[wmfights]

It was a Catholic ideal before there was a United States.

I think you may have really stepped in it this time annalex. Always remember it's okay to say oops, I was wrong about that.

Prior to the USA in a RCC dominated Europe the model was religion determined by the state, freedom of religion was not allowed let alone promoted as an ideal. Personal responsibility has also never been a RCC ideal. Your church has constructed it's teachings in such a way that the individual must go through your church to correct any error on their part, or to find any chance for salvation. Your church never promoted the personal responsibility of searching the Scriptures, "which are made to make you wise for salvation" but instead taught/teaches that the individual must submit to the church in all things and never disagree, or question anything.

I'm sure the last point accounts for part of the reason RC's get so frustrated by the Sola Scriptura crowd saying lets look in the Bible and see what it says.

[Natural Law]

"Prior to the USA in a RCC dominated Europe the model was religion determined by the state, freedom of religion was not allowed let alone promoted as an ideal."

And yet it was Protestant Europe that the colonists fled from in pursuit of religious freedom, or at least the right for they themselves exclusively to practice as they choose and Protestant England that they ultimately rebelled against.

The notion that Calvinist Geneva was in any way the model for the American Republic is also laughable. The American Republic was modeled upon the works of Plato and the Roman republic. The Soviet Politburo was modeled after Calvin's Geneva.

[Quix]

INDEED TO THE MAX.

[the_conscience]

Your church has constructed it's teachings in such a way that the individual must go through your church to correct any error on their part, or to find any chance for salvation.

When one expects the government, be it political or religious, to shoulder their personal responsibility that person will ultimately deny any culpability.

So despite all their rhetoric about free will it is actually a concept that scares them to death such that they are willing to submit to the bondage of some greater human authority.

[annalex]

Thank you very much for the lively discussion but I won’t be able to get to your numerous posts today. Maybe tomorrow, or failing that, over the weekend.

[annalex]

Prior to the USA in a RCC dominated Europe the model was religion determined by the state, freedom of religion was not allowed let alone promoted as an ideal.

The ideal in question is personal responsibility, as someone quite comically said "one of the great ideals of the United States, is that of personal responsibility" (111). I can only repeat what I said already: the Catholic Church teaches that man has a free will to choose works by which he will be justified; his sanctification or depreavity is a matter of the individual choice. For the sinner we teach that he should confess and do penance. We do not teach the false doctrine that salvation is something one gets once and for all because he responded to an altar call. We don't teach falsehoods of any kind. The Catholic Church teaches personal responsibility, and has been for two thousand years.

That the modern invention of secular state has something to do with Protestantism, yeah, perhaps it does. Surely, the Catholic Church never taught that Catholicism is one religion among equally good many that people get to choose. If you like that "freedom of religion", enjoy what's left of even that.