OPINION:
In his Easter reflections after visiting our nation’s largest Roman Catholic Church, Newt Gingrich suggested that religion is what truly brings people together (“The universality of the Roman Catholic Church,” Web, April 24). In fact, there is a far greater American ideal that could unite all of humanity: the Declaration of Independence. It is a profound document that the late President Carter accurately claimed created the United States.
I’m certain Mr. Gingrich and his wife saw all of humanity in that church on Easter, but I saw it at every meeting and athletic event I attended at Rockville High School, whose student body represents more than 150 nationalities. That experience demonstrated to me clearly that we Americans ’are the world’ — and single religion is never going to unite us.
Religious differences too often lead to violence. The Declaration of Independence, on the other hand, represents a set of universal truths that can unite. It declares that “all men are created equal” and are “endowed” with “unalienable Rights.” These do not belong to any single church, nation or era; they belong to all people, everywhere, for all time.
Republican President Abraham Lincoln understood this deeply. He once said that the Declaration claimed “liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.” And he called it “a rebuke and a stumbling block to tyranny and oppression” everywhere.
The Roman Catholic Church absolutely has global reach. But it is these universal ideals rooted in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that can truly bind humanity.
CHUCK WOOLERY
Former chair, United Nations Association, Council of Organizations
Rockville, Maryland
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