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We all understand that no one is defending pure democracy as mob rule, but rather the system of a constitutional republic in which democratic elements are embedded.

I have no animus to the constitutional republic of the Founding Fathers; but I think that the American Project contained the seeds of its present demise from the beginning. I see that seed in the inability of the Founding Fathers to draw a wall of separation where it really belongs, -- between moral law and the democratic process. I think it is a deeply flawed thing to put issues of moral law to the voter, either directly in a referendum, or indirectly through electoral politics, or even less directly through the judicial nominations controlled by elected senatorial elite. Why? Because things are morally right or wrong regardless of the popular opinion. Let us recall that the choice between Jesus and Barabbas was decided in an election. The abortion regime of today is a firmly entrenched legal system because of a democratic process that worked as designed.

I don't think the Founding Fathers understood subsidiarity. They designed a system where subsidiarity prevailes in issues of economics or administration, such as our system of cascading federal state and local government, and constitutional protections for the individual. But subsidiarity has another dimension, and that is the immutability of moral law, which is derived top-down from Christ the King and is not taken to a vote. I believe that the dual background of the Founding Fathers in Protestantism and Enlightenment allowed them to think that either the democratic politics would not invade the moral sphere (and of course they did nearly from the start), or that a bottom-up political process of independent Christian communities reaching a moral consensus would not produce a starkly un-Christian outcomes. On these counts they were wrong.

Comparing immoral democratic force to an immoral king is comparing apples and oranges. A democratic force, unless limited to mundane administration such as traffic rules, is intrinsically immoral, as it is a mechanism by which a majority dictates economic or, worse, moral decisions to a minority. The thinking that a decision is good simply because it is arrived at democratically replaces serious ethics. A king, on the other hand is an owner of real estate, -- of the public space. If he mismanages it, due to immorality or ineptitude, the effects are limited to his property. In this environment the Church has a chance to project her teaching from her own property. Further, a king has no interest in expanding his reach beyond his royal property line, because with such expansion comes a need for larger government from which a threat to his dynasty might emerge. A king has no institutional need to sell his services to the people, -- if he leaves them alone they will leave him alone; an elected politician must sell the government service on a 4-year cycle. Monarchies tend to act defensively and republics -- expansively. But since expansion into the economic sphere punishes the government rather quickly with decreased economic output, the expansion invades the moral sphere. Which is precisely where the state does not belong.

The Church cannot mount and effective defense of her sovereignty over the moral sphere unless she stops endorsing the democratic institutions of modern state.

You are using democracy equivocally. At times you acknowledge that it refers to elected representative government, at the end you advert to tyranny of the majority. That's the issue, I guess. You have a point--were there sufficient safeguards against the tyranny of the majority? The founders understood the problem and put their hope in virtuous, citizen-representatives, as Tocqueville observed. I don't think that's fairly characterized as putting a separation between the electoral process and moral law.

And I really don't think that the experiment failed because of inherent refusal to integrate moral law and electoral process. It failed because the actors, the elite actors, abandoned moral law in favor of positivism, might makes right etc. (O. W. Holmes) and because we tinkered with the checks and balances, especially in direct election of senators.

And with respect, I just don't see the difference you see between representatives (who were elite members of society in the vision of the Founders, who could only be chosen from stakeholders, property-owners and indeed, were expected to be from the upper ranks of the property-owners) and kings. The citizen-legislators who went to Washington to do their selfless civic duty and then return to their estates and farms are analogous in every way to kings. They are more numerous than a single king, yes, but that's merely a difference of number. They are elected (though medieval kings were elected, usually following dynastic lines), yes. But they were expected to act and vote in their own moral persons, not merely mechanically reflect the will even of the majority of their constituents. I really don't see the gaping chasm you see between the systems.

I believe that the dual background of the Founding Fathers in Protestantism and Enlightenment allowed them to think that either the democratic politics would not invade the moral sphere (and of course they did nearly from the start),

I hate to be provocative, but I'll repeat what I've said before. It all goes back to Protestantism. After the "reformation" it's been nothing but downhill for pretty much every culture in the world. Once man gave into his own selfish pride (arrogance, really) and decided that he could interpret Christianity himself, he naturally tended toward the lowest common denominator. A lot of today's -ism's have their roots, indirectly mostly, in the Reformation.

I stopped believing the lie that America is so great because we have democracy and freedom for freedom's sake a long time ago. Freedom for its own sake is nothing more then license.