Discerning the Movie “Independence Day,” 28 Years Later (and on things aging well), by Peter Wolfgang

By Peter Wolfgang, Catholic Culture, Jul 05, 2025

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.

Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention for the month of July is “that we might again learn how to discern, to know how to choose paths of life and reject everything that leads us away from Christ and the Gospel.”

I thought about that intention after seeing on the 4th of July, for the first time in nearly thirty years, the movie Independence Day. My wife and I have fond memories of seeing the film when it first came out. The summer of 1996 was a great time to be alive. Something about Independence Day—Will Smith and crew zapping those aliens and saving America—seemed to capture the zeitgeist of the time. …

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