As we collectively commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is good and appropriate to celebrate the good things that can be identified with the founding and history of the United States of America. While every nation, culture, society, and political entity has faults—including those comprising the contemporary U.S.—we do well to hold to the things that are true and good about any political culture. Having said that, however, reflecting on 250 years since the Declaration of Independence is a good time to examine the truth-claims that are asserted there, and how—or even whether—they are compatible with Catholic faith.

As a threshold matter, the Catholic Church does not endorse any particular political arrangement as exclusively good. As stated in Gaudium et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World from Vatican II), “In virtue of her mission and nature [the Church] is bound to no particular … political, economic or social system.” It also asserts that “Christ … gave His Church no proper mission in the political, economic or social order,”  rather, “the purpose which He set before her is a religious one” (42). Of course, this religious purpose has profound political implications, because the relative good or bad of any politics is measured by this purpose. All politics must answer to Catholic moral theology, but no politics can ever be identified with it.

Regardless of the relative good that may be found in it, no nation or political arrangement can be identified with the Church. There is no such thing as a “Christian” nation-state. Nation-states may establish and preserve principles that are more or less consistent with Christian morality, but none can be identified with the Church. Indeed, to identify an earthly political regime—whether the U.S. or any nation-state—with the Church is idolatry. The Church endorses no particular political model precisely because the theology of the Church transcends and relativizes all political structures and arrangements. To collapse the tenets of Catholic faith into political identity is the essence of idolatry.

This is an especially cautionary note for us Americans. Many of us are tempted by narratives about the American founding that, either impliedly or explicitly, identify the United States with some kind of divine plan, as though God has blessed the U.S. as the Christian form of politics; that the U.S. is a “Christian nation.” A variation of this error might be one that does not identify the U.S. as a Christian nation, per se, but which nonetheless asserts that God has granted us special favor as a nation-state. This assertion would typically avert to the founding “principles,” such as those found in the Declaration of Independence. We Catholics must strenuously and consistently resist such stories, as they lead directly to the risk of idolatry I noted above.

Rather than to offer a single model of political life—or to endorse any particular political regime—the Church instead offers a set of criteria by which any political structures should be judged and evaluated. While many factors and elements are included in these criteria, they can be summarized by reference to the four pillars of Catholic Social Doctrine: the dignity of the human person, the solidarity of all humankind, the subsidiary nature of social institutions, and the preservation of the common good. Taken together, the Church’s social doctrine is a coherent body of truth that both suggests policy guidelines and sits in judgment over all policy. The purpose is not to endorse any political regime, but rather to identify those elements of any politics that do or do not comport with these principles.

Which brings us back to the Declaration of Independence. The vast majority of the Declaration is a recital of complaints and grievances against England’s King George III, but few people ever read that catalogue of complaints. Rather, we more typically avert to a single sentence of the Declaration, upon which we build the entire edifice of our national political identity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Declaration asserts, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are the “self-evident” “truths” that we are celebrating on July 4, 2026.

But what if this most fundamental statement of American identity is, well, false? The notion of “inalienable Rights” is, from the judgment of Catholic Social Doctrine, highly problematic. The rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence are the possessive individual rights invented by 17th century philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. For both these thinkers, the “state of nature” is one of radical individualism, in which each of us has absolute claims against every other person in a “war of all against all.” This theory is in tension with—if not contradicted by—the four pillars of Catholic Social Doctrine. These individual rights are a denial of both the doctrines of solidarity and common good. And they lead inevitably to the practical denial of subsidiarity, as the government assumes a greater role in adjudicating among these various individualist claims of rights. It goes without saying that such a regime cannot serve and preserve human dignity, the first pillar of the Church’s social doctrine, and the ultimate rule of any politics.

Can Catholic Christians live happily under the institutions of such a political philosophy? Yes, certainly. But we must strongly and persistently resist any temptation to identify Catholic faith with this theory. Moreover, we must maintain a moral and religious skepticism of this or any political regime that would presume to make such absolute pronouncements about the nature of the human person. We can live under the Declaration as an article of peace; but we must reject it as an article of faith.