For Catholics, we do not take the bible literally, we do manage to apply the gospels to our modern lives even if it disagrees with formal church dogma. Most, if not all, Christ's teachings dealt with how we should treat each other and ourselves not with a host of don'ts. This is the basis of ethics for most Catholics.
As Americans, a subset of these ethics are basically the Preamble to the Constitution, "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Governance ethics will be based on these assumptions. Our laws are the codified ethics that follow from these assumptions.
Christ's teachings are not codified but are arrived at within each person's well-formed conscience.