Contrary to popular belief among some Catholic groups that
there is something inherently wrong in the American system as designed by the
Founding Fathers, there is every indication that Leo XIII and other popes saw
something special about the United States — in a good way.
This is not idle speculation. Alexis de Tocqueville mentioned in Democracy in America that he considered
American political institutions to be in conformity with Catholic teaching, and
that the United States could one day be a “Catholic” country.
Cardinal Satolli’s enthusiastic characterization of the U.S.
Constitution and the Gospels as “the Magna Charta of humanity,” and some of the
language used by Pius XI in describing the act of social justice as well as his
analysis of the role of free association have distinct parallels with the
opinion and even language of de Tocqueville.
As G. K. Chesterton remarked,
“It may
have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American
Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a
truth; and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American
Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded
on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.
That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the
Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that
is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all
men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them
that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly
does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it
clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal
rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed
logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government
it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there
is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.” (G. K.
Chesterton, “What is America?” What I Saw
in America (1922).)
The problem was that by the time Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum, fundamental changes had
already been introduced into the American system. These undermined not only what was uniquely American about America, but also
virtually everything that appeared to make the American spirit so compatible
with Catholicism.