Two Anniversaries of 2026 and the War on History

Our humanity is tightly tied to memory, and so we celebrate anniversaries: weddings, births, deaths, ordinations, and inaugurations. This year of our Lord 2026 is no different, and it features two milestones of church and state. Eight hundred years ago, St. Francis surrendered his soul to Our Lord; two hundred fifty years ago, the United States came to be with its Declaration of Independence. Both anniversaries are crucial for helping us understand who we are and to what we are ordered. And both can be understood by looking at lesser anniversaries noted this year.

First, consider the United States. How will we mark and celebrate the anniversary of our founding? A successful anniversary celebration requires a minimum amount of consensus, and that is precisely what we currently lack. Differences over who we are and what we stand for have hardened into seemingly insurmountable divisions. There is talk of civil war. In these circumstances, how can we set aside those competing visions in order to celebrate together? 

History and its recorded precedents can help. I have in mind two important dates: 1976 and 2001. The first marked our Bicentennial—200 years as a nation ostensibly “conceived in liberty” and giving due honor to “nature’s God.” On that July Fourth, 1976, I turned fifteen. So I remember the 1970s. It was a strange decade, replete with struggles for the nation’s civil, cultural, and economic soul. 

And yet, somehow, we came together to celebrate the Bicentennial, with parades, fireworks, reenactments, and, this being America, plenty of Bicentennial-themed merchandise. It was celebratory even in the midst of manifest uncertainty. Can anyone now, in the era of the 1619 Project and a Socialist-Muslim mayor of New York City, conceive of a similar scenario for the 250th anniversary? What has happened to us during the intervening 50 years?

Look no further than September 11, 2001. We will mark the 25th anniversary of that tragic day this year. The immediate aftermath of that attack saw the last period of national unity in this country—and indeed, in what used to be known as Western Civilization. The stunning and endlessly-repeated images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers and their subsequent, shattering collapse brought people together in a shared circle of grief and incomprehension. 

Then, rather than appealing once again to God and repenting, America’s leaders focused not on the manifest wounds of a sick and damaged nation but on “evil” outside its borders. Subsequent American history illustrates how a nation, like the World Trade Center, collapses. Sadly, American Catholics share in the blame.

In the 1960s, decades of efforts to show that Catholicism was compatible with America gave way to the zeitgeist of confusion and rebellion. Priests like the Berrigan brothers blazed a trail of civil disobedience and liturgical and moral experimentation. The post-conciliar questioning and jettisoning of tradition made it easy for Catholics advocating for their version of justice to step away from a grounding in the Faith to an ostensibly moral but a-religious activism. An older generation of activists like Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez gave way to a new wave of Alinskyite activists like the former Catholic Worker member turned Democratic Socialist Michael Harrington. An even bleaker option was the self-immolation of Catholic Worker-affiliated Roger LaPorte, whose despair still resonates with activists today. 

This abandonment of the Faith is reflective of our ongoing effort to understand what America has been, is, and should be. The looming question, to which I shall return, is: Independence from whom and for what? But first, St. Francis and a more long-standing anniversary.

St. Francis: poor man, founder, preacher, troubadour, fool for Christ. In today’s parlance, the “little man” of Assisi was a disruptor. He was a radical, and not in the sense given the word by Saul Alinsky. Rather, Francis sought the roots of Christianity by imitating Christ. In the words of Bishop Robert Barron in his The Pivotal Players:

It [is] a serious temptation to romanticize Francis, to turn him into a harmless religious symbol, much like the little statues of him that accompany bird baths in suburban backyards. In his own time, Francis was a deeply troubling and unnerving figure. 

His approach to penance made a huge impact on Europe, and the various branches of the Franciscan order play a large role in today’s Church.

Cardinal Bergoglio, when elected to the papacy in 2013, shocked many by assuming the name Francis, a saint’s name never previously employed by a pope. During his 12-year pontificate, Pope Francis showed that his image of the Saint of Assisi was of the idealistic hippie, lover of birds and animals, accepting of other religions—surely not the historical figure who preached Christ to the Muslims, rejoiced at the martyrdom of his followers in Islamic Morocco, and who denounced the heterodox and counseled obedience to superiors. 

In 2026, the faithful can follow traditional practices and, hopefully, take advantage of graces of the anniversary. But Catholics intent on upholding the traditional St. Francis would be advised to “gird up their loins” for the onslaught of faux-St. Francis propaganda. 

To understand how we came to this pass, we can skip over cultural low points like Zeffirelli’s hippy-trippy biopic of St. Francis, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and similar dreck. The sure key to the debasement and rebranding of St. Francis comes with the 40th anniversary this year of Pope John Paul II’s October 27, 1986, interfaith prayer meeting in Assisi, an event still scandalizing the faithful. As Eric Sammons points out, the Polish pope tried to make a distinction between praying together and being in the same place praying. But that is not the message conveyed to the Church and the world. 

The messaged conveyed implied St. Francis was a pioneer of false ecumenism. In the Vatican document giving the text of the pope’s speech, the well-known prayer often attributed to St. Francis is used as a concluding passage: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,” etc. The imagery of Buddhists and animists praying in Assisi laid the groundwork for 2019’s Pachamama desecration and Pope Francis’ documents full of religious indifferentism.

So, what is in store for the anniversaries of this year? In America, we now have scenes of citizens harassing federal agents. But we should remember that 250 years ago “patriots” were tarring and feathering “loyalists” and driving them from their homes. We should also remember that supporters of slave owners took over federal institutions and broke their oaths of office in the run-up to the Civil War. From the 1960s onward, some Americans have deemed it more important to push their agenda rather than obey properly-instituted laws. America has persisted as a nation of rebels.

In a similar manner, the enemies of Church Tradition and perennial magisterium have for decades sought to throw off what they see as unjust and outdated strictures. I suggest there is a common solution to both of these problematic situations: remembering that the United States has been dedicated since 1846 to the Immaculate Conception. A similar renewed reliance on Our Lady would benefit the Church, countering a move by Cardinal Fernández to downplay the Blessed Virgin Mary’s role in our lives. 

Likewise, the acknowledgment of the Kingship of Christ would benefit both Church and state. It is a telling fact that the United States was founded on rejection of a king, despite the fact—as historian Andrew Roberts ably shows in his biography of George III—that the king in question was really not a bad monarch in practice. The renewal of obeisance to Christ the King could also inspire a future pope to take up again the discarded triple tiara.

Finally, in this anniversary year, we American Catholics might find a helpful ally in the soon-to-be beatified Archbishop Fulton Sheen, a loyal son of the Church who also loved his native land. If we are going to keep our nation together, we can use all the help we can get in this tumultuous and dysfunctional anniversary year.