Comments for The Founders’ Vision of Religious Liberty at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sat, 18 May 2013 21:23:24 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-founders-vision-of-religious-liberty.html#comment-15786 The Founding Fathers—including the very important but not-well-known-today John Dickinson and James Wilson—based their understanding of government on natural law. And James Madison wrote in Federalist 43 that the right to revolution stated in the Declaration of Independence was based on natural law. This is not anything that a student will find in his textbook or in lectures on American history. (ISI and Hillsdale among the few exceptions, of course.) - Ruth Joy Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:51:56 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-founders-vision-of-religious-liberty.html#comment-15733 I wanted to thank Professor Jodziewicz for explaining this subject extremely well. - Manfred Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:48:34 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-founders-vision-of-religious-liberty.html#comment-15716 I will propose that Catholicism, with its coherently developed doctrine on the relationship between faith and reason, is actually the one religion that is most suited to representative democracy in temporal affairs, which are the realm of the state. Obviously, the Church itself cannot be a democracy in that truth comes from God, not by the popular votes of man. The Church must be free from the coercion of the states in matters of faith and morals. But correspondingly, the hierarchy of the Church serves our Lord best when it leaves management of the state to the laity. As George Weigel has stated more elegantly, things knowable by natural reason are the realm of the state and its laws. Since natural reason cannot contradict eternal law, conscientious governance according to natural reason (aka natural law) leads to laws that are just. Things only knowable through Divine revelation are the realm of faith beyond reason (but not contradicting it). This is the realm of the Church. It is a higher realm because it is concerned with higher things, including our ultimate destiny to live with God forever. Catholicism fits nicely into a representative democracy that is based on natural law. Today's progressivism is not based on natural law. There are inherent contradictions. Our charge is to learn the truth, expose their lies, and try to persuade our fellow Americans of the real truth. I believe Gandalf said the evil often destroys itself in the Lord of the Rings. Let's help it along by shining the light of Christ on it. - athanasius Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:44:35 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-founders-vision-of-religious-liberty.html#comment-15715 Gian It is precisely the liberty of the Church to which liberals have always objected. As the Catholic historian, Lord Acton explains, “It condemns, as a State within the State, every inner group and community, class or corporation, administering its own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it emancipates the subjects of every such authority in order to transfer them exclusively to its own. It recognises liberty only in the individual... Under its sway, therefore, every man may profess his own religion more or less freely; but his religion is not free to administer its own laws. In other words, religious profession is free, but Church government is controlled. And where ecclesiastical authority is restricted, religious liberty is virtually denied.” It is not only the Church, but all independent bodies that liberals view with suspicion; remember the famous French Revolutionary declaration of August 18, 1792: “A State that is truly free ought not to suffer within its bosom any corporation, not even such as, being dedicated to public instruction, have merited well of the country.” - Michael Paterson-Seymour Thu, 07 Feb 2013 03:55:00 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-founders-vision-of-religious-liberty.html#comment-15713 It is idle to expect the secularists who lack any convinction of the supernatural realm to have the understanding of the content of religious liberty that a religious person would have. The separation of Church and State depends upon the recognition of separate realms of natural and supernatural affairs. When the conviction of supernatural realm is gone, there is nothing that gives content to the liberty of the Church. Thus, those that attack the liberty of the Church are not necessarily malicious. They simply do not understand. - Gian Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:43:33 +0100