Thank you, everyone, for your input.
I understand now that Fr. Fagothey was then off the mark on this point. I was not sure what to make of what he said, for I had known already that the power of authority came from God and not from the people, even if the people did elect their leader. It is simply then an error to think that the power of authority comes from God through the people.
I have these questions now:
Was such an error actually held by St. Robert Bellarmine?
And did such teaching of his actually have any influence on U.S. Declaration of Independence?
I remember that there is also a section in the children's catechism called My Catholic Faith that says something to the effect that St. Robert Bellarmine's teaching had influence on the American Revolution's principles. I think it even mentions St. Thomas Aquinas. I see that that section is in error, and it is tragic to have such in a children's catechism. One more question then: What would be good arguments against this strange effort to make American principles seem as if they had influence from St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Thomas Aquinas? I did not get to see some of this thread still, and so I am sorry if I ask questions right now that may have answers already shown in this thread.
Thank you all again!
To my humble knowledge, we are dealing here with what is often called the Jesuits of the School of Salamanca. This is the place that I need to mention that the Dominicans of the School of Salamanca were good and proper Thomists and my anti-Jesuit bias is not meant to refer in any way to them.
There are many loyal Catholics, myself among them, who believe that the suppression of the Jesuits in the 18th Century was in general a good thing and that view is essentially a criticism of the Salamanca Jesuits and the more opportunistic wing of the Jesuit Order. But what is being condemned is not an accusation against them of error or heresy, but rather simply a condemnation of their gross opportunism and frequent immorality. So, although I reject St. Bellarmine's politics, I am rejecting a certain opportunism in his politics, not any actual heresy as such. The true issue here is gross opportunism, not error. There is also the complication that the German Jesuits were exempt from these bad behaviors and we should understand that Jesuit immorality was largely restricted to Southern Europe and its overseas dominions, but never widespread among the Northern European Jesuits. Hence the protection of German Jesuits by Frederick the Great was also fully justified and the restored Jesuits after 1814 were a much more wholesome organization than the earlier Jesuits had been.
Basically the Jesuit School of Salamanca (not the Dominicans!) toyed with the heresies of scepticism exemplified by wicked Englishmen like John Wycliffe and Oliver Cromwell. Rather than actually adopting said heresies, many Jesuits indulged them for opportunistic reasons and were guilty of many grave sins of worldliness, which for reasons of moral propriety I shall not attempt to
enumerate.
But certainly the Jesuit School of Salamanca had a fundamental and even overriding influence on both the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution as well. In fact that opportunistic school could be said to have intellectually dominated the entire 18th Century of Western Civilization and be the underlying explanation for why that century suffered from so much foolish scepticism and doubt. Voltaire was truly the overripe and rotten fruit of the Jesuit School of Salamanca.
Which means that the Declaration and Constitution are in truth highly opportunistic docuмents written for clever propaganda purposes that, although they served the purposes of their architects extremely well, are both of strikingly low intellectual and spiritual quality. Basically they are effective weapons originally provided by clever opportune worldly Jesuits that were later used by Catholics in the service of his Most Catholic Majesty the King of France. Catholic France funded the American Revolution and she successfully got her "money's worth" and more in that bargain with the Puritan and more or less Jansenist colonials of early America.
The evidence indicates that George Washington did convert to Roman Catholicism in his last years. This is credible because probably no man in the entire 18th Century did more to serve the true interests of Catholicism in that century than our great and glorious First President. Nothing so weakened and countered the Jesuit worldliness I'm here criticising than the Battle of Yorktown that in its way fatally wounded historic Deism and broke forever the grip of the specific Radical Liberal factions that had gained control over the British Army and government during the reign of King George II. So the American Revolution was a great boon to Catholics and the Declaration and Constitution, although products of a Jesuit opportunism that should be condemned, did serve Catholic interests quite well up until about 1920.
Here we see that men should be evaluated above all by what they are loyal to. The Latin Jesuits of Southern Europe and Latin America committed many sins in the service of their own worldliness and their sins eventually made possible the evils of the Radical Freemasons and the French Revolution. Yet the German Jesuits and later the Jesuits after their suppression in the early 1760s were by and large true to Holy Mother Church and therefore many Jesuits also did great good through their timely contributions to the American Revolution.
This also demonstrates how history is complicated and should not be judged by any personal hobbyhorses that we provide for ourselves but only by the true objective interests of Holy Mother Church and her Eternal Monarch, Our Lord Jesus Christ. When we become selfless enough to see history from that high vantage point, then history becomes clear and we become able to see the vast war between Catholic good and Jєωιѕн evil that is the essence of our grim and glorious human condition.
Topic: Patriarchal and popular consent theories (Read 6368 times)