Any attempt to tie Rome to democracy is laughable..
Christ is a king. I would rather have His monarchy than any democracy.
You obviously didn’t read the article.
Yes! Amen & Amen!
It has been self evident that they were and are the enemies of “A government for the people, by the people and of the people”
To perpetuate the myth that the U.S.A. is a democracy is dangerous and leads to articles such as this.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2839948/posts
p.s. it has a barf alert.
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...
More or less laughable that the people who claim that John Calvin founded the USA?
Rome lies like the Russians.
Rome is all about a top-down authoritarian hierarchy with an "infallible" king (pope) as its leader who possesses "divine" rights.
Who does the Vatican think it's fooling? Rome's idiotic boasts get more outlandish every day.
"There is nothing holier, or better, or safer, than to content ourselves with the authority of Christ alone." -- Calvin, Institutes IV:xv.19
Re "an accurate expression of the Catholic mind, medieval and modern." While some RCs and writings influenced the DOI, as Judea-Christian principles ethics do, and if they reflected that then there is soundness, but what it left out is that what the founders sought to construct is in contrasts the some of the ethos of Rome during times when it wielded its unScriptural sword of men against theological adversaries. And which was wrong when Protestants did so as well, but there was much they had and have to unlearn if they will learn the way of the Master. Another Traditional Roman Catholic (which Dr. Kopp apparently is) asserts regarding religious freedom, No man should be forced to become Catholic, but all men should be forcibly restrained from attacking the Faith in any fashion. ...Cannibals should not be allowed on street corners. Ask yourself this: If it is OK to permit a man to murder his mother, what do I do if that man is my brother? Honor his "right" to kill Mom, or defend to the death my Mom? TWENTY-FIVE EXPLICIT ERRORS OF VATICAN COUNCIL II, Michael Malone http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/vatican2/vatican2.htm ▀ The crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection.(Pope Innocent III, Epistle to the Hierarchy of France, July 15, 1205) ▀ It would be licit, according to custom, to hold the Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime. (St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Judaeorum) ▀ It is insanity to believe that liberty of conscience and liberty of worship are the inalienable rights of every citizen. From this stinking fountain of Indifferentism flows the erroneous and absurd opinion, or rather derangement, that liberty of conscience must be asserted and vindicated for everyone. This most pestilential error opens the door to the complete and immoderate liberty of opinions which works such widespread harm both in Church and State. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15,1832) ▀ That every man is free to embrace and to profess that religion which he, led by the light of reason, thinks to be the true religion is hereby CONDEMNED as ERROR. (Ven. Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Modern Errors,December 8, 1864) Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors) December 8, 1864: ▀ Error condemned: In this age of ours, it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion be the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other cults whatsoever. In certain regions of Catholic name, it has been praiseworthily sanctioned by law that men immigrating there be allowed to have public exercises of any form of worship of their own. ▀ [It is error to believe that] Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. Section X, Errors Having Reference to Modern Liberalism, #78. ▀ Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors): [It is error to believe that] The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus Issued in 1864, Section VI, Errors About Civil Society, Considered Both in Itself and in its Relation to the Church, #55. http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P9SYLL.HTM ▀ Pope Pius X VEHEMENTER NOS: That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.... Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State... ▀ When the law, by the suppression of the Budget of Public Worship, exonerates the State from the obligation of providing for the expenses of worship, it violates an engagement contracted in a diplomatic convention, and at the same time commits a great injustice. - Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906. http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10law.htm ▀ Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 1302: Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: 'Put up thy sword into thy scabbard' [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered _for_ the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 1302 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/b8-unam.html ▀ Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors): "[It is error to believe that] The (Catholic) Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect." Section V, Errors Concerning the Church and Her Rights, #24. http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P9SYLL.HTM ▀ The Roman Pontiff "does not only have the office of inspection and direction," but enjoys "full and supreme power of jurisdiction, not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and governance of the Church dispersed throughout the world" (DS 3064). ▀ Boniface VIII: It is I who am Caesar; the Sovereign Pontiff is the only King of the Romans, as he rode thru the city, carrying sword, globe and sceptre. (Rome and its story, p. 241, by Welbore St. Clair Baddeley, Lina Duff Gordon) ▀ The Church has the right, as a perfect and independent society provided with all the means for attaining its end, to ...admonish or warn its members, ecclesiastical or lay, who have not conformed to its laws and also, if needful to punish them by physical means, that is, coercive jurisdiction. Catholic Encyclopedia Jurisdiction ▀ In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture cannot be contravened under any circumstances. Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech of 6 September 2007; Torture and corporal punishment as a problem in Catholic Theology, September 2005 ▀ That it is against the will of the Spirit to burn heretics at the stake is condemned as false. (Pope Leo X, Exsurge Domino, 1520 ▀ Innocents Bull [Ad Extirpanda] prescribes that captured heretics, being murderers of souls as well as robbers of Gods sacraments and of the Christian faith, . . . are to be coerced as are thieves and bandits into confessing their errors and accusing others, although one must stop short of danger to life or limb. Bull Ad Extirpanda (Bullarium Romanorum Pontificum, vol. 3 [Turin: Franco, Fory & Dalmazzo, 1858], Lex 25, p. 556a.) http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html ▀ Canons of the Ecumenical Fourth Lateran Council, 1215: We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that raises against the holy, orthodox and Catholic faith which we have above explained; condemning all heretics under whatever names they may be known, for while they have different faces they are nevertheless bound to each other by their tails, since in all of them vanity is a common element. Those condemned, being handed over to the secular rulers of their bailiffs, let them be abandoned, to be punished with due justice, clerics being first degraded from their orders. As to the property of the condemned, if they are laymen, let it be confiscated; if clerics, let it be applied to the churches from which they received revenues. But those who are only suspected, due consideration being given to the nature of the suspicion and the character of the person, unless they prove their innocence by a proper defense, let them be anathematized and avoided by all 1-intil they have made suitable satisfaction; but if they have been under excommunication for one year, then let them be condemned as heretics. Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler's vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp) ▀ Those who have been detected, even by slight proof, to have deviated from the doctrine of the Catholic religion ought to fall under the classification of heretic and under the sentences operating against heretics. (Pope Innocent IV, Registers of Innocent IV, Berger, Paris:1881) Pope Innocent IV., in his instruction for the guidance of the Inquisition in Tuscany and Lombardy, ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture a confession of their own guilt and a betrayal of all their accomplices (1252).371371 In the bull Ad extirpanda http://userwww.sfsu.edu/%7Edraker/history/Ad_Extirpanda.html
The bull conceded to the State a portion of the property to be confiscated from convicted heretics.[3] The State in return assumed the burden of carrying out the penalty. The relevant portion of the bull read: "When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them."[4]: |