Fr. Mike Johns: Immigration and the Declaration at 250

“The Declaration of Independence itself,” note Catholic legal scholars Michael Scaperlanda and Teresa Collett,

reflects several assumptions about the nature of the human person. Broadly speaking, it assumes that (a) the human race did not bring itself into existence but was created by some transcendent Being, variously referred to as “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge”; (b) the human person has an unalienable and equal right to be free; (c) freedom is exercised in community; (d) freedom must be ordered by government and law; and (e) these truths are self-evident.

Put simply, the underlying impulse of the Declaration is the conviction that the human person is prior to government. Government is both necessary and good, but it can only order and safeguard what is already there, namely, the community of persons created by God. As the Declaration asserts, government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.” The priority of the human person is taken, moreover, as a self-evident truth. …

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