The really interesting thing about America’s founding is that as much as Protestants feared being dominated by the Church of Rome, the ideas which Jefferson immortalized in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Declaration of Independence are uniquely Catholic.
Jefferson captured three main ideas: that our rights are endowed by God and cannot be denied by the state; that rulers rule by consent of the governed; and that power within governments should be distributed among multiple branches at both the local and central levels where they can best be addressed and absolute power is never attained by a tyrant. He based these ideas on his reading of De Laicis: Treatise on Civil Government by Catholic Cardinal (and Saint) Robert Bellarmine. Bellarmine had written the treatise in response to the consolidation of power over the Church in England by Henry the VIII. — Jefferson had a copy of the book in his library and it had his handwritten notes in the margins throughout. — It is also interesting to note that the divine right of the kings was defended by Sir Robert Filmer in “Patriarcha or of the Natural Power of Kings.” Filmer wrote in direct response to Bellarmine to defend the King’s control of the Church in England. So the mostly Protestant Founders embraced Catholic doctrines in order to protect religious freedoms which many Protestants at the time feared were threatened by the Catholic Church. —Ain’t history fun?
Yep, history is fun. For example, the Roman Catholic Church opposed religious freedom right up to Vatican II (the same Vatican II routinely decried by FR traditionalists and closet sedevacantists), even to the point of censoring Catholic commentators advocating religious freedom and forbidding Catholics from reading Protestant Bibles. So it seems Bellarmine’s treatise fell upon deaf ears within his own church. What’s that old saying about a prophet and his own country?
“History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. “ — Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
It is fun, and interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Today, those who attack Catholicism (and Protestantism) due so out of a perverse desire to be enslaved because they are already enslaved to their passions, bodily or political.