In a recent interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (a Catholic), Christian nationalist Doug Wilson (a Presbyterian Calvinist) said, “One of the things is that America was founded as a Protestant Christian country. At the founding we were 98 percent Protestant, in every direction.”

In other words, we should go back to that form of Christianity. In the good old days (before its descent into secularism starting in the Fifties and Sixties), he says, Puritan Protestantism ruled and established America.

“When it came to it, America kept her Protestant ethos and incorporated successfully Catholics and Jews,” said Wilson. “That’s something that we know how to do. We’ve done it before—it’s been done. I’m grateful for that.”

We’re all for Christianity, of course, and we’re likewise theocratic. Let Christianity rule! (Remember when abortion and sodomy were illegal?)

But we have to remind Reverend Wilson of two things.

First and foremost, the first form of Christianity established in America was not Presbyterianism (as he advocates) but Catholicism. (See Where the Cross Stands.)

Remember Christopher Columbus?

He was not only a devout Catholic but also—like other explorers who would follow in his wake—a missionary.

He considered the evangelization of the New World his primary goal.

He was Catholic—in fact, so devout it was the visit to a Marian shrine in Spain that led to confirmation to do what he did and cross the Atlantic (on a flagship the Santa Maria). He prayed to the Blessed Mother before setting out, Reverend Wilson. He was a third-order Franciscan who, when possible, attended daily Mass, including a liturgy as well as Confession before setting out on his dangerous, remarkable, history-making exploration.

Fair of complexion, with freckles and an aquiline nose, neither pudgy nor rail-thin, with grey hair, on the muscular side, high of cheekbone, somewhat taller than average, with the carriage of an aristocrat, yet the sensibilities of a crewman, Columbus often had a monk’s cord around his waist and sometimes—not aboard, that anyone has reported, but after his famous expeditions—was seen in a monk’s robe, entertaining thoughts, at one point, of entering a monastery.

In St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the United States, is the tallest known Cross in the world. It stands on the Matanzas Bay where boats head out into the Atlantic, and it can be seen from miles out to sea. It marks the spot where the first documented Catholic Mass in the U.S. took place.

This wasn’t where Columbus landed but rather another Catholic explorer named Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

Surely there had been earlier Masses, explorers in previous years who were known to have priests aboard: adventurers who had reached places such as southwestern and northwestern Florida.

But this is the official spot where—for all intents and purposes—Christianity entered America.

It stands two hundred and eight feet tall, does the Cross, erected there in 1966 as if to offset—or war against—the evil which entered the country that decade and especially that year. To stand under this Cross, which is located at the oldest Marian shrine on the continent, is to feel Grace.

It dates back to the sixteenth century—1565—long before Williamsburg, Virginia, as well as before that first official Protestant “thanksgiving” at Plymouth Rock.

A unique, vine-covered chapel is dedicated there to Our Lady of La Leche, or “Our Lady of the Milk,” showing the Blessed Mother nursing her Child. Pregnant women come here to ask for safe deliveries, as do women seeking to become fertile, often finding those prayers answered.

Some day in the future—perhaps the not so distant future—this Cross and this area may play a role in the spiritual and temporal survival and revival of America.

It was on August 27, 1565, according to a priest’s own diary, that a marvel factored into the picture.

It came at nine that evening when a comet suddenly blazed through the dark directly above the ship. According to the priest, all were astounded, for it gave “so much light that it might have been taken for the sun. It went toward the west—that is, toward Florida—and its brightness lasted long enough to repeat two Credos.”

God, he wrote, “showed to us a miracle from Heaven.”

Back to Columbus: clerics who joined Columbus on subsequent voyages—Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians—were soon aboard the ships of other explorers, including Ponce de Léon, who discovered Florida around Easter in 1513.

There are legends that Saint Brendan of Ireland landed in Greenland long before and that here had been a liturgy involved around 1112 A.D. (Greenland is technically part of North America), and there are legends of Vikings setting foot as far south as Newfoundland and even Maine. At Kensington, Minnesota, a slab of soft calcite some believe was put there in the 1300s bore mysterious runic markings. If not a hoax, it meant that a century before Columbus (who during his second voyage had Mass celebrated at La Isabela west of the Dominican Republic), Vikings had etched the following:

“Eight Goths and 22 Norwegians on an exploring journey from Vinland very far west. We had camp by two skerries, one day’s journey north from this stone. We were fishing one day when we returned home and found ten men red with blood and dead. AVM [Ave Virgin Mary] save us from this evil. We have ten men by the sea to look after our vessel forty-one days’ journey from this island. Year 1362.”

If true, the Virgin had been invoked seven centuries ago in what is now the U.S.

We carry a 1992 book called The Final Hour, and that hour, though dwindling — despite the sand moving through the hourglass — has not yet concluded.

We have time.

We have minutes.

We as a society—and as a Church—can still rebound.

We can still recover America. We’re at a turning point.

We can stave off “chastisements.”

We can turn morals around.

We can prevent the unraveling of society.

With prayer and fasting, we can stop wars; we can suspend the laws of nature.

With hope, we can succeed despite indications to the contrary—despite compelling facts indicating that the country has gone around the bend, that it is over the top,  that it has passed the point of no return. There is still a chance. It is a prayer to say beneath this Cross. It is a prayer for anywhere.

But time is short, and in the near-distance, a trumpet sounds.

(Remember these words from an alleged prophecy:  “… I have ordained as a beacon of light…  the place near the water where the Cross stands.”)