Notes from Fr. Hamilton Published Monday, July 8, 2024 TO PURCHASE AN ADVANCED COPY SEE RICKY THIS WEEK THURSDAY 11:30am in YUKON Send this newsletter to a friend here. FATHER STEPHEN HAMILTON OCPAC Board Chairman Bob Linn has been busy entertaining family this week and asked me if I would step in with an article of my own. Because we are still savoring the memory of our national founding and because there has been such turbulence over how to remember that founding in our schools, I wanted to continue in that vein. Awareness of one’s family provides a sense of origin and common values. What is true of the family is also true on the broader scale in reference to the nation. In fact, familial terms like fatherland or motherland are used to refer to a country. Patriotism encourages the awareness that citizens should have about the origins and the values of the nation. Without it, the collective identity and the appreciation of foundational family values of the nation is weakened. Each July 4, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence as the birth of our nation. To celebrate a birth is to celebrate an origin. We began as a project of self-governance in order to secure rights, promote justice, and advance legitimate progress. The risk in any family, institution, or organization is that generational drift can lead to rupture with the fundamental principles and common values that support the proper identity. The Declaration of Independence expresses belief in a Creator who is the source of self-evident truths and unalienable rights. This is fundamental to our American identity The Foundation of America’s Unalienable Rights The word unalienable deserves attention for what it tells us about the values we must keep today. If you buy something with a big sticker price, like a car, you might have a lien on it from the bank loan. A lien indicates that someone else has a right to keep possession of the property until the debt is paid. Unalienable has Latin roots meaning something “of or belonging to another”. When attached to the negative prefix “un-” and the suffix “-able”, the meaning becomes “not capable of belonging to another”. Thus, the Declaration affirms rights that do not come from man himself, because they are endowed by the Creator, and they do not come from any other mediating authority, like a government, because there is no lien that can be placed on them; they are “not-lien-able”. Believers recognize these rights proceed from an authority higher than man, whom we call God. Even non-believers should affirm this higher authority. Otherwise, these rights would only be secure until someone more powerful comes along. To be American is to acknowledge that a higher authority has given us gifts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government serves to secure these unalienable rights, at times needing to adjudicate competing rights with due process and equal protection under the law, but does not have sole dominion over them. Religion and religious values have an important place in our national life. John Adams wrote that the Constitution that guides the American project of self-governance in our democratic republic is dependent upon a “moral and religious people” (Letter to the Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798). The Founding Fathers recognized religion’s role in promoting a more stable peace and justice in a diverse body politic because religion inspires a person’s interior dispositions whereas, government can only coerce external actions. There is debate about the personal religion and religious convictions of the Founding Fathers. Were they Christians? Deists? A mix? To what degree did they adhere to their religious beliefs? That they saw the value of religion is not debatable. A man’s belief in a higher authority is necessary for self-control and for the common good of a self-governing nation. This is because faith in a higher authority (Creator, God) breeds virtue, which creates the conditions for freedom that can withstand testing in a pluralistic society (thus the traditional motto: e pluribus unum). At the origin of our nation’s birth and identity is the role religion plays in forming a moral people capable of self-governance in our democratic republic. Our Constitution protects against both a state established religion and against attempts to impede religious practice. Suspicion of religion in the public square damages the origin and the founding values of our national life. Contentious debate about rights (the right to life, the definition of marriage, bodily autonomy, etc.) springs from a type of societal amnesia that a higher authority is the source of our unalienable rights. Man does not make these rights for himself. Man cannot radically alter them. To be American is to hold that our unalienable rights are above any government and any man. This is true whether one professes a religion or not, or whether one is zealous in practicing faith or not. Otherwise we have no stable rights at all. Celebrating American independence should extend beyond the last parade and the last firework display on July 4. Patriotism teaches awareness of the national family value of the role of religion in public life for how it forms a people of virtue and creates the possibility of enduring freedom. Fr. Hamilton is a Catholic priest serving in Edmond, and is the chairman of the Board of Directors of the OCPAC Foundation (Original Constitutional Principles Affecting Culture). Send this newsletter to a friend here. IF YOU MISSED LAST WEEK . . . RYAN WALTERS Watch Ryan Walters speak here. Watch the entire meeting here. _________  also speaking . . . OKLAHOMA GOP CHAIRMAN NATHAN DAHM Watch Nathan Dahm speak here. Watch the entire meeting here. ___________ Patriotic Music . . . VOCAL SOUNDS OF OKLAHOMA Watch Vocal Sounds of Oklahoma sing here. Watch the entire meeting here. COMING!!! WEDNESDAY JULY 31, 2024 OUR FOUNDATION BANKS AT QUAIL CREEK BANK A few of our board members at Quail Creek Bank From left to right: Joseph Palmer, Alan Loeffler, Suzanne Reynolds, Lucia O'Connor, Father Stephen Hamilton, Bob Linn, and Gaylene Stupic. OCPAC FOUNDATION is a 501 (c) (3). Gifts are tax-deductible. I encourage each of you to support our mission. To get started, we are suggesting: The Century Club To join, mail a cancelled check to: OCPAC FOUNDATION P.O. Box 721212 Norman, OK 73070 Your $100 per month donation will help support the development of the Foundation’s work to widen our audience and outreach capabilities with quality meetings and enhanced educational video content. Our beginning financial goals will allow us to secure the initial permanent staff positions necessary to the function of a foundation with ambitions to change the world. OCPAC | P.O. Box 2021 | Edmond, OK 73083 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice