Happy 4th of July 2011

Thank  you to all our troops throughout the world.

Happy 4th of July to all!

Nothing like having family around with Hot Dogs and Hamburgers and some apple pie.

Or Hay anything on the menu for that matter is great on this weekend.

It's in the 90's here in Southern California...HOT!....but I love it.

A few articles on this 4th. Drudge has a headline article to honor a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Well, we as Catholic have one to honor of our own.

Charles Carroll is the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence but many fought in the War.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton: Without Morals A Republic Cannot Subsist Any Length of Time

Published Sunday, July 3, 2011 A.D. | By Donald R. McClarey

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
                                           George Washington, Farewell Address
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, as he signed his name when he added his signature to the Declaration of Independence, was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.  When he died at the age of 95, he was the last of the Signers to depart this vale of tears.
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And a few more articles to read on this Catholic American Day.

Catholics and America’s Founding

By George J. Marlin

For this Fourth of July weekend, a little history lesson. After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the vast majority of Catholics sided with the revolutionaries, because they considered themselves American, not British. “They understood the genius of America,” wrote the distinguished Catholic historian, Theodore Maynard, “Without hesitation they threw in their lot with Congress.” Charles Carroll, founding father and "an exemplar of Catholic and republican virtue" Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only son of Charles Carroll of Annapolis, was born in 1737 and died in November 1832. He was the lone Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and the last of the signers to die. Last year I interviewed Dr. Brad Birzer, Assistant Professor of History at Hillsdale College and author of American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll (ISI, 2010). Here is some of that interview: Chesterton Defines and Defends Patriotism The opening section of G. K. Chesterton's essay, "The Patriotic Idea", first published in 1904, and included in G. K. Chesterton: Collected Works, Volume XX: Christendom in Dublin, Irish Impressions, The New Jerusalem, A Short History of England (also available in softcover), which was edited by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.: I The scepticism of the last two centuries has attacked patriotism as it has attacked all the other theoretic passions of mankind, and in the case of patriotism the attack has been interesting and respectable because it has come from a set of modern writers who are not mere sceptics, but who really have an organic belief in philosophy and politics. Tolstoy, perhaps the greatest of living Europeans, has succeeded in founding a school which, whatever its faults (and they are neither few nor small), has all the characteristics of a great religion. Like a great religion, it is positive, it is public, above all, it is paradoxical. The Tolstoyan enjoys asserting the hardest parts of his belief with that dark and magnificent joy which has been unknown in the world for nearly four hundred years. He enjoys saying, “No man should strike a blow even to defend his country,” in the same way that Tertullian enjoyed saying,“Credo quia impossible.”