EWTN News reports that Matthew Mehan, a professor at Hillsdale College, advocates for the renewal of American culture through classical learning and Catholic intellectual tradition, winning the Heritage Foundation’s America 250 Innovation Prize for his book *The American Book of Fables*. Mehan argues that Catholics should take pride in their contributions to the founding of the United States and that education must be reoriented toward moral formation centered on Christ, invoking the Second Vatican Council’s universal call to holiness and movements such as Opus Dei as engines for this renewal. The fundamental problem with this vision is that it attempts to baptize a secular republic while remaining utterly silent on the only foundation that can truly renew any society: the social reign of Christ the King and the unconditional submission of the state to the Catholic Church.
The Myth of “Catholic Contributions” to a Secular Republic
Mehan’s narrative rests on the assertion that Catholic intellectual tradition contributed to the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This claim, while flattering to Catholic pride, is historically and theologically disastrous. The American founding was steeped in Enlightenment rationalism, Masonic ideology, and Protestant revolt — all of which are antithetical to Catholic social teaching. The Declaration’s appeal to “Nature’s God” and the Constitution’s deliberate silence on Jesus Christ as King are not Catholic achievements but victories of the very liberalism that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors. Error 77 explicitly condemned the proposition that “it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” The American experiment was founded on precisely this error — the legal equality of all religions before the state, which is indifferentism made civil law.
Mehan’s attempt to claim Augustine’s City of God and Thomas Aquinas as scaffolding for American republicanism is a gross misreading of both. Augustine did not lay groundwork for liberal democracy; he taught that every earthly city is marred by sin and that true justice is found only in the City of God, which is the Catholic Church. Aquinas taught that the state must be subject to the Church in all matters touching on man’s supernatural end. The American founders explicitly rejected this vision. To baptize their work is to commit the very error Pius XI warned against in Quas Primas — removing Christ and His law from public life, which destroys the foundation of all authority.
The Fatal Silence on Christ the King
The most damning omission in Mehan’s entire discourse is the complete absence of any mention of the Feast of Christ the King or the doctrine of Christ’s social kingship over nations. Pius XI instituted this feast precisely to combat the laicism that Mehan otherwise claims to oppose. The encyclical Quas Primas states with absolute clarity: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Mehan speaks of “national renewal” and “moral formation” but never once demands that the United States publicly recognize Jesus Christ as its King and submit its laws to the governance of the Catholic Church. This is not an oversight; it is the hallmark of Catholic liberalism — the desire for cultural influence without the Cross, for moral renewal without submission to divine authority.
Pius XI taught that “the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” and that “it matters not whether individuals, families, or states” — all are bound to obey Him. Mehan’s vision of Catholic education producing virtuous citizens for a secular republic is precisely the naturalistic humanism that the pre-conciliar Church condemned. True renewal does not mean better citizens for a godly republic; it means the conversion of the nation to the Catholic Faith and the public acknowledgment that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
The Poison of “Vatican II” as Framework for Renewal
Perhaps the most spiritually dangerous element in Mehan’s discourse is his explicit invocation of the Second Vatican Council’s “universal call to holiness” as the engine of Catholic educational renewal. This conciliar document, Lumen Gentium, redefined holiness in ways that undermined the distinction between the religious and secular states and opened the door to the democratization of the Church. The pre-conciliar Church understood holiness as inseparable from the religious life, the sacramental system, and submission to the hierarchical Church. The Council’s “universal call” was not a recovery of tradition but a dilution of it — a way of saying that the laity could achieve sanctity without the religious vows, without the cloister, without the radical separation from the world that the saints exemplified.
Mehan further cites Opus Dei and the Neo-catechumenal Way as “enormous engines” for planting holiness in students. Both organizations are products of the post-conciliar revolution. Opus Dei, founded in 1928 but massively expanded after the Council, has been criticized for its recruitment practices, its secrecy, and its accommodation with the conciliar reforms. The Neo-catechumenal Way, founded in 1964, is a charismatic movement that embodies the very liturgical and catechetical innovations that have devastated Catholic practice. To present these as models for authentic Catholic renewal is to mistake the disease for the cure.
The Reduction of Education to Moral Formation Without Dogma
Mehan argues that Catholic education must prioritize moral formation over information, stating that “the moral life must be centered around Christ.” While this sounds pious, it is dangerously incomplete. Moral formation without dogmatic precision is sentimentality, not Catholicism. The pre-conciliar Church taught that the intellect must first asset to revealed truth before the will can be ordered to the good. The Syllabus of Errors condemns the proposition that “moral laws do not stand in need of divine sanction” (Error 56) and that “the science of philosophical things and morals may and ought to keep aloof from divine and ecclesiastical authority” (Error 57). Mehan’s emphasis on moral formation, while omitting the necessity of the Church’s infallible magisterium in defining that morality, is precisely the modernist approach that St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi — the reduction of religion to subjective experience and practical action.
Furthermore, Mehan’s claim that “Catholic academics don’t know their own traditions very well” is ironically applicable to himself. He speaks of Cicero and Seneca as preparing the “good soil” for Catholic thought, but he ignores the fact that the Church’s own saints and doctors — not pagan philosophers — are the true foundation of Catholic education. The Lamentabili sane exitu condemned the idea that “the method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable” (Error 13). Mehan’s preference for classical rhetoric over scholastic theology is itself a symptom of the modernist drift that places human wisdom above divine revelation.
The Heresy of Americanism and the “Patriotism” of Catholics
Mehan’s exhortation that Catholics should see themselves as builders of the United States and that “this is your patrimony too” borders on the heresy of Americanism, which Pope Leo XIII condemned in Testem Benevolentiae (1899). The Americanist heresy consisted in adapting Catholic doctrine to liberal democratic ideals, emphasizing active virtues over passive ones, and downplaying the necessity of the Church’s authority in public life. Mehan’s entire discourse is an exercise in Americanism — the attempt to make Catholics feel at home in a system that was designed to exclude Christ from public life.
The true Catholic attitude toward any secular republic was expressed by Pius XI: “The state must leave the same freedom to the Church… and in fulfilling the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness… it cannot depend on anyone’s will.” Mehan never demands this freedom. He never calls for the abolition of the separation of Church and state, which Pius IX condemned as Error 55 of the Syllabus: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” Instead, he offers Catholics a comfortable place at the table of a nation that was founded on the rejection of their King.
Conclusion: The Impossibility of Renewal Without Repentance
The fundamental bankruptcy of Mehan’s vision is that it seeks national renewal without national repentance. It wants the fruits of Catholic culture without the root of Catholic doctrine. It invokes “fides et ratio” but omits the one thing necessary: the public acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, and that every nation that refuses His rule is building on sand.
The pre-conciliar Church taught that there is no true peace except in the Kingdom of Christ, no true justice except under His law, and no true education except one ordered to the salvation of souls through the sacraments and the magisterium. Until Catholics like Mehan are willing to demand that the United States submit to the social reign of Christ the King — as Pius XI insisted all nations must — their talk of “renewal” is nothing but the rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. The only authentic Catholic response to the crisis of American culture is the one the Church has always taught: conversion to the Catholic Faith, reception of the sacraments, and the public acknowledgment of Christ’s kingship over all nations, including this one.
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Catholic scholar says classical learning can help renew America (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 28.06.2026