FAITH OF THE FOUNDERS: Philadelphia Catholic Chaplain’s Independence Day Praise
(QUICK READ) — It was a typical Mid-Atlantic summer day in Philadelphia on July 4, 1779, when a chaplain whose name is lost to history delivered an address in a Catholic church there in a celebration of the Declaration of Independence.
In the course of his address, this eloquent and faithful Catholic chaplain extolled the work of God in guiding the American colonists in their struggle with the armies and Navy of what was then the most powerful nation on Earth, Great Britain:
“We are assembled to celebrate the anniversary of that day which Providence has marked in His eternal decrees to become the epocha of liberty and independence to the thirteen United States of America.
“That Being, whose almighty hand holds all existence beneath its dominion, undoubtedly produces in the depth of His wisdom those great events which astonish the universe, and of which the most presumptuous, though instrumental in accomplishing, dare not attribute to themselves the merit.
“But the finger of God is still more peculiarly evident in the happy, the Glorious Revolution, which calls forth this day’s festivity. He hath struck the oppressors of a free people — free and peaceable — with the spirit of delusion, which always renders the wicked the artificers of their own proper misfortunes…
“It is with this view we shall cause the canticle to be performed, which the custom of the Catholic Church hath consecrated to be at once the testimonial of public joy, a thanksgiving for benefits received from Heaven, and a prayer for the continuance of its success.” — Cited Benjamin Morris, “The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States of America.”
PREVIOUSLY ON FAITH OF THE FOUNDERS:
John Adams on the ‘Grand Scene” of the American Settlement