by
Thomas A. Droleskey
The Life of Riley was a radio program that ran from 1944 to 1951. It starred William Bendix throughout its radio run, although the first television presentation of the program, which ran on the National Broadcasting Company television network from October 4, 1949, to March 28, 1950, starred Jackie Gleason. The better known television adaptation of the radio program named The Life of Riley starred William Bendix, a popular star of motion pictures (he was hilarious in 1950's Kill the Umpire), running on the NBC-TV network from January 2, 1953, to August 22, 1958.
One of the set pieces in almost every episode of The Life of Riley was a scene in which Bendix, playing Chester A. Riley, who stumbled and bumbled his way through various crises, would slump down in his chair, looking very forlorn and perplexed as he exclaimed, "What a revoltin' development this is!"
Well, there are times when I feel like Chester A. Riley as I read reports on what passes as "discourse" in the naturalistic farce that is American electoral politics.
Such has been my reaction to the comments made by Christine O'Donnell, the Tax Enough Party-endorsed Republican nominee for the seat in the United States Senate from the State of Delaware that was held by Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., from January 3, 1973, to January 15, 2009 (the seat is now held by Ted Kaufman, who had been Biden's senatorial chief of staff from 1976 to 1995), about separation of Church and State in a debate with the Democratic Party nominee, Chris Coons, broadcast on WDEL Radio on Tuesday, October 19, 2010. I had to roll my eyes and slump down in my own chair after reading the misinformation spewed out by Chris Coons and the lack of any true understanding about the issue demonstrated by Christine O'Donnell.
Here is a brief report about the exchange that occurred between Miss O'Donnell and Mr. Coons two days ago now:
WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.
The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.
Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."
"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.
When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"
Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.
"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution. (Christine O'Donnell Questions Separation Of Church & State.)
What a revoltin' development this is.
As I continue to be in my fourth month of fatigue, permit me for the sake of brevity to summarize and to correct the errors of fact and principle as made by the principals in the WDEL Radio debate of Tuesday, October 19, 2010.
First, Chris Coons baited Christine O'Donnell, who lacked the intellectual sophistication to recognize the bait and respond appropriately, by stating that the teaching of "creationism" in public schools would be an exercise in "promoting religious doctrine."
Evolutionism is a disproved ideology that is central to justifying sinful behavior as "normal" as human beings are said to be nothing other than a higher species of animal who must yield to their passions for the sake of gratification. It is not promoting religious doctrine to provide students with scientific studies that disprove evolutionism and that show the world had to be created by means of Special Creation. The teaching of evolutionism, which must be accepted as a "doctrine" of the secular order from which no one is free to dissent lest he or she be considered "out of the mainstream" of belief, is an imposition of a disproved ideology to convince students that they are but biological organisms whose behavior is not be governed by any moral authority, no less the true God of Divine Revelation as He has manifested Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church.
Second, Christine O'Donnell is correct. The words "separation of Church and State" do not appear at all in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. The words do not appear there. The framers of the First Amendment meant to prevent the establishment of a national state church as existed in the England, although the individual states were free to establish such churches as the First Amendment does not, as written, apply to the actions of the state governments. Connecticut had an established religion, Congregationalism, until 1818. Massachusetts required citizens belong to some church and to be taxed by that church until 1833. And it was until the year 1877 that the State of New Hampshire required members of its state legislature to be Protestant.
Third, although the words "separation of Church and State" are not to found in the First Amendment, the spirit of this manifest error is there.
That is, many of the founders, although generally disposed to the concept of "religion" in general, had a particular hostility to the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and to the Catholic Church, something that has been demonstrated numerous times on this site (see the appendix below). This hostility was born of the so-called Age of Reason or the "Enlightenment" that convinced men that they could govern their own affairs without the "interference" of an ecclesiastical authority and without subordinating themselves to any particular doctrine in order to realize personal and social order, a point that neither Miss O'Donnell or Mr Coons, who was demagoging the issue for the sake of painting Miss O'Donnell as an "extremist," really understand as at the proximate root of the social decay that we see before our very eyes.
Fourth, the phrase "separation of Church and State" was read into the Constitution as a matter of legal interpretation by United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black in the case of Everson v. Board of Education of Totowa, New Jersey, February 10, 1947, as he applied (or incorporated) the "no establishment of religion" clause in the First Amendment as binding upon the state governments by means of the "due process of law" clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. (You want a lecture on the incorporation of various of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states? Such a lecture is usually broken down into six or seven eighty minute class lectures. You'll just have to wait until I am next employed in my chosen field of political science. Are you holding your breaths?)
In other words, the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided, starting in the case of Gitlow v. New York, June 8, 1925 to make various parts of the first ten amendments applicable to the state governments even though those amendments were written to be limitations on the actions of the Federal government, not the state governments, a view that was ratified by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Barron v. Baltimore, February 16, 1833. The Gitlow case, however, started the Supreme Court on a four decade course of applying various provisions of the Bill of Rights on a "case-by-case" basis.
This is how the so-called "right to privacy," derived from alleged penumbras (or shadows) of various parts of the Bill of Rights, including the Ninth Amendment, was created out of whole cloth by justices in act of sheer legal positivism (asserting that something is legal because it has been asserted gratuitously as being legal by mere men!) in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, to strike down state laws prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to married couples, a decision that paved the way for Roe v. Wade's sweeping overturn of state laws restricting the conditions under which babies can be surgically assassinated. The "incorporation" of various provisions in the ten amendments as being applicable to the states, however, had been specifically rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Hurtado v. California, March 3, 1884. (Wind me up. Point me to a classroom. I'll even teach for free.)
Associate Justice Hugo Black, who was an "absolutist" on the First Amendment" ("no law means no law"), therefore, incorporated the "establishment" clause of the First Amendment to the states while upholding the constitutionality of a New Jersey program that permitted parochial school students to be transported on public school buses with students from those public schools. This is the pertinent section of the Everson case that made it possible for the Anti-Catholic Liberation Union (otherwise known as the American Civil Liberties Union) to initiate one lawsuit after another to take the First Amendment's indifference to the true religion, Catholicism, to the point of open hostility to all religion:
The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State". . . .
This Court has said that parents may, in the discharge of their duty under state compulsory education laws, send their children to a religious rather than a public school if the school meets the secular educational requirements which the state has power to impose. It appears that these parochial schools meet New Jersey's requirements. The State contributes no money to the schools. It does not support them. Its legislation, as applied, does no more than provide a general program to help parents get their children, regardless of their religion, safely and expeditiously to and from accredited schools.
The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. New Jersey has not breached it here. (Everson v Board of Education.)
It is from Hugo Black's dictum in Everson that most Americans have come to believe that the exact phrase "separation of church and state" exists in the First Amendment, which it does not.
That having been noted, however, Hugo Black did correctly assess the mind of the founders when he wrote the following in Everson:
The meaning and scope of the First Amendment, preventing establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, in the light of its history and the evils it was designed forever to suppress, have been several times elaborated by the decisions of this Court prior to the application of the First Amendment to the states by the Fourteenth. The broad meaning given the Amendment by these earlier cases has been accepted by this Court in its decisions concerning an individual's religious freedom rendered since the Fourteenth Amendment was interpreted to make the prohibitions of the First applicable to state action abridging religious freedom. There is every reason to give the same application and broad interpretation to the "establishment of religion" clause. "The structure of our government has, for the preservation of civil liberty, rescued the temporal institutions from religious interference. On the other hand, it has secured religious liberty from the invasion of the civil authority." (Everson v Board of Education.)
Hugo Black correctly expressed the intentions of the framers of the First Amendment, among whom was the hater of the Catholic Faith, James Madison. Unfortunately for us as citizens of our country, those intentions were based on bad history and a false notion of civil liberty as no man or nation is free when he is not under the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church, which has the right received from God Himself, to interpose herself with the civil authorities when the good of souls demands her motherly intervention after she has exhausted her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation.
Neither Christopher Coons or Christine O'Donnell understand (or are even aware of, most likely) these telling words of Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.
By the way, have you seen any putative Roman Pontiffs refuting and condemning the doctrine of the separation of Church and State these days? Just a little food for thought for the unconvinced out there in cyberspace.
Sure, sure, sure. There are gaggles and gaggles of Americanist Catholics who have tried to contend over the years that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America affords Catholics with the opportunity to practice their Faith openly without any overt persecution from the Federal government, making this country a haven of "religious freedom" in contradistinction to the United Kingdom, which suppressed the Faith and imposed repressive measures upon Catholics on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.
Thus we see, as I have noted so many times on this site, the cleverness of the devil in raising up "bad" Protestants, those who attacked the Faith and Catholics loyal to it with violent ferocity, in order to make "good" Protestants, those who were willing to "tolerate" Catholics, look better by comparison. Lost in this truly diabolical trap is the simple fact placing the true religion on a level of equality with false religions makes it impossible for any religion to oppose the efforts of atheists or anti-Theists from asserting themselves in the "public marketplace of ideas." Irreligion becomes as good as religion, something that Pope Pius IX noted in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, and that Pope Leo XIII explained in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.
For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."
And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
There is no rational, coherent basis by which one can oppose the spread of actual demonic "worship" or its variants, including witchcraft and the New Age "spiritualities," into every aspect of society. The First Amendment thus makes it far easier for the devil to snatch souls from the true Faith by making "religious liberty" or "religious freedom" into a protected "civil right" that no one can oppose lest he put into jeopardy the ability of his own religious denomination to practice its tenets freely.
Defenders of all things American, including self-styled Constitutionalists from the ranks of the multitude of heretical and/or schismatic Protestant sects, claim that the framers of the Constitution were not indifferent to religion, that they simply recognized that it would be impossible in a religiously pluralistic country to choose a "national" religion, preferring to leave the matter of established religions up to the state governments, which remained free to erect established churches prior to the application of various provisions of the Bill of Rights, which, as written, as noted earlier in this article, are only limitations upon the actions of the Federal government and not the state governments, to state governments by virtue of a twisted reading of the Fourteenth Amendment's "due process of law" clause from the time of Gitlow v. New York to our present day. The framers, these defenders of all things American argue, did not mean to exclude the expression of religious convictions from public life. The framers meant merely, we are told, to prevent the sort of "religious warfare" that had been common in Europe in the centuries before the American founding, which is why they, the framers, believed it inopportune to have a nationally established church of any kind.
There are, of course, many serious problems with these theses, starting with the fact that the "religious wars" in the two and one-half centuries leading up to the "founding" of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic United States of America were engendered by Protestantism. Many of them were fought between competing sects of Protestants, as was the case during the English Civil War between 1641 and 1649 as Anglicans and Puritans, the English followers of John Calvin who wanted to "purify" the Anglican Church founded by the lustful King Henry VIII of its remaining "Catholic" trappings (a "hierarchy," a "sacramental" system, veneration of Our Lady and a select number of other saints), fought each other (with a wide variety of motivations and goals), resulting in the overthrow and beheading of King Charles I. The framers of the Constitution of the United States of America had a warped, myopic view of history, being unwilling to look at the truth of the glory of the Middle Ages, summarized so succinctly by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.
Neither Chris Coons or Christine O'Donnell understand any of this. Then again, of course, who is teaching them that it is so? Certainly not the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who have endorsed "religious liberty" and the separation of church and state, believing that it is "good enough" for "believers" to make their voices heard in the "public square." No, it is not good enough for the true God of Divine Revelation. (see
Generic Christianity Is Not Good Enough For God).
The social consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King are vast, starting with the destruction of the family, which has been rent asunder by divorce and contraception and feminism and materialism and positivism and utilitarianism and the organized forces of naturalism. The atomistic individualism of Calvinist capitalism and Lockean liberalism thus produce the same sort of societies as that produced by all forms Socialism, including that wrought by Bolshevism, as critiqued by Pope Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937:
Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man's relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement .
Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.
What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word. the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a humanity without God
The world devoid of God and of submission to His true Church is the only possible consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ King. Naturalist liberals disagree with naturalist socialists, including communists, only about a few details. All forms of naturalism produce the godless world, which makes possible barbarism in "liberal" states and totalitarianism in "socialist" states. Indeed, the degree to which men fall into the naturalist trap will be the degree to which all states, liberal and socialist, get to increase their power over the lives of ordinary citizens in the name of "law and order" and "national security," you understand. The heresy of religious liberty makes it impossible for anyone to find any one overarching means by which social evils can be retarded, resulting in a new caste of dictators whose "infallible" pronouncements must be accepted without criticism or dissent. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, for example, eviscerates the First Commandment by stating unequivocally that no religion, including the Catholic Faith, must be recognized by the civil state as indispensable for personal and social order, thus resulting in the triumph of the false religion of statism. A neat little trick of the devil, wouldn't you say?
We must know our Catholic Faith and Its Social Teaching to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith, to recognize error for what it is and to pray for those who are steeped in it. Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Have you read that anywhere lately?
Nothing less than a new Christendom depends on our daily fulfillment of Our Lady's Fatima Message, which is the foe of all forms of naturalism in the world in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. The leaders of all nations will then understand that they have First Commandment obliges them to pay homage to Christ the King and to Mary our Immaculate Queen, giving the strange gods of false religions no public quarter whatsoever. May every Rosary we pray, humbly and devoutly, help us to plant a few seeds for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a triumph that will have us giving great thanks unto God, not slumping in our chairs like the fictional Chester A. Riley.
Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saint Ursula and her Companions, pray for us.
Saint Hilarion, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
Appendix A
Une Fois Encore: A Founding Hatred for Christ the King
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away {with} all this artificial scaffolding…" (11 April, 1823, John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, II, 594).
Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."—-James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance," addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death; see also Not A Mention of Christ the King for a fairly comprehensive discussion of how assiduous most of our presidents have been in refusing to make public mention of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, most of the time than their public remarks.)
