I don't believe the pope is God. You'd apparently rather have homos grinding Christians into the dust so long as no "meddlesome" Churches are able to get involved.
"A good bit of the rest of what you write is nonsense. There was, for example, complete religious freedom in Pennsylvania."
Nearly FOUR decades after the Tolerance Act of Catholic Maryland. The Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges was not established until 1683, and revision of the charter did not cease until 1701. By the time the Pennsylvania Charter was firmly established, Protestants in Maryland had already overthrown the tolerant Catholic government of the colony.
"Catholics could not participate in the political life of the English colonies for the same reason that could not participate in England: the oaths required of them by the Crown were oaths they could not take. That was their choice."
Yes, and you can choose not to bake for a gay wedding -- you just have to accept the resulting fines and jail time. Some choice. You're parroting the same line as the democrats.
"The real truth is that adherents of the Church of Rome were not important in the Founding of America in any sense; and most importantly not in any ideological sense. The "Americanist Heresy" was established long before Leo XIII, because the "Americanist Heresy" was really the "heresy" of the Scottish Enlightenment, which the Roman Church could not abide."
Before you said Pope Leo XIII manufactured the heresey in question. Now, you're saying it existed long before. Make your mind up -- which is it? Separation of Church and state, resulting, as we see, in the persecution of Christians, is a heresy. The state does not need to establish a religion, but it does need to acknowledge Jesus Christ as sovereign king and use scripture as the basis for any and all laws, which would necessarily make all legislation compatible with the teachings of any Church worth taking seriously.
Until then, enjoy your SCOTUS coming down on the side of butt-rangers.
The first part of your sentence is ENTIRELY incompatible with the second. What you are calling for is no different from Sharia.
English law is not -- and never has been -- descended from scripture. English law came to us from Roman law. Palestine was a backwater of Roman civilization. Neither the Jews, whom the Romans regarded as savages, nor their Abrahamic successors had any influence in the formation of those laws. And thank [the REAL] God for that.
You have serious reading comprehension problems. The thread of the argument is why Romanists didn't participate in the Revolution. Given that it was The Crown and not the colonials that forced them to take oaths contrary to their conscience in order to participate in public life, why didn't they raise arms in a revolution to throw off the King? They had everything to gain. Yet only two men did so. And one of them may have been a de facto excommunicant.
Before you said Pope Leo XIII manufactured the heresy in question. Now, you're saying it existed long before.
Again, the reading comprehension problem rears it's ugly head. Please do try to keep up and actually read what's been posted to you. Leo's "heresy" only affirmed what the Church had known all along: that reformed Christianity in general and the Scottish Enlightenment in particular would take secular power away from his church forever. It posited authority in the minds and hands of those governed.
He chose to call it the "Americanist Heresy" to strangle the baby of liberty in its cradle. The British ship had already sailed. He could hardly assault The Enlightenment directly without even the dullards of his own flock understanding what a totalitarian kook he was. But, if you read the document, it's clear that his "Americanist Heresy" was nothing more than an assault on representative government itself.
And you yourself have now posted several pages in support of that very assault.