The Founding Fathers of the United States understood that whether the new Republic would survive was an open question. There was neither certainty nor even likelihood that it would. The Achilles Heel was whether the essential foundation of the Republic would itself survive. If that foundation crumbled, the Republic would fail, as had the ancient republic of Rome.
Our Founding Fathers understood that . . . virtue is essential to freedom. People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government. "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people," said John Adams. "It is wholly inadequate to the government of any others." Without virtue, a society can be ruled only be fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well. [Charles Colson & Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999), p.373.]A man who cannot govern himself cannot participate constructively in a society which depends upon self-government for its continued existence. Ultimately this is a religious issue. The more ordinary people believe in God and fear Him, the better the institutions of government work. Society looks first to God for all things: the state is merely one of the institutions, carefully defined and delimited, given by God for our good.
The more atheistic society becomes, the more it looks to the state for its life and sustenance. Every issue, every quarrel, every inadequacy generates a siren call for the state and its agencies to step in to sort things out.
What is the answer? There is no magic wand, no simple answer. It all turns around whether the majority of the people begin once again to fear God, or as the Catechism puts it, begin to live so as "to glorify God and enjoy him forever". Only then can a government committed to liberty of conscience and freedom survive.
