Dr. Tom Williams

There's always been a temptation because Catholics were very persecuted early on as the Irish and the Polish and sometimes Germans.

And they did everything in their power to make it look like, oh, I'm first an American and then I'm a Catholic.

This was a temptation.

It was a temptation to fit in, to assimilate, to make it

Show that you're a better citizen.

Show that you're—and this—we got John F. Kennedy out of this, you know, the one who said, you know, I'm not—I'm first an American.

I'm going to be an American.

And this is something that there's always been a struggle in kind of the Catholic spirit in the U.S.

But it's only more recently the evangelicals and the Protestants have joined in that same timidness and that same unwillingness to say, you know, I am a Christian and I

uphold and my allegiance to Jesus Christ is actually superior to any other allegiance as I have.

And it's what makes me a good citizen.

What makes me a loyal patriot is because I actually do believe and I believe that I should be loyal to my nation.

But this is something that we're very afraid of right now.

We're so afraid of not fitting in.

We're so afraid of being considered to be obscurantist, to be considered to be, you know, less

cool than the academics who say that this is something that's very passe.

We all want to fit in.

And this is this is the great temptation of our day.

And it's why so few people are willing to stand up and be counted and just say, hey, yeah, I'm an educated person and I am a Christian and I believe in the creed.

I recite it on Sunday and I believe it.