![University of Dallas panel explores American exceptionalism through a Catholic lens #Catholic In a standing-room-only event, college students lined the walls of a large room at the University of Dallas to hear three Catholic academics and an apologist reflect on what makes America exceptional in a celebration marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.Liam Ritter, a junior and the founder of the university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, which hosted the discussion, told EWTN News that the March 4 panel of speakers served as the capstone of three days of celebrations at the university.The panel was comprised of University President Jonathan Sanford; Trent Horn, staff apologist with Catholic Answers; Burt Folsom, distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College and economic historian; and Susan Hanssen, associate professor of history at the University of Dallas.‘We have a population of people who know what is at stake’In response to Ritter’s question, “Why [is it] that our political regime has been so stable for so long,” Hanssen recalled America’s first immigrants. “I think the first thing that makes America exceptional, and its political regime exceptional, is the fact that America was first populated by people who fled the rise of the modern nation state and totalitarianism … and so we have a population of people who know what is at stake in political liberty," she said.“Theyʼve seen what happened to their ancestors,” she continued. “They remember the stories. And America has been blessed in its political constitution with the regime of liberty, which has made possible the flourishing of subsidiary communities and societies.”Hanssen said we should not take for granted today that we still “have a free people." “We need to listen to our latest immigrants … those who have fled Venezuela, those who have fled Iran, like my uncle, a Persian Jew, who refuses to call himself Iranian because he associates modern Iran with the regime of the Ayatollah.”‘Get married, have children, raise them well’Sanford said that though we are a nation of immigrants, “there won’t be enough to pull in to make up for” the continuing demographic decline.“Get married, have children, raise them well,” he said to chuckles from a receptive audience, which was mostly composed of college students.He encouraged the students not to focus on “one big step,” but rather, to take smaller steps: “Get up early. Pray. Exercise. Go through the day in an ordered fashion, give Caesar what is Caesarʼs, and God what is God’s.”“Do the little things thousands and thousands of times,” he said.“In order to exercise liberty properly,” he continued, one has to ask, "How should I live my life?” and then rely on the institutions that “help you do that.”He called the family the “foundational institution” of America. “Recover the family,” he said.In addition, “we need to see those institutions that mediate the virtues — schools, universities — that embrace fully the idea of what [the virtues] are.”Horn also encouraged students to focus on family relationships, telling them “get off the phones and the internet. They’re killing all of us. They’re rewiring our brains.”
Trent Horn (left), an apologist at Catholic Answers, and University of Dallas President Jonathan Sanford participate in a panel on American exceptionalism at the University of Dallas on March 4, 2026. | Credit: Courtesy of University of Dallas Young Americans for Freedom Chapter
Of people currently in their 20s in America, "one in three will never have children,” he lamented, implying too much technology use is partly to blame.The Catholic Answers apologist pointed out, however, that though the Second Industrial Revolution “broke the family” by encouraging workers to move away from their homes and families to pursue careers, the internet “post-Covid,” in the age of “Zoom and telecommuting … might be good” because many people no longer have to choose between a job and staying near their extended families.“Maybe tech can help build up family networks,” he said.‘The greatest outpouring of economic development’ in historyRitter told EWTN news that he chose speakers who could address “the wonderful things the U.S. has contributed” to the world because “a lot of young people don’t have appropriate gratitude for the country.”Ritter asked Folsom, a historian who focuses on economics and industrial affairs, about what the professor believes the U.S. has contributed to world economics and world innovations.Folsom said that the generation after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1905, was responsible for “the greatest outpouring of economic development … in world history” and “gave us the rise of an America that became a world power” by World War I.He listed inventions that facilitated the rapid development of industry and infrastructure in the country during the Second Industrial Revolution, including the typewriter, the telephone, adding machines, the light bulb, electricity, factory-produced cars, and recording devices for music and movies, among other innovations.Through the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, “the founders gave us the freedom” to develop these technologies, he said. “We had amazing infrastructure that allowed people to produce, and not have government get in their way.”The professor said the post-Civil War period could be eclipsed in the present day “because with artificial intelligence, this generation may yet be able to come up with more.”‘A responsibility for this political regime of freedom’At the conclusion of the panel discussion, Hanssen called the feeling in the room “electric, it’s teeming with patriotism. This isn’t a normal college campus.”Referring to Sanford’s earlier admonition to ”get married and have kids,” she said: “I agree, be fruitful and multiply … Preach the Gospel, and baptize in the name of Jesus, but also, go into politics!” she exclaimed.She encouraged the students to develop “the ability to love something so much that you would die for it: God, family, country.”“Recognize what is at stake. We have a responsibility for this political regime of freedom, to the immigrants who come here … to our children… to preserve the rule of law.”She concluded to loud applause: “So family; yes! Faith; yes, but to the barricades, ladies and gentlemen!"](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/university-of-dallas-panel-explores-american-exceptionalism-through-a-catholic-lens-catholic-in-a-standing-room-only-event-college-students-lined-the-walls-of-a-large-room-at-the-university-of-dalla.jpg)
The speakers encouraged the college students to get married, have children, stay off the internet (unless it enables them to telework and stay near their extended families), and be political.
![‘My trust was in God’: Priest recounts flight from Holy Land amid Iranian conflict #Catholic A Jesuit priest says he has a “much larger perspective” of the crisis of war after fleeing the Holy Land at the outset of U.S. and Israeli aggressions against Iran.Father Anthony Wieck, SJ, told EWTN News he was leading a pilgrimage of about 20 Catholics in the Holy Land when the war began on Feb. 28.“We had just spent a week in Galilee and prayed our way through the holy sites of Jesus’ teaching and miracles,” Wieck said, describing the region as “a lovely land [God] created for himself to enjoy on this earth.”The group arrived in Jerusalem on Feb. 26, he said, and the next day word began to spread of the need to evacuate from the region. Several pilgrims were able to leave immediately, Wieck said, while others who attempted to leave the next day were unable to get a flight out and eventually had to return to the pilgrim group.Ben Gurion International Airport “is not a safe place to be because there are military installations near the airport,” he said. “Iranian missiles were being sent that way, and our people ... were taken into the bomb shelter five stories down below the airport.”Wieck said that even as the conflict broke out, his group still toured holy sites, including the Church of the Pater Noster, where tradition holds that Christ taught the disciples to pray the Our Father. “We were instructed by our guide to continue the tour and to simply seek cover whenever the sirens went off,” he said, pointing out that “those living in Jerusalem are so used to warning sirens there that they have much less fear than we do. They’re observant but not fearful. And we were trusting them.”The priest was offering a chanted Mass at the Dominus Flevit Church while explosions sounded in the distance as Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted Iranian missiles.“It was scary, yes,” Wieck said. “But I continued the Mass with trust, and after Communion (before the final prayer) asked all pilgrims to pray for a couple minutes regarding where the Lord was in all of this situation.”
Father Anthony Wieck, SJ, says Mass at the Dominus Flevit Church in Jerusalem on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. | Credit: Father Anthony Wieck, SJ
After Mass, a group of pilgrims from Kansas joined them in the church amid sirens and explosions in the surrounding region. “It struck me as supremely important that we not make decisions based on fear but on faith,” he said.The priest’s group took a truncated walking tour of Jerusalem, he said, which “became eerily quiet that evening.”The tour company ordered them to evacuate the following morning. Departing for Jordan, the group found itself stuck amid a crush of evacuations in the area. “A typical two-hour trip to Amman, Jordan, took us seven hours,” Wieck said. And while the group initially “felt much safer being outside of Jerusalem,” they eventually felt “locked in” at their hotel, particularly amid mass flight cancellations.
Missile contrails are seen over the Holy Land region on Sunday, March 1, 2026. | Credit: Father Anthony Wieck, SJ
Jordanians in the area kept assuring the Americans that the country’s King Abdullah II would protect them. “Not feeling the same allegiance to their king, my trust was in God,” the priest said.The U.S. Department of State provided military evacuations to Americans in the area. “Little by little, our pilgrims found an occasional flight that [shuttled] them out of the war zone,” Wieck said. The priest and one other pilgrim, a religious from Phoenix, were the last from their group to remain in Jordan before they took a flight with Royal Jordanian Airlines on March 4. Wieck said the pilot took “great efforts to circumvent Israeli airspace.” The air carrier “was bold enough to keep to their travel plans despite the threats,” Wieck said, describing the airline as “my new favorite.” ‘Truly a Catholic experience’Wieck told EWTN News that he “would not say that I was stellar in my response to what God was doing here.” “I wanted to pray much but felt so much stress and trauma around me that it was truly difficult,” he said. “I was exhausted.”Yet during the frightening evacuation, he said, “hundreds of people” back home were lifting up the pilgrims with prayers and sacrifices. “They knew our plight was becoming a bit more grave,” he said.Back home in the U.S., Wieck, who lives in Louisiana, said he was still reflecting on what happened but said the harrowing ordeal gave him “a much larger perspective to have experienced profoundly how much we need the help of our brothers and sisters in times of crisis.”“It was truly a Catholic experience,” he said.“Though as humans we usually don’t carry our crosses in times of crisis all that well, our brothers and sisters in the faith can see us through. That was my experience,” he said.“How wonderful it is to be Catholic!” he added.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-catholic-a-jesuit-priest-says-he-has-a-much-larger-perspective-of-the-crisis-of-wa.jpg)
Father Anthony Wieck, SJ, was leading a group of pilgrims in Jerusalem when the U.S. and Israel began launching strikes against Iran.
In the surrealist realm of Roger Dean’s “Tales from Topographic Oceans,” vibrant neon hues dance across the canvas, illuminating fantastical landscapes that defy logic and reason. Within this ethereal world, psychedelic creatures morph and shift, their neon bodies pulsating with otherworldly energy. Swirling vortexes of neon light spiral upward, drawing the viewer into a kaleidoscopic journey through the subconscious mind.
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