In 1776, a group of revolutionaries in Philadelphia declared a truth they held self-evident: Human beings are equal in their inherent worth and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Now, as the United States marks 250 years of an unprecedented political experiment, those ideas warrant renewed reflection.
Over the ensuing two and a half centuries, the American project has evolved into a global symbol of liberal democracy, constitutional order, and economic freedom. To secure the Jeffersonian promise, modern societies strive to shape the political, legal, and economic conditions that govern social life. We largely place our hope in what Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North defines as the humanly devised “rules of the game” (e.g., constitutions, laws, and regulations), expecting that the right institutional framework will protect our rights and foster prosperity.1
Yet underneath our complex institutional framework lies a persistent, quiet crisis of meaning.2 As shared prosperity proves elusive, political antagonism mounts, and social cohesion weakens, we must ask: Can purely institutional solutions ever deliver the fullness of life, liberty, and happiness we long for? Or have we mistaken institutional means for the deeper ends of human flourishing?
A profound answer may be inferred from the late Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI’s) “My Joy Is to Be in Thy Presence: On the Christian Belief in Eternal Life.” First published as a chapter in God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, this eloquent and penetrating essay draws from Ratzinger’s homiletic work from decades earlier.
Naturally, Ratzinger never addresses Jefferson directly. However, an interpretation of Ratzinger’s theology on life, liberty, and happiness offers a compelling illumination of the American promise. Viewing the Jeffersonian triad through Ratzinger’s theology suggests that many of the struggles and discontents of modern life are not merely institutional in origin, but also reflect a diminished sense of transcendence. Catholicism does not offer a replacement for sound institutions and government policies but a more expansive account of meaning that situates both within a broader vision of human flourishing.
Recovering Life:
From the Survival of Bios to the Gift of Zoē
When Jefferson wrote of the right to life, the immediate context was protection against the arbitrary exercise of power and the violence of tyranny. In the modern liberal tradition, this right entails the preservation of physical existence and bodily integrity—the finite realm of bios, which Ratzinger describes as “the passing life of this world” (140).
Can purely institutional solutions ever deliver the fullness of life, liberty, and happiness we long for?
Ratzinger identifies a fundamental reductionism in the corresponding conceptualization of life. We have devoted much effort into preserving biological life, yet grow increasingly “uncertain” (130) of what lies beyond it. Even among Christians, he notes, “the awareness of eternal life has become astoundingly weak” (131). Citing Hans Urs von Balthasar, Ratzinger observes:
It is as if modern man had had a tendon cut, so that he can no longer run toward his original goal, as if his wings had been clipped, as if his spiritual awareness of transcendence had withered (130).
This fading hope in eternity, Ratzinger notes, is the reverse side of a weakened faith in the living God. When we cease to believe in God as “an active agent in history” (131), we shut ourselves into a world where only what we can build, touch, and measure is real.
Ratzinger thus points to the Gospel of John for a far richer concept: zoē, (“rooted in eternal life”). Rather than being a chronological extension of bios, eternal life entails “a new quality of existence . . . freed from the fragmentation of . . . the accelerating flight of moments” (137). Eternal life is the “true life” that forms “the firm base of our soul” and “an indestructible heart from which spring the courage and joy to go on, even when exterior things are painful and hard” (140, 137).
We do not discover this life by looking inward at our private wants but by “learn[ing] to see God once more as an active agent in the world and in regard to ourselves” (132). As Ratzinger emphasizes, already amidst our fleeting temporal existence, eternal life is made present “whenever we truly encounter God from within” (140).
Reclaiming Liberty:
The Myth of Utopia vs. Liberation from Self
If Jefferson’s conception of life provides the foundation of the American experiment, liberty constitutes its central organizing principle. In the secular tradition, liberty is often defined negatively as the absence of coercion, or positively as self-determination.
Yet in human history, the pursuit of absolute liberty has not infrequently devolved into destructive, totalitarian ideologies. Why do our institutional efforts to build perfectly free societies often result in new forms of captivity?
Ratzinger answers by exposing the delusion of utopia. Modernity has attempted to replace eschatology with self-made political utopias, based on the belief that an “inner logic in history” (142) will inevitably produce a just society through the right institutional arrangements. But this, Ratzinger asserts, is a “primitive myth” and “simply illogical” (142):
The struggle to keep evil under control, within limits, has to be taken up anew by each generation and can never be removed by the institutional arrangements of an earlier generation.
For Ratzinger, utopia resembles the myth of Tantalus. The perfect, self-made free society, intended to “fulfill man’s hope by its own powers and without faith in God” (142), always seems within reach, yet proves elusive, in part because “man always remains free and can therefore never be fixed in place in a final state of things” (142). Utopia has proven unreachable via institutional engineering.
True liberty, Ratzinger argues, is found not in the reconstruction of external social structures, but in internal transformation⎯liberation from the self:
Thus it becomes apparent that there is in this face-to-face encounter with God nothing selfish, no withdrawal into a merely private realm, but that very liberation from the self which alone makes any sense of eternity (141).
The contrast with the modern ideal of autonomous individualism is unmistakable. Under the banner of individual liberty, modern culture has instead built what Ratzinger calls a “dungeon of loneliness” (136), manifested, among other things, in the social fragmentation that the political scientist Robert Putnam captured in his phrase “bowling alone.” We demand the freedom to do what we want, but this self-centered liberty eventually isolates us, turning others into obstacles or competitors.
In Ratzinger’s theology, true liberty is the freedom to love, to sacrifice, and to unite our gaze “with the single gaze and the one being of the Son.”
True liberation occurs, Ratzinger stresses, when our individual wills are aligned with the divine will of the living God. When we step into the “sanctuary” of prayer and place ourselves in the “pilgrim company of God’s history” (138), we are freed from purely private questioning. There, we no longer see others through the lens of “mine and yours”—what John Chrysostom called “cold words”—but as members of “one Body” (141).
In Ratzinger’s theology, true liberty is the freedom to love, to sacrifice, and to unite our gaze “with the single gaze and the one being of the Son” (144). The genuinely “liberating force” thus arises within the “quiet cycle of true life,” in an economy of grace where “Nothing that is good goes for nothing” (145).
Refocusing the Pursuit of Happiness:
The Illusory vs. the Presence
For Jefferson and the broader political philosophy of the American founding, the pursuit of happiness encompassed the freedom to acquire property, cultivate virtue, and seek human flourishing. In contemporary society, however, the pursuit has largely been narrowed to a race for wealth, status, and material comfort.
Ratzinger meets this reality with startling clarity: “We long for justice; and that is why we also long for truth. . . . We long for true happiness,” he adds, “All of us” (135, 136). Yet we are constantly tempted to settle for cheap replacements:
The happiness of mere success, of mere power, of mere wealth, is always an illusory happiness; a glance at the world of today . . . will show us how true this is (139).
To illustrate true happiness, Ratzinger turns to Psalm 73. The righteous man’s temporal life has become a painful contradiction; he suffers illness and anguish while the cynics, who mock God, grow “healthy and plump” (138). On the verge of despair, the supplicant wonders if it was pointless to remain righteous. The decisive moment comes when he enters the sanctuary of God. Stepping beyond his private calculations, “the true perspective of reality re-emerges” (139).
Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. . . . Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. . . . For me it is good to be near God (139; Ps 73: 23-26, 28).
This, Ratzinger insists, is the exact definition of true happiness: “my happiness is to be in your presence” (139).
Toward a Liturgy of a Nation’s Soul
The 250th anniversary of the United States provides an opportunity not only for celebration but also for reflection on what we truly seek. Every society has, in a sense, its own liturgy: a pattern of loves and commitments that reveals what it ultimately prioritizes. The modern secular imagination has directed much of its confidence in institutions—the “rules of the game” that organize our political, legal, and economic affairs. These rules are essential for the orderly functioning of a temporal society. Yet they cannot, by themselves, give us a reason to hope.
Joseph Ratzinger’s theology provides a powerful complement to the secular horizons of modern thought. He invites us to recognize that life is not merely the preservation of earthly existence but allowing God to teach the soul and orient it toward eternal life. Similarly, liberty is found not in the unconstrained autonomy, but in the liberation that comes from opening oneself to God’s will. And happiness lies not in the fragile fulfillment promised by wealth and power but in the lasting joy of communion with God.
In a passage in his essay, Ratzinger looks back at St. Augustine, who lived through the chaotic collapse of Rome. Yet St. Augustine did not succumb to despair because he could see a new city arise at the horizon, the City of God. He was so warmed by this promise that he wrote, “Brothers, when I speak of this city, even though the troubles here grow great, I can no longer contain myself” (144).
As we navigate the challenges and anxieties of our own historical moment, perhaps we might look anew at our nation’s heritage of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—not as self-contained political ends, but as invitations to a fuller, transcendent horizon. By looking beyond the immediate calculus that characterizes our temporal concerns, we may open ourselves to the grace that Ratzinger’s theology and the Catholic tradition identify as essential for forming persons and communities capable of building a truly free and enduring society.
1 See, e.g., Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012); Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty (New York: Penguin Press, 2019). Acemoglu and Robinson, together with Simon Johnson, likewise won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”
2 See, e.g., Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).
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* The idea for this essay emerged from a reading group exploring the writings of Joseph Ratzinger. I am grateful to Maia Browning Olsen, Andy Johnson, Scott Olsen, Nancy Trumps, Nimfa Szarka, and especially Fr. Jay Biber for their many insights and the enriching conversations that helped shape these reflections.