Some secularists have posted attacks on David Barton's use of John Jay, co-author of the Federalist Papers and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, because he was an "anti-Catholic bigot."

Jay was not against catholic religion (liturgy) so much as he was against catholic politics. Jay's position was well stated some years ago by a Secular Humanist named Paul Blanshard, in a book on American Freedom and Catholic Power. It is truly ironic that Secularists would now turn around and welcome "papists" with open arms, and sweep both Blanshard and Jay under the carpet.

In article <19990125223809.14196.00003500@ng-fa1.aol.com>, kathyp11@aol.com (Kathy P 11) writes that since I have so many complaints about our government, I should leave America:

><<There are plenty of other politically Christian nations to choose from,
>after all.>>
>
>And Kevin replied:
><<Really? I sure can't think of any.>>
>
>How about the U.K., Mexico, and Italy to name a few.

I responded:

Mexico and Italy are at best roman catholic nations, not Christian nations,
and they are actually mafia or drug cartel nations.
I grant the U.K. but wouldn't describe that as "plenty of nations."

In article <19990126225652.24022.00003730@ng03.aol.com>, witchward@aol.com (Witchward) writes:

>I hate to burst your bubble, Kevin, but by definition, Roman Catholicism IS a
>Christian religion, ergo, Roman Catholic nations ARE Christian Nations!

My response:

The question is not whether a person who is a member of the Roman Catholic Church can have his sins atoned for by Jesus. The question is whether the political principles of papism are compatible with the political principles of a Christian nation like America. The Founding Fathers were virtually unanimous in their answer: NO. Even those men who were members of the Roman Catholic Church and signed America's founding documents downplayed their political allegiance to the Pope, in much the same way John F. Kennedy did during his presidential campaign. They adhered to Protestant principles of freedom, not monarchical principles of papal submission.

Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that "Puritanism . . . was scarcely less a political than a religious doctrine." The Puritans established schools because they believed that knowledge of the Bible would lead to political liberty. Papists believed that the laity should not study the Bible, because they might get out from under papal domination. Tocqueville says of the Puritans of 1642:

But it is by the attention it pays to Public Education that the original character of American civilization is at once placed in the clearest light. "It being," says the law, "one chief project of Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scripture by persuading from the use of tongues, to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors..." Here follow clauses establishing schools in every township, and obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to support them. Schools of a superior kind were founded in the same manner in the more populous districts. The municipal authorities were bound to enforce the sending of children to school by their parents; they were empowered to inflict fines upon all who refused compliance; and in case of continued resistance society assumed the place of the parent, took possession of the child, and deprived the father of those natural rights which he used to so bad a purpose. The reader will undoubtedly have remarked the preamble of these enactments: in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

The Puritan religion, says de Tocqueville,

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Reeves, Trans. vol.1, p.40 - p.41

The roots of America's "democratic republic" are in Puritanism, and they conflict with papism. Another great American historian, George Bancroft, in History of the United States, vol.1, p.317 - p.318, says:

The principles of Puritanism proclaimed the civil magistrate subordinate to the authority of religion. . . . In the firmness with which their conviction was held, the Puritans did not yield to the Catholics; and, if the will of God is the criterion of justice, both were, in one sense, in the right. The question arises, Who shall be the interpreter of that will? In the Roman Catholic Church, the office was claimed by the infallible pontiff, who, as the self-constituted guardian of the oppressed, insisted on the power of dethroning kings, repealing laws, and subverting dynasties. The principle thus asserted could not but become subservient to the temporal ambition of the clergy. Puritanism conceded no such power to its spiritual guides; the church existed independent of its pastor, who owed his office to its free choice; the will of the majority was its law; and each one of the brethren possessed equal rights with the elders. The right, exercised by each congregation, of electing its own ministers was in itself a moral revolution; religion was now with the people, not over the people. Puritanism exalted the laity. Every individual who had experienced the raptures of devotion, every believer, who in moments of ecstasy had felt the assurance of the favor of God, was in his own eyes a consecrated person, chosen to do the noblest and godliest deeds. For him the wonderful counsels of the Almighty had appointed a Saviour; for him the laws of nature had been suspended and controlled, the heavens had opened, earth had quaked, the sun had veiled his face, and Christ had died and had risen again; for him prophets and apostles had revealed to the world the oracles and the will of God. Before Heaven he prostrated himself in the dust; looking out upon mankind, how could he but respect himself, whom God had chosen and redeemed? He cherished hope; he possessed faith; as he walked the earth, his heart was in the skies. Angels hovered round his path, charged to minister to his soul; spirits of darkness vainly leagued together to tempt him from his allegiance. His burning piety could use no liturgy; his penitence revealed itself to no confessor. He knew no superior in holiness. He could as little become the slave of priestcraft as of a despot. He was himself a judge of the orthodoxy of the elders; and, if he feared the invisible powers of the air, of darkness, and of hell, he feared nothing on earth. Puritanism constituted not the Christian clergy, but the Christian people, the interpreter of the divine will; and the issue of Puritanism was popular sovereignty.

George Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol.4, p.81:

Protestantism, in the sphere of politics, had hitherto been the representative of that increase of popular liberty which had grown out of free inquiry, while the Catholic church, under the early influence of Roman law and the temporal sovereignty of the Roman pontiff, had inclined to monarchical power.

Therefore, Catholics were generally excluded from political office, just as any Confederate might have been unable to get elected in post-Civil War America. The 1776 Constitution of North Carolina (§32) prohibited from office those who denied "the truth of the Protestant religion," because they held "religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State."

Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. 4, p.191, records the Debates in the Convention of North Carolina, Wednesday, July 30, 1788

Mr. HENRY ABBOT, after a short exordium, which was not distinctly heard, proceeded thus: Some are afraid, Mr. Chairman, that, should the Constitution be received, they would be deprived of the privilege of worshipping God according to their consciences, which would be taking from them a benefit they enjoy under the present constitution. They wish to know if their religious and civil liberties be secured under this system, or whether the general government may not make laws infringing their religious liberties. The worthy member from Edenton mentioned sundry political reasons why treaties should he the supreme law of the land It is feared, by some people, that, by the power of [p.192] making treaties, they might make a treaty engaging with foreign powers to adopt the Roman Catholic religion in the United States, which would prevent the people from worshipping God according to their own consciences.

Loyalty to the Pope was considered treasonous, and also inconsistent with loyalty to a republican form of government. John Adams and the framers of the Massachusetts constitution explained:

[W]e have . . . found ourselves obliged . . . to provide for the exclusion of these from offices who will not disclaim these principles of spiritual jurisdiction which Roman Catholics in some centuries have held and which are subversive of a free government established by the people.
John Adams and John Bowdoin, An Address of the Convention for Framing A New Constitution of Government for the State of Massachusetts-Bay to their Constituents (Boston: White and Adams, 1780), p. 17.

They were not alone. The greatest authority on the US Constitution, founder of Harvard Law School and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, explains the rationale: It was their political loyalty to the Pope.

[If] men quarrel with the ecclesiastical establishment, the civil magistrate has nothing to do with it unless their tenets and practice are such as threaten ruin or disturbance to the state. He is bound, indeed, to protect . . . papists . . . . But while they acknowledge a foreign power superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain if the laws of that kingdom will not treat them upon the footing of good subjects.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1833) vol. III, p.383 §400.

It is no surprise that Virginia was one of the last states to separate state and clergy, because Episcopalianism is merely a modified papism. As George Bancroft wrote in History of the United States, Vol.3, p.327-28:

Thomas Paine (who in 1776 was not an atheist) wrote against Popery in Common Sense. After discussing the Bible and its condemnation of monarchy, (1 Samuel 8) Paine says,

These portions of scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government, is true, or the scripture is false. And a man hath good reason to believe that there is as much of kingcraft, as priestcraft, in withholding the scripture from the public in Popish countries. For monarchy in every instance is the Popery of government.

Finally, for Catholics, "religion" is liturgy, ritual, bead-counting, and ceremony.
For Christians,

Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27