NEW CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT THINKS "UNDER GOD" UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Why doesn't this surprise me?

"Incoming Catholic University of America (CUA) president John H. Garvey has defended the freedom of Catholic adoption agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples. However, he also holds that the Pledge of Allegiance could be viewed as unconstitutional and may violate Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom."
Catholic News Agency

I'm sure that Mr. Garvey is a wonderful human being. Still, how can the use of the phrase "under God' be considered unconstitutional when the founders expressed the same sentiment over and over in their writings?

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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..."
The Declaration of Independence

“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

“[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

-John Adams

“Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [the Fourth of July]?" “Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity"?

-John Quincy Adams

“God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel”

“In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered… do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?”

-Benjamin Franklin

"For my own part, I sincerely esteem it [the Constitution] a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests."

-Alexander Hamilton

“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

-Patrick Henry

I could go on and on with this but you get the point. The Founders were religious (mostly Christian) and they all believed that a belief in God was essential to the governing of the country and the individual. Their genius was not in excluding religion from government but in seamlessly joining the two together in a way that still allowed for the free will exercise of religious belief by the people.

The claim that the phrase "under God" is unconstitutional is spurious and dangerous. It distorts history and leads to a conclusion that is not supportable. It is only through a recognition of the blessings bestowed upon this country by a benevolent God that we can come to give thanks and understand our place in the world.

The rejection of God in America has led us to the place we're at today. It's time we return to the belief in God that our Founders expected us to hold. The Pledge of Allegiance, as currently written, is an important tool to get us there.