Among the preparatory prayers of the Mass, there are these words from Psalm 42: “Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy.” However inadequately accomplished, the purpose of this essay is to affirm and distinguish our cause as Catholic minds and human beings from the nation and from the world that are not holy—to affirm the strength and meaning of the world of the Church for our varied worlds of living and working. As Christopher Dawson points out in a remarkable essay, there is, even in the modern world, “a tradition of sacred culture which it has been the mission of the Church to nourish and preserve”—and to nourish and preserve it even in the nation that is not holy. “However secularized our modern civilization may become,” Dawson continues, “this sacred tradition [this sacred life] remains like a river in the desert, and a genuine religious education can still use it to irrigate the thirsty lands and to change the face of the world with the promise of a new life. The great obstacle is the failure of Christians themselves to understand the depth of that tradition and the inexhaustible possibilities of new life that it contains.”

One of the striking facts about the present religious situation in the United States is the notable growth of religious bodies and the marked increase in religious affiliation on the part of the American people. In 1900, 36 per cent of the American people were reported as religiously affiliated; by 1930, the figure had risen to 47 per cent; and by 1950, to 57 per cent. In the quarter of a century from 1926 to 1950, the population of the United States rose 28.6 per cent; church membership, however, jumped nearly 60 per cent. The annual gain in church membership since 1940 has been some two per cent, the most rapid in all our history. Allowing for the notorious imprecision of statistics on religion, it may still be asserted with considerable confidence that there is today among the American people a greater tendency than ever before to regard themselves as affirmatively religious and to identify themselves with religious institutions. The actual religious significance of this tendency is not easy to assess; certainly it would be rash to infer from the statistics any conclusions as to the actual faith of the masses of the American people. There are too many cultural and sociological factors involved, and “religion” means too many different things to different people, to make any such inference at all possible. But I do not think it can be denied that there is today a growing tendency towards religious identification among Americans. Even those Americans who avow no particular church affiiliation would, in the great majority, regard themselves as “religious” in some sense. Again, merely as a cultural fact, it may be asserted that Supreme Court Justice Douglas' recent dictum (speaking forthe court in the New York released time case, 1952), “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being,” just about describes the view the American people, by and large, take of themselves.

America demands bold lines and strong personalities in its public men. It might almost be said that unless a man lends himself to caricature, he will not be included in the company of American political greats. James Madison has accordingly suffered unduly at the hands of American historians, and he has suffered even more in being denied an appropriate place in the affections of the American people. For my own part, I should like to confess that I took for granted the prevailing attitude about Madison, as in every way the junior lieutenant to Jefferson, when I first began my studies of the American philosopher-statesman. It was a genuine experience, then, gradually to come to realize that this gentle and modest man was not the pure scholar who had wandered into politics, there to be given favors of office by the great Republican leader with whom he was closely associated. He was, as I have attempted to demonstrate in a previous work, in every way a full collaborator with Jefferson in forming the Republican party and in developing that Republican ideology which is still unmatched in the modern theory of democracy. He was also the amalgamator of all the essential elements in the Republican tradition, conceived in the broad sense: for he achieved, in his thought and character, a total balance among Jefferson's ideals for the pursuit of happiness, Hamilton's understanding of strategic means, and Adams' realization of the need to check power with power.

The theorist's attempt to interpret man's relation to man in civil society inevitably grows from and reflects his deeper conception of man's relation to the universe and to God. Consequently, the ultimate meaning and significance of a political theory can be ascertained only by establishing the precise way in which the theorist's world view has been spelled out in his view of the state. In the case of Orestes A. Brownson this is especially true. In the course of his movement from Transcendentalism to Catholicism he elaborated a metaphysic distinctively his: it summarizes his own intellectual history, his basic thought prior even to his theology, for it is the rationale of his acceptance of the Catholic Church. Our thesis with regard to Brownson's political thought is first, that this same metaphysic constitutes the premises on which he elaborates his political theory and, secondly, that the solution he offers to the ultimate problem raised by that theory is theological since ultimately his basic metaphysic gets completed by his theology. Our task is to indicate how this metaphysic and theology determine the fundamental conceptions of his specifically political thought.

The elections for the German “Bundestag” (Parliament—Lower House) of September 6, 1953 guarantees a democratic development for the free part of the German nation. However, the real significance of these elections transcends the German borders. For months there had been a stagnation in foreign policy which, since the spring of 1953 and especially since Churchill's speech of May 11, 1953, paralyzed all efforts to create the European Defense Community and a political unity. This was due to uncertainty as to the outcome of the German elections. However, since the overwhelming majority of the 49 million people of the Federal Republic voted for the policies of Adenauer, this situation has been terminated