The National Catholic Register interviews Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and founder of the James Madison Program, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. George offers his assessment of American democracy, the duties of citizenship, the role of Catholics in public life, and the enduring promise of the American experiment. The entire exchange reveals the bankruptcy of a Catholic intellectual who has substituted the worship of the secular republic for the social kingship of Christ, reducing the Faith to a set of “values” that can be shared with any “person of goodwill.”
The American Republic as the New “City of God”
Robert George’s opening remarks are a masterclass in naturalistic civic religion. He speaks of the American constitutional republic as an “experiment” whose endurance for two and a half centuries is “certainly something worth something to be grateful for.” But grateful to whom? George offers gratitude “to those men who, pledging their ‘lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,’ launched the American experiment.” This is the language of civil religion, not Catholic theology. The Founding Fathers are treated as quasi-providential figures, and the Declaration of Independence is elevated to the status of a quasi-scriptural text whose principles — “all men are created equal” — are treated as self-evident truths requiring no supernatural grounding.
What is conspicuously absent from George’s reflection is any acknowledgment that the American founding was, at best, a product of Enlightenment naturalism — a political order constructed on the explicit rejection of the social kingship of Christ. The Declaration’s appeal to “Nature’s God” and “their Creator” is not a Catholic profession of faith; it is the language of Deism and Freemasonry. Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). George does not merely reconcile himself with these errors; he celebrates them as the very foundation of the republic. His gratitude is directed not to the true Church, which alone guarantees the social reign of Christ, but to a political order built on the formal denial of that reign.
The proposition that “all men are created equal” is, in its original context, a rejection of the organic, hierarchical, and sacramental vision of society that the Church has always taught. It is a proposition that flows from the same Enlightenment rationalism that produced the French Revolution and the subsequent persecution of the Church. George treats this proposition as an unqualified good, a principle to which the nation must be “rededicated.” But the Catholic before 1958 would recognize this for what it is: the substitution of abstract natural rights for the concrete rights of God and the Church. As Leo XIII taught in Immortale Dei (1885), the state must be ordered to God and the Church, not to the autonomous individual. George’s entire framework is a repudiation of this teaching.
“Civic Friendship” as the New Charity
George’s treatment of political polarization is perhaps the most revealing portion of the interview. He warns that “the bonds of civic friendship have dangerously frayed” and insists that citizens must treat each other “not as enemies to be defeated or destroyed, but as friends who disagree.” He even co-authored a book with Cornel West — a Marxist and Unitarian Universalist — titled Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division, in which he describes West as “a friend — and indeed a brother.”
This is the language of the post-conciliar ecumenism project. George’s “civic friendship” is not supernatural charity, which is ordered toward the salvation of souls and the glory of God. It is a naturalistic tolerance that places the temporal common good — defined in purely secular terms — above the claims of the Faith. The Catholic tradition teaches that the bonds between men are supernatural, flowing from baptism and membership in the one true Church. George’s “brotherhood” with Cornel West is a brotherhood of naturalism, a unity built on the explicit rejection of the supernatural order.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to remind the nations that they are not autonomous entities governed by “civic friendship” but are subject to the royal authority of Jesus Christ. “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians,” Pius XI wrote, “so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” George’s vision of the republic, however, is one in which Christ’s reign is entirely absent, replaced by the abstraction of “civic friendship” and “constitutional mechanisms.”
The “Catholic Moment” as Political Activism
When asked about the “Catholic moment” — the idea that the Church would serve as the primary moral conscience of the nation — George offers a diagnosis that is as revealing as it is deficient. He states that “Catholics are part of the problem rather than part of the solution” because they are “driven more by ideological fervor and partisanship than by the teachings of the Church.” He then prescribes the remedy: “We Catholics will become part of the solution when, and only when, our political actions are genuinely shaped by the Church’s wisdom — the wisdom of Christ — regarding questions of justice and the common good.”
But George never defines what “the Church’s wisdom” actually is in concrete terms. He does not mention the social kingship of Christ. He does not mention the necessity of the state’s formal subjection to the Church. He does not mention the prophetic mission of the Church to condemn error, not to dialogue with it. His “Church’s wisdom” is reduced to a set of vague principles about “justice and the common good” that can be applied within the existing secular framework — a framework that is itself the product of the rejection of Catholic truth.
George’s call for Catholics to “wear our partisan political allegiances very lightly” is a masterstroke of evasion. The problem is not that Catholics wear their partisan allegiances too heavily; it is that the entire system of partisan politics within which they operate is built on the denial of Christ’s kingship. The Catholic moment, properly understood, is not about making the secular republic more “just” by injecting Catholic “values” into it. It is about the restoration of the social order under the reign of Christ the King — a restoration that George never once mentions.
Abortion: The “Most Glaring Violation” of a False Principle
George’s treatment of abortion is particularly revealing. He states that abortion is “today the most glaring violation of the principle to which we committed ourselves as a nation” — namely, that “all men are created equal.” He draws an analogy between the struggles over slavery and segregation and the current struggle over abortion.
This analogy is deeply flawed from a Catholic perspective. The Catholic condemnation of abortion does not rest on the Enlightenment principle that “all men are created equal.” It rests on the divine law: “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), and on the Natural Law as taught by the Church from the earliest centuries. The Church condemned abortion long before the American Republic existed, and she condemns it regardless of whether a given state recognizes the “equal dignity” of the unborn. The Catholic position on abortion is not derived from the Declaration of Independence; it is derived from the eternal law of God.
By grounding his opposition to abortion in the Declaration’s principles, George effectively subordinates the divine law to the secular constitution. He treats the American founding as the ultimate moral framework, rather than the teaching of the Church. This is precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), which condemned the proposition that “the Church has no right to require any internal assent from the faithful to the pronouncements issued by the Church” (Proposition 7). George does not merely fail to require internal assent; he does not even mention the Church’s dogmatic teaching on abortion, preferring to rest his case on the secular principles of the Republic.
“Fidelity Month” and the Syncretistic Republic
The interview concludes with George’s promotion of “Fidelity Month,” which he describes as a movement “to restore the values that have traditionally been principles of our unity and strength as Americans: fidelity to God, to our spouses and families, and to our country and communities.” He insists that this is “not an identitarian observance” and “not a sectarian one,” and that it unites “people of very different racial and ethnic backgrounds, religious traditions, cultural heritages and partisan political allegiances.”
This is the religion of the Antichrist. George’s “Fidelity Month” is a syncretistic civic religion that places “fidelity to God” on the same level as “fidelity to our country and communities.” It is a religion in which “God” is undefined and unconfessional — a god who can be affirmed simultaneously by Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and “people of goodwill of every faith and shade of belief.” This is precisely the indifferentism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Proposition 16).
The Catholic faith teaches that there is one true God — the Blessed Trinity — and one true Church — the Catholic Church — outside of which there is no salvation. George’s “Fidelity Month” denies this by implication, reducing “fidelity to God” to a vague theism compatible with any religion. It is the liturgy of the secular republic, a civic religion that worships not the God who became man in Jesus Christ, but the god of the American experiment — the god of “civic friendship,” “constitutional mechanisms,” and “the profound, inherent and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family.”
The Silence of the Supernatural
The most damning feature of George’s entire interview is not what he says, but what he does not say. There is no mention of the sacraments. There is no mention of the state of grace. There is no mention of the final judgment. There is no mention of the social kingship of Christ. There is no mention of the necessity of the Church for salvation. There is no mention of the supernatural destiny of man.
George speaks of “the profound intellectual and spiritual resources of our tradition” but never identifies what those resources are in supernatural terms. He speaks of “the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions” but never connects this to the supernatural dignity of the baptized soul. He speaks of “religious freedom” but never defines it in terms of the Church’s own teaching — which, as Pius IX and Gregory XVI before him insisted, is not the indifferentist “freedom of all religions” but the freedom of the truth.
This silence is not accidental. It is the silence of a Catholic intellectual who has made his peace with the modern world and who now seeks to baptize the secular republic with a thin veneer of Catholic “values.” George is not a Catholic who engages the public square; he is a public square figure who happens to be Catholic — and who has allowed the public square to define the terms of his engagement.
The American experiment, as George describes it, is an experiment in naturalism — an attempt to build a just society on the foundation of autonomous human reason, without reference to the social kingship of Christ or the teaching authority of His Church. This experiment was condemned in advance by every pope from Gregory XVI to Pius XII. Robert George’s interview is not a Catholic reflection on the state of the nation; it is a Catholic surrender to the nation — a surrender that would have been unthinkable before the conciliar revolution and that now passes for “faithful engagement” in the post-conciliar wasteland.
The true Catholic response to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is not gratitude for the “experiment” but repentance for the apostasy it represents. The Declaration is not a Catholic document; it is a product of the same Enlightenment rationalism that produced the French Revolution, the suppression of the Church, and the subsequent persecution of the Faith. The Catholic who celebrates it celebrates the foundations of the modern world — the world that has crucified Christ anew in His Mystical Body.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam — but not through the American experiment. Through the restoration of all things in Christ — including, and especially, the nations that have rejected His reign.
Source:
America 250 Years Later: A Conversation With Robert George (ncregister.com)
Date: 26.06.2026