“Be the best that we can be,” Bishops’ leader urges on USA’s 250th anniversary

Archbishop Paul Coakley expresses gratitude for America’s many blessings – and offers an example of someone that US Catholics could emulate.

As the United States of America celebrates her 250th anniversary, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says that being faithful to the Gospel is the best way Catholics can build up the nation.

And he has a particular American Catholic in mind as a model for that fidelity.

“I think the first thing that comes to mind is just to be the best Catholics that we can be,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City said in response to a question about the role of the Church in America at this milestone. “Our greatest contribution to the well-being of our nation is our own fidelity — to strive for holiness, to live the Gospel, to live the freedom that has come to us from God and to use it responsibly, to build up our brothers and sisters, to build up this land and to contribute in the ways that we can with an authentic patriotism which expresses our love of country.”

Archbishop Coakley spoke with Aid to the Church in Need-USA for the pontifical foundation’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He said that as the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, he would hope that Americans understand that the message of the Church on this occasion is one of thanksgiving.

That thankfulness includes “gratitude for the people who have gone before us, those who have achieved for us the level of freedom that we enjoy, in a particular way for the religious liberty that we enjoy in this great nation,” the archbishop said.

It is also a time for renewed appreciation of the “rich heritage that we have as Americans and the many ways in which the Lord has blessed this land, and the many people — the peoples that have built this nation from the very beginning, beginning with our Native Peoples but all of the immigrant peoples that have come over the past 250 years and their sacrifices to build a strong union.”

The nation’s history of immigration, too, should certainly be born in mind, he continued. “I think we dare not forget where we came from,” Archbishop Coakley said. “Except for our Native communities, the rest of us arrived here as immigrants. And that’s what strengthened this land.”

And, as perhaps a special message for today, Archbishop Coakley commented, “I think we need to learn to see this phenomenon [of immigration] as not so much a problem as an opportunity that needs to be harnessed and directed wisely.”

First Martyr from America

For many years, Archbishop Coakley has been promoting the cause of canonization of an Oklahoma priest whose life exemplifies many of the values and qualities of which the archbishop spoke in his interview with ACN. Blessed Stanley Rother came from a family whose ancestors had immigrated from Germany and worked hard to build up their community.

Blessed Stanley “in many ways exhibits some of the best of what we are called to be as a nation and as a people,” the archbishop said. “He was a hard-working man from rural America who embraced the faith that was his inheritance, that he was called by God to share with others, and which he did with great generosity.”

Pope Francis in 2016 recognized Rother as a martyr – making him the first martyr from the United States of America.

Born on March 27, 1935, in Okarche, Oklahoma, he grew up on the family farm and attended the local Catholic church that had anchored his family’s faith for generations. Discerning a vocation to the priesthood, he studied at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, Texas. Academic struggles almost derailed his path to the priesthood, but his bishop saw something in him and helped him get into Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He was ordained a priest on May 25, 1963.

Only a few years later, Rother answered Pope St. John XXIII’s call to send missionaries to Central America and joined the Oklahoman mission in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, where he served the indigenous Tz’utujil people. It was there that he was killed on July 28, 1981, after defending his flock from government oppression.

Blessed Stanley was beatified in 2017. In 2023, Archbishop Coakley dedicated the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City, where the martyr is entombed.

A documentary about Blessed Stanley, “American Martyr,” narrated by Martin Sheen, will be released in theaters August 25.

“I think for me part of the attractiveness of Blessed Stanley is his generous spirit in not keeping to himself the gifts that he had received, of being willing to share them with others, even heroically laying down his life for his brothers and sisters in response to his Gospel faith,” Archbishop Coakley told ACN-USA.

The archbishop reported that since building the Rother Shrine, he has witnessed a growing devotion to the priest from Okarche, particularly among seminarians, priests, and men discerning the priesthood. Seminarians see him as somebody who can understand their struggles and challenges, particularly along academic lines. Priests admire his dedication to his parishioners and his heroic witness in laying down his life for his flock, literally.

“I think priests are finding in his witness, his hard work, his willingness literally to roll up his sleeve and get his hands dirty a very attractive model of holiness for them,” Archbishop Coakley said.

As the 250-year “American experiment” and the influence of the United States in the world become subject to evaluation, criticism and debate, a missionary from rural America might just be the kind of role model American Catholics will look to as the nation continues to fulfill its original ideals of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

–John Burger