by the "common good" and "human dignity," and what a non-believer means by exactly the same words, can be very different. The abortion issue is far from the only relevant example. Three simple principles guide Christian political thinking. First, we need to serve the common good – the real common good, which is not the same as providing "the most stuff for the most people." Second, we need to defend the dignity of the individual person. And third, we need to do these things in the right order of priority. For example, individuals can't demand respect for their desires and behaviors if these things cripple the general welfare. Likewise, we can't serve the common good by demeaning each other or exploiting individuals, especially the weak, the poor, and the innocent. And while lots of social issues need our attention – things like hunger, health care, and just immigration policies – no issue is more fundamental to human dignity than the right to life. Without the right to life, all other human rights are simply pious sentiments dressed up in idealistic language. These principles should be obvious. But in the span of my adult life, the entire landscape of American culture has changed drastically. Americans who self-identify as atheist, agnostic, or having no religious affiliation at all went from 16 percent of the population in 2007 to 29 percent in 2026. And that has serious implications, because religious freedom – one of the cornerstones of the American Founding we celebrate this week – can't be a concern for people who have no religious faith. In fact, outright hatred of Christian believers is on the rise in this country. My point is this. The nation we think we live in isn't the one we now actually live in. Our civic institutions and vocabulary may seem the same, but the realities of power are different. Without God, man always ends up in some form of idolatry. When God leaves the stage, the state expands to fill his place. And God has been exiting the stage of our public life – or, too often, been pushed off the stage – for decades. To borrow some thoughts from Philadelphia's archbishop emeritus, we might profit from reading two things: Neither one is the Declaration of Independence. Neither one is the Constitution. Neither one has anything obviously to do with politics. The first is John Bunyan's novel, The Pilgrim's Progress. And the second is Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Celestial Railroad." Bunyan's book was written in 1678, and it's one of the world's great religious allegories. More copies have been printed of Pilgrim's Progress than any book in history except the Bible. It embodies the early Puritan hunger for God that inspired America's first colonists and shaped the roots of our country. Hawthorne's short story, written in 1843, is a very different piece. It's one of the great satires in American literature. Hawthorne was a descendant of Puritan...

    7 min
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