Catholic Sources and the Declaration of Independence - Democracy not a "child of the Reformation"

Our Sunday Visitor via Catholic Education Resource Center ^ | 1930 | REV. JOHN C. RAGER, S.T.D.

[anglian]

“there’s not a single rational thought represented by these anti-Catholics”. Here’s a thought. Those anti’s ought be thankful they weren’t around in 1599, a time when Cardinal Bellarmine, a member of the Roman Inquisition could get his hands on them.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Jesus already set up His millennial kingdom, the New Jerusalem, the Church.

Which is why you folks get so much wrong. Your basic premises are flawed.

[ALPAPilot]

Any fifth columnist who puts loyalty to a foreign clerical monarch over our Constitution has no business living here

Are you assuming the principles of the Catholic Church contradict the American principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence? I do not believe you could demonstrate a contradiction. Nor do I think you can demonstrate the The Roman Catholic Church opposed Enlightenment Republicanism.

[Cronos]

clemenza: Any fifth columnist who puts loyalty to a foreign clerical monarch over our Constitution has no business living here

wait a minute -- are you saying Catholics are not welcome in the USA?

[Cronos]

"The Loyalists were often Catholics."

What are you talking about? Catholics having a vested interest with Protestant England -- the same England that persecuted them and denied them rights?

1. There were no Baptists among the Founding Fathers --> there were
   1. Church of England/Episcopalian: 28
   2. Presbyterian: 8
   3. Congregationalists: 8
   4. Lutherans: 2
   5. Dutch Reformed: 2
   6. Methodists: 2
   7. Catholics: 3 (C. Caroll, D. Caroll & Fitzsimons)
   8. Deists: 7 (including Thomas Jefferson
   So perhaps since there were no Baptists, they shouldn't be considered (according to your statement) Americans?

2. Evidently you never heard that Maryland was founded for providing religious toleration of England's persecuted Roman Catholics?

3. Evidently you never knew that John Caroll had initially been a priest before devoting himself to the Revolution?

4. Evidently you never heard of Fr. Pierre Gibault who pledged the support of the region of S-W Indiana to the USA (to Col. George Rogers Clark)?

5. Evidently you never heard of the accomplishments of John Barry, a native Irishman who captained a number of ships during the war. Barry was the first to capture a British war vessel on the high seas; he also was wounded in a sea batter yet captured two British ships and fought the last battle on the seas of the Revolutionary war. He was George Washington's choice for commander of the US navy -- he was issued Commission Number 1 by Washintong and was not only the first American commissioned naval officer but also it's first flag officer

6. Evidently you've never heard of the Marquis de Lafayette, a Catholic or the Polish captain Tadeusz Kosciuszko and both were key in the Revolutionary War?
7. Evidently you never heard of Casimir Pułaski, a Pole who led Washington's cavalry and died in the battle for Savannah

8. Evidently you never heard of the Catholic Philadelphia merchant Stephen Moylan who became Quatermaster General of the Continental Army?

9. John Caroll says this about Catholic participation in the Revolutionary war (remember the country was only 1.6% Catholic):"Their blood flowed as freely, in proportion to their numbers, to cement the fabric of independence as that of their fellow citizens. They concurred with perhaps greater unanimity than any other body of men in recommending and promoting from whose influence America anticipates all the blessings of justice, peace, plenty, good orders, and civil and religious liberty"

The religious freedom fought for was also religious freedom for Catholics from Protestant England, hence the Catholic volunteers and support from Catholic Irishmen, Frenchmen and Poles.

[Cronos]

In case you didn’t know, Rnmomof6, we in the US have a republic — we’re not the messy democracy, rule of the mob....like in the PCUSA...

[dangus]

Bellarmine defended Galileo, even though Galileo’s cosmology was vastly inferior to diCusa, and offered nothing but failure beyond Capernicus.

Galileo was positively mule-headed; he won through Bellarmine the concession that he could present his ideas as theories, rather than as proven, and he went and created an Aristotelean straw man, representing the pope, named, “Simpleton” (Simplicio, in Latin), a prick move that set science back four centuries because it killed off diCusa’s cosmology in the cross-fire. Ironically, Galileo’s observations could have confirmed diCusa, but Galileo didn’t know of diCusa’s suppositions, and he ignored any and all data that didn’t fit his own hunches, making him out a scientific hypocrite.

But where Bellarmine defended Galileo’s freedom of thought, and STILL got Bellarmine a cozy post-trial life, Calvin issued a fatwah against Galileo that would have cost Galileo his life if he ever entered Switzerland.

[dangus]

You want to blow Texas Fossil’s mind and let him know who George Washington summoned to his death bed to administer last rites?

John Carroll, brother of Charles Carroll, and founder of Georgetown University, and future first United States Catholic bishop and Archbishop of Baltimore.

We’re not talking nominal Catholics!

[goodwithagun]

Although some were slave owners, slavery itself was struck out of the Declaration of Independence so that the southern states would vote for secession from King George. Jefferson even wrote that slavery was a sin that future generations would pay for. My bishop, a USCCB member, actively campaigned for obama when he composed his how to vote flier and included them in every October 2008 bulletin. To my knowledge, the Founders did not create slavery is awesome pamphlets and then distribute them in their churches.

[goodwithagun]

I am fully aware of the latest news. I too listened to the letter that was read at mass Sunday and that is what these links refer to. However, the USCCB chose to lie with dogs when they chose to support obama and now they are waking up with fleas.

[Cronos]

Bellarmine and other inquisitors only had the authority to judge Catholics. The antis wouldn’t be in that list. They’d have to answer to Puritans or Calvinists or Anglicans or Lutheran who meted out their own versions of the inquisitions in their time.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“None were Catholic or members of the The Church of England (Anglican).”

Manhy Americans are ignorant of their own history so it doesn’t surprise me you would make that common mistake. Now, look up Charles Carroll (who I believe was the longest living survivor of the Declaration of Independence).
Also, how many Catholics would you expect in English colonies that often persecuted them?

[anglian]

Menocchio, also known as Domenico Scandella, was a Friulian miller born in 1532 in the village of Montereale, twenty-five kilometers north of Pordenone. His philosophical teachings earned him the title of a heresiarch during the Inquisition and he was eventually burned at the stake in 1599, at the age of 67, on orders of Pope Clement VIII.

He was married and had eleven children.
Ginzburg’s book details the patient mechanism of the Inquisition in Counter Reformation Italy as it sought to eradicate suspected heresy and heretical groups rather in the same way that Stalin suspected counter-revolution everywhere.
The locals knew the sick sixty-seven-year-old well – he had long been a character in the local villages – being a miller by trade, a former mayor of nearby Montereale and an administrator of the parish church there. His name was Domenico Scandella but he was better known as Menocchio. With Giordano Bruno in far-off Rome, the virtually unknown and ill-educated old man shared the dangerous honour of being accused of heresy and of being burned alive. http://www.readysteadybook.com/BookReview.aspx?isbn=0801843871

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“To my knowledge, the Founders did not create slavery is awesome pamphlets and then distribute them in their churches.”

No, some of them just bought, sold, raped, and beat those slaves instead. I’ll take a misguided, misinformed pamphleteer over a slaver any day.

[Hacksaw]

Any fifth columnist who puts loyalty to a foreign clerical monarch over our Constitution has no business living here. That isn't "anti-Catholicism" that is the truth.

Wow. So should Zionists move away too? How do you propose to enforce this?

[Hacksaw]

Any attempt to tie Rome to democracy is laughable..

More or less laughable that the people who claim that John Calvin founded the USA?

[dangus]

Well, not exactly...

It’s true that the Inquisitors only went after people who were corrupting the church. You could believe and teach what you wanted to, so long as you didn’t claim that what you were teaching was the teaching the Catholic faith. No false advertising!

So Muslims and Jews were absolutely free to teach Islam and Judaism, under the law. The only ones who fell under the Inquisition were the conversos, who claimed to have converted to Catholicism, but sometimes only did so insincerely. And this is something which will never be clear from history: Islam teaches that taqqiyah, lying to assume power in an “infidel” state, is morally acceptable. So were the Muslims in Spain who claimed to be Christians doing it more out of fear of Christian vigilantes, or to promote Islamic beliefs within a Catholic state through sinister means?

The problem for Protestants is that they were not recognized as a separate church from the Catholics, and did, in fact, fall under the authority of the Inquisition.

On the other hand, the very first thing the proto-Calvinists (shall I call them Zwingliists?) did when they established a canon in Switzerland was prohibit the Catholic mass, and launch immediate wars against their neighboring Catholic canons. And Luther claimed to be a reforming Catholic, until long after he had gotten the various lords of Germany to side with the Muslims over Catholics, and suppress non-Lutherans in their fiefdoms. So I’m not shedding tears for them.

[Cronos]

Mariner: None were Catholic or members of the The Church of England (Anglican).

sorry, but your statement is very, very wrong, from wikipedia (but you can check elsewhere):

Lambert (2003) has examined the religious affiliations and beliefs of the Founders. Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and three were Roman Catholics (C. Carroll, D. Carroll, and Fitzsimons).

Among the Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 28 were Church of England eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists.

[Cronos]

what’s incredible is that they do not even bother to read. That’s true about their reading of scripture, history etc. etc.

[Cronos]

did you even read what I said — these guys were not Catholics, hence out of the jurisdiction. the Puritans had their own version of the inquisition, as did the Calvinists in Geneva, Lutherans, Anglicans etc.