Wings of Liberty • July 23, 2025

THE CURSE OF CHURCH AND STATE, PART 2: SILENCE, HERETIC

Control is the aim of all religionists who desire civil power. They want the power of government for one single reason: they are not content to allow their religious ideas to stand or fall in competition with other religions and philosophies in the marketplace of ideas, judged by each person for themselves as true or false. Instead, they intend to dominate human thought and behavior by having government compel their religious views on society using the force of law. Since they have lost the argument in the public square, they will win it by force. Some of these religionists may have vague intentions of altruism, hoping to reform a corrupt society through religious compulsion. But, regardless of motive, as soon as the objective is obtained it is inevitable that the union of church and state will result in persecution.


This is because the power of government is to make laws for society. When religionists have this power they will make laws for their religious purposes, and laws to punish breaches of their religious laws. The result is religious persecution, and the corruption of church and state.


There are many examples to demonstrate that the above proposition is true. In theocratic Muslim countries where the church controls the state, censorship of media of all sorts is enforced, from books to movies, and the internet. There are religious restrictions on every aspect of society, and these restrictions are for the good of society in the minds of those who pass them and enforce them. Compliance is mandatory, and a person is considered an enemy of the common good if he dissents.


In Islam, as in all religions, the ultimate dissent is considered to be conversion away from one’s former religion. But when the mosque controls the state, one converts from the religion which controls the government. In much of Islam, conversion is to be punished by death. Islamic teaching stipulates that a delay of three days for “reconsideration”, is appropriate prior to carrying out the death penalty.i


The Roman Papacy also wants control of government, even global government,i and it long ago proved that it persecutes dissenters. For centuries it banned books and persecuted their authors,ii justifying it actions with the claim that reading John Locke, Galileo, and John Milton, was “heresy” and “contrary to morality”, and suppression of writings is necessary for the common good. Many martyrs were tortured and killed for possession or creation of prescribed religious materials.


This censorship and persecution is supposedly justified by the papal teaching extra ecclesiam nulla salus - "outside of the Church, there is no salvation”, and, “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”iii Thomas Aquinas, often lauded by Catholic scholars, agreed that "to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is absolutely necessary for salvation."iv Thus, the Papacy justifies censorship by the following perverse argument: since only Catholic doctrine can save society, dissenting or heretical views must not be tolerated if society is to be saved.


This position is not only ancient, but also modern. In advocating for a new reinterpretation of the Constitution through a lens of Catholic social doctrine deceptively called “common good constitutionalism”,v Harvard legal scholar and Catholic Integralist, Adrien Vermuele, stated:


The libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology – that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech … [should] fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources.vi


Carefully consider Vermuele’s assertions in this vein and it will slowly dawn on you that he is quietly but vehemently opposed to American independence, the Bill of Rights, and probably apple pie. Vermeule believes the United States government should be subordinate to the Roman Catholic Papacy. When he advocates for government censorship of public speech that is low in “quality and moral worth”, what he means is that the Catholic Church should direct the government to suppress public speech it opposes.


Vermeule’s contentions prove the proposition that a union of church and state results in wickedness and oppression, as President John Adams wrote.vii But there may be another word to describe his intentional attack on US independence. What do you call a proposition that your country’s government and Constitution be subordinated to the Pope of Rome, who is not only a religious leader but a foreign monarch, and that your fellow citizens be stripped of their freedom of speech and property rights?


While these menacing thoughts are published under the sometimes-subversive cloak of academia, Vermuele betrays enough of an inner latent Torquemada that there should be serious alarm bells for liberty lovers.


Take David French, for example. French, a lawyer, former editor of the National Review, and Protestant twice has debated Sohrab Amari, a well-known Catholic Integralist and editor of the New York Post, on the subjects of American liberty and Originalism versus a Catholic social doctrine reinterpretation of the Constitution.viii French is a staunch supporter of individual rights, and the defense of civil liberties as enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Amari believes the government should be subordinated to the Catholic Church, and that the Constitution needs to be “reinterpreted” so that it conforms with Catholic doctrine.


French handily won both debates. But if the Catholic church controlled the government, the French/Amahri debates probably do not end with a handshake. They end with French’s writings proscribed, his house expropriated and converted into a camp for Catholic migrants,ix and French himself chained to a rack and tortured for heresy. That is the difference when the church controls the state.


Many Protestants today want civil power, and claim to be setting up a kingdom for Jesus Christ. They claim there will be more liberty in this kingdom, not less. But Protestants who believe in a union of church and state are not much different than Papists. They have behaved like Papists when they have had civil power and there is every reason to believe they will again if they obtain it again.


There are many examples of the foregoing, but one or two will suffice. In Scotland, “The National Covenant or Confession of Faith” was first created in 1580 and certified by an act of Parliament in 1640. The law was approved by Charles II in 1651 as a condition precedent of his restoration to power.


As noted by author and liberty advocate A. T. Jones, the Covenant “declares, in approval of various acts of the Scottish Parliament, as follows:


… do condemn all erroneous books and write concerning erroneous doctrine against the religion presently professed, or containing superstitious rites and ceremonies papistical, … and ordains the home-bringers of them to be punished … and ordains the users of them to be punished for the second fault as idolaters.i


In order to protect the Covenant religion, the Covenant declares that “all within the realm are bound to profess it”, and states all must:


… recant all doctrine and errors repugnant to any of the said articles, and all magistrates, sheriffs, etc., are ordained to search, apprehend, and punish all contraveners; … that none shall be reputed loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord or his authority, but be punishable as rebellers and gainstanders of the same, who shall not give their confession and make their profession of the said true religion.ii


Magistrates were required by the Covenant to:


Maintain the true religion of Jesus Christ… and be careful to root out of their empire all heretics and enemies of the true worship of God who shall be convicted by the true Kirk of God [Church of God] of the aforesaid crimes.iii


Scottish Reformer Jon Knox himself stated that “none provoking the people to idolatry ought to be exempted from the punishment of death”, and “it is not only lawful to punish to the death such as labor to subvert the true religion, but the magistrates and people are bound to do so unless they will provoke the wrath of God against themselves.”iv


As noted, this is far from the only example of Protestant misdeeds when they obtain civil power. John Calvin had Michael Servetus arrested and murdered over a religious disagreement. Zwingli endorsed violence to encourage conversion, and Melanchthon drowned an Anabaptist for the “heresy” of being rebaptized.


Thus we see a union of church and state in Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism all yields the same evil result. The supposedly “true” religion (as declared by thin-skinned religionists who cannot stand to have their ideas debated and adopted or discarded as the individual decides) is established by civil law, dissenting views are censored, and the expositors punished, persecuted and murdered. That is the lesson of history in all ages, and it is the prophecy of Revelation 13 that so will it be at the end of time.


Revelation 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.


The next installment in this series will examine the links between Catholic social doctrine, the labor movement, and the push for church and state union.






i The Papacy is in a fixed battle for global domination. See, for example, Malachi Martin, “The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West”, Simon & Schuster, 1990, pages 16-18.


ii https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum


iii Unam Sanctum, Pope Boniface, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm


iv Thomas Aquinas, Against the Errors of the Greeks, Pt. 2, ch. 36


v Individual rights are for the common good. In fact, the highest common good is served when freedom of thought, speech, religion, and the press hold sway. The name, “common good constitutionalism” falsely implies that constitutionalism itself neglects the common good, which is the exact opposite of the truth.


vi Adrian Vermuele, “Beyond Originalism,” The Atlantic, March 31, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/common-good-constitutionalism/609037


vii See www.wingsofliberty.net/the-curse-of-church-and-state-part-1-canon-and-feudal-law


viii https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/david-french-sohrab-ahmari-and-the-battle-for-the-future-of-conservatism ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gFiDNIaIVA


ix https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2019/07/a-principle-of-immigration-priority-.html


x https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2019/07/a-principle-of-immigration-priority-.html


xiThe American Sentinel, September 1886, pages 69-70.


xii Ibid


xiii Ibid



xiv Knox’s Works, Laing’s Ed, vol IV. pages 515-600; Lecky’s History of Rationalism, vol II, pages 50, 51.




By Wings of Liberty August 14, 2026
It is apparent that there are obvious media biases which result in coverage blackholes with both the left-wing media and the right-wing media. The leftist media avoids stories that are politically problematic for the left, and the right-wing media avoids stories which are unfavorable to the political right. Unless you are a complete partisan-loyalist-come-what-may (and these abound, to be sure) you know both sides of the media have their agendas. And they push those agendas with the issues they cover, how they cover them, or whether an issue gets covered at all. Control of information = control of people. If you needed any further evidence that the western media is bought and sold, major broadcast networks ABC, NBC, and CBS, along with cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC, largely ignored the stunning release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary entries leading up to his testimony, or rather non-testimony, at the Senate on July 29, 2026. [1] The Fauci diary files, which can be read here , expose a number of lies Fauci told the public versus what he recorded in private, [2] including conflicting stories about the origins of the virus and its actual versus claimed risk of fatality to the public. Following the hearing on July 29, during which Fauci refused to answer questions and pled the Fifth Amendment 111 times, most major news outlets either gave cursory coverage to the testimony, or actively defended Fauci’s conduct. Similarly, most major news outlets failed to report the bombshell revelation that Bill Gates held Q level security clearance through the Department of Energy (equivalent to top secret clearance issued by the Defence Department) during COVID, or questions Fauci refused to answer from Senator Rick Scott related to Fauci’s involvement with Bill Gates, [3] or Gates’ funding of virus research. Bill Gates’ top level security “typically applies to positions involving nuclear weapons design, national laboratories, critical energy infrastructure and classified scientific research”. [4] Fauci is stonewalling Congress and the American public and the world at large has yet to learn exactly what Fauci and Bill Gates were up to regarding gain of function research and the subsequent MRNA “vaccine” which was imposed and coerced so forcefully onto the public. Was this just about money? Make a virus, sell a “cure”? Or was it also about something even darker – like depopulation? The Covid shots were not only ineffective in preventing infection or transmission of Covid-19, they killed and maimed a lot of people. In 2010, Gates said that “if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” [5] Despite an almost superhuman media campaign to recast this statement as benign, there just seems to be no amount of media weaseling that will make it go away. And since “reproductive health services” is often just the sleaze ball way of saying “abortion”, reasonable people have reasonably concluded that a good translation of what Gates said in the 2010 TED Talk is just what it sounds like: that if the elites abort more babies and inject people with more dangerous pharma cocktails, the population of planet earth will decrease by 10-15%. Which is a goal the Club of Rome and other elite orgs have been talking about for decades. [6] But back to Fauci: facts are facts. Fauci knew the virus was intentionally genetically modified: he had funded that research through the NIAID. Fauci publicly pushed the narrative during the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was natural, and evolved from a wet market, which was false. It looks just like a man covering his tracks. Analysis of the virus revealed a novel furin cleavage site found at the S1/S2 boundary of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is absent in closely related natural coronaviruses like SARS-CoV. This specific additional sequence creates the mechanism whereby SARS-CoV-2 can infect human airways by facilitating viral entry by pre-cleaving the spike protein and significantly increasing infectivity, tropism, and syncytia formation. Fauci was aware that this very mutation was the purpose of NIAID funding and gain of function efforts, all while attempting to convince the public that the virus was natural. If you haven’t watched the full July 29, 2026 Fauci Senate hearing, you should. The link is here. And, as you may already know, in the intervening time between then and now, another shoe from the millipede has dropped. It has come to light that Fauci knew early on that the Covid vaccine could cause baby miscarriages in pregnant women, but he publicly informed the world that pregnant women should take it, and that it was safe. [7] If it looks like a depopulation agenda, and it walks like a depopulation agenda… But there is another story which the western media, left or right, refuses to cover regarding Tony Fauci, and that is his link to the Vatican. Sometimes what is not said is just as informative, if not more so, than what is said. And that is why it is so notable that both left and right wing media avoid investigation and coverage of the Vatican’s involvement in the narratives of both Anthony Fauci, as well as another public perp named Jeffrey Epstein. [8] If you watch Fox News, you will see that it is almost as averse to criticism of the Vatican or investigation into Fauci’s connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, vax mandates, as left-wing media outlets like CNN. It’s the same with Epstein and the Vatican. Radio silence from legacy media, be they left or be they right. Yes, its true that Fox News has turned on Fauci – but it doesn’t really have a choice at this point because the story has become too big. It’s either cover Fauci, or lose all credibility with that segment of the conservative base which smells all the dead rats under Fauci’s floorboards. So, Fox News covered Fauci’s diary and his narcissistic obsession with fame. It covered allegations Fauci misled Congress on the origins of the virus. It covered Fauci’s gross exaggeration of the fatality rate of Covid-19 in public, while privately documenting that it is actually far less dangerous. Fox News covered all of that. But Fox News is awfully quiet re Fauci and the Vatican. And there definitely is a connection between Fauci and the Vatican that any investigative journalist worth their salt should want to dig at. It’s not just that Fauci is Catholic, and the Vatican is the civil power of the church-state union of the Catholic Church. It’s not just that Fauci is being sheltered and aided in the midst of congressional scrutiny and public exposure by the Jesuits at Georgetown University, [9] which of course he is, or that the Jesuits are the militant arm of the Papacy, which of course they are. It’s not just that Joe Biden (Catholic) gave Tony Fauci (also Catholic) an unconditional pardon for all of his crimes during the pandemic no matter how heinous, or that the popes of old used to grant such plenary indulgences for all sins to the crusaders who furthered their wars. Isn’t that how it works in the confessional, behind the scenes? “Forgive me father, for I have sinned.” “What have you done, my son?” “Do you have the internet? I killed millions of people with a genetically altered virus and then told the whole world they needed to take a poison shot to save them from the virus.” “Yes, its all forgiven, my son. Ego te absolvo. Go do 33 ‘hail Mary’s’ and keep your head down at Georgetown for awhile.” The reality is that the Vatican and Fauci were teammates during Covid. The Vatican pushed lockdowns and Covid shots globally arguably as hard as Tony Fauci, and brought all its moral and spiritual influence to bear on the reluctant to overcome their misgivings. The Pope told every Catholic in the world that they have a “moral obligation” to take the Covid shot. [10] He told them it was “morally licit” even though derived from cell lines from aborted foetuses. [11] The Vatican even minted a coin celebrating the imposition of the Covid shot on the human family. [12] In doing so it publicly celebrated oppression, force, deception, coercion, and corruption. It celebrated everything that is anti-Christian, and anti-liberty of conscience. And early in the rollout of the Covid shots, the Vatican held a symposium to chart a course for world governments to overcome vaccine hesitancy in the face of public reports that the shots were killing people. The event was hosted by Pope Francis, and included the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna. Opening remarks were delivered by none other than Anthony Fauci. What did Tony Fauci say at this conference hosted by the Pope? Well, among other things, Fauci informed the crowd that moral authority needed to be brought to bear to overcome the doubters. The right voice was needed to overcome the hesitant, and those who did not want an experimental gene editing franken-shot under threat of punishment via the loss of civil liberties. Fauci said the key to overcoming current vaccine hesitancy is pairing the right medical message with the right messenger. “You have someone who’s a deeply religious person who will listen to their clergy.” [13]  Oh yes. There are plenty of dead rats in the Tony Fauci’s former office. One by one Congress will ensure that some of them are found and publicly ventilated. Fauci may take a public fall, and some media outlets will be compelled to cover some of his disgrace. But no mainstream media dares to touch the involvement of the Vatican with Fauci. And you should ask yourself what that means. And when you have thought about the implications you may know a little more about who really runs this world.
By Wings of Liberty July 7, 2026
TO: THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Via EMAIL: RLC@usdoj.gov RE: RECOMMENDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY COMMISSION Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback to the recommendations of the Religious Liberty Committee submitted to President Donald J. Trump on June 26, 2026. While we are mindful of the Committee’s labors which resulted in the 12 recommendations released June 26, certain of which we agree with, we write to voice our concerns and objections to the Committee’s first and ninth recommendations, 1 and its obviously insufficient consideration of the warnings of the Founding Fathers of the dangers of a union of church and state, or the many lessons of history regarding same. The Committee recommended that the Department of Justice “issue guidance clarifying the proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and separation of church and state.” 2 At the formal release of the Committee’s recommendations on the same day, Committee Chair Dan Patrick publicly stated that, “The separation of church and state is not in the constitution, ” and that the phrase “ has no constitutional basis .” 3 As citizens and students of history, and as Christians, we are alarmed, lest the flawed and unconstitutional view of the Chair of the Committee of the so-called “ proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state”, prove influential or worse, instructive, to the Department of Justice. If the Committee’s opinion of the so-called “proper understanding” of the Establishment Clause is the same as that of its Chair, it is apparent that its understanding is not proper, but rather improper. Founding Father, “Father of the Constitution”, and fourth President of the United States, James Madison, contradicted Chair Dan Patrick’s claim that the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. Madison stated that, “ Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States , the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." According to James Madison, the separation of church and state is in the Constitution. As to whether James Madison, who is the principle author of the Establishment Clause, or Dan Patrick, is the greater authority on this subject, we think it not difficult for reasonably minded people to ascertain. Certainly, the Founding Fathers were all aware of the persecution of the Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and others in some of the colonies. They had seen first hand the ear croppings, whippings, imprisonment and hangings in Massachusetts and other colonies. In Europe, the persecution of the martyrs is well documented. Today we take the Bible for granted, but forget that William Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible into the English language not by atheists, but by religious bigots. It was a union of church and state which suppressed speech and the freedom of the press in England. It was a union of church and state which prohibited the work of translation of the Bible which changed the world. It was a union of church and state which necessitated his flight to Europe. It was a union of church and state which killed him. We respectfully ask that the Department of Justice, in considering the issue of public guidance of the separation of church and state, consider the history of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and early Founding Father, who was repeatedly jailed for his religious faith in England. Pennsylvania Colony became a haven, not from atheist persecutors, but religious persecutors who did not believe in the separation of church and state. The same is true of Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island, who was ordered arrested for declaring that the civil magistrate cannot enforce the first table of the Decalogue. We ask that the Committee take into account the brutal public whipping of President Abraham Lincoln’s five-time great grandfather, Obadiah Holmes, in Massachusetts colony, for the “crime” of religious dissent. Obadiah Holmes was not whipped by atheists. He was whipped by Puritan bigots who did not believe in the separation of church and state. We respectfully request that the Department of Justice consider this history in the issuance of public guidance on the subject. We are concerned that the Committee neglected to take into account the impact of the separation of church and state on the other rights codified in the First Amendment. Free speech and freedom of the press, for example, owe their flourishing in the modern world in large part to the separation of church and state in America. Prior to the protections in the First Amendment, the Roman Catholic Church for centuries maintained a list of banned books called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The books were subject to confiscation, and the possession of them resulted in the punishment of the owner. Unfortunately, the Committee makes no mention of the censorship in this context of Galileo and Kepler, Kant and Locke, John Milton and Maimonedes, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, David Hume and Edward Gibbon, and many others, all at the behest of the Roman Papacy, which is itself a union of church and state. Free speech in the western world is the legacy of those who risked the wrath of a unified church and state, often at the cost of their lives. We would also ask that the Department of Justice consider the repeated modern calls from the papal power today for the censorship of the internet, and the suppression of free speech, contrary to the First Amendment. 4 We have no doubt that the censorship of Galileo, Kepler, Milton and others was prosecuted under the justification of the censorship of misinformation, also. The Roman Church was not alone in this persecution, either. We would ask the Department of Justice in its formulation of public guidance on the separation of church and state to remember the religious persecutions carried out at the behest of John Calvin in Geneva against religious dissenters such as Michael Servetus, who paid with his life for his writings and teachings. Servetus was executed by a union of church and state. We are concerned at the public statements of those who would create such a system in America. 5 Therefore we respectfully ask what proper guidance can the Department of Justice hope to give to the public on the “proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state” if it is directed in its object by a Committee and a Committee Chair, who has neglected to more fully analyze the reasons for the separation of church and state, or the reasons why the United States codified the disestablishment of church and state in the First Amendment in the first instance? Reference to the wall of separation between church and state is not only mentioned by President Thomas Jefferson in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, which of course it is. 6 What is often left out of the narrative is that Jefferson said that he personally believed that the principle of the separation of church and state is codified in the Constitution. Therein, Jefferson wrote: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, ¬t opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. 7 James Madison wrote, It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. 8 Lastly, we object to the recommendation of the Committee that the Johnson Amendment be removed. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are mindful of Our Lord’s words that we “render to Caesar what is Caesar, and to God the things that are God’s.” 9 Jesus Christ established the principle of the separation of church and state, and taught that what belongs to God cannot be rendered to Caesar. The application of this teaching is that religionists, ambitious for civil power, and politicians ambitious for their endorsement, are to be kept separate in the American system of politics, as the Constitution requires. The union of church and state results in the corruption of both, a result which neither should desire, and neither can afford. Madison stated that “The number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State." 10 And he was right. If the Johnson Amendment is removed, religionists who want civil power will publicly stump and promise their votes and congregational dollars in exchange for political favors, and the politicians will be doubtless all too eager to reciprocate in the form of legislation which the religionists desire provided they will aid their attempts to gain office. In his anonymous treatise published in the Boston Gazette, John Adams, later the second President of the United States, wrote that canon law was a tyrannical form of government, as was feudal law, but that the worst of all forms of governments was a union of the two. 11 And it was Madison who stated that, “In the Papal System, Government and Religion are in a manner consolidated, & that is found to be the worst of Governments.” We respectfully request therefore that the Department Justice not adopt recommendations 1 and 9 of the Committee, and that it does adopt recommendation 1 of the Committee that it convene a public hearing, with written and oral submissions from the public, to more comprehensively study the question of the separation of church and state in history, and in American history in particular, a study which we would enthusiastically support. We remain yours truly, [THE UNDERSIGNED] ------------------------------------------------------- 1 https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/president-trumps-religious-liberty-commission-delivers-historic-report-draft 2 Ibid, [Emphasis added]. 3 https://www.chron.com/politics/article/dan-patrick-church-state-constitution-viral-22323383.php 4 https://reclaimthenet.org/pope-francis-calls-on-social-media-platforms-to-censor-more-misinformation ; 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAUkMwlWYB8 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMBiPIfx-UA 6 https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html 7 https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html - Jefferson here is clearly referring to Congress. That Congress is prohibited by the Constitution from making a union of church and state. 8 James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments 9 Matthew 22:21 10 James Madison, Letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819. 11 John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765. https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/PJA01dg2 Since the Promulgation of Christianity the two greatest systems of Tyranny that have Sprung from this source, are the Cannon and the feudal Law. The Desire of Dominion, however noble and useful on the whole, is however, when unawed and unrestrained by Hopes and Fears, an encroaching, grasping, restless and ungovernable Principle. And among all the Variety of iniquitous systems that have been contrived by the great, for the Gratification of it, in themselves was never So successful, as in the Invention and Establishment of the Cannon and the Feudal Law. In the former, the most refined, sublime, extensive and astonishing Constitution of Policy that was ever conceived by the human Mind, we find was framed by the Romish Clergy, for the Aggrandisement of their own order. All the Epithets, that I have given to the Romish Policy, will be owned to be just, when it is considered, that they found it practicable to persuade Mankind, that God almighty had intrusted them with the Keys of Heaven, whose Gate they might open and Close at Pleasure—With a Power of Dispensation over all the Rules and Obligations of Morality—With an Authority to Licence all sorts both of Sins and Crimes.—With a Power of deposing Princes, and absolving subjects from their Allegiance.—With a Power of procuring or witholding the Rain of Heaven and the Beams of the Sun—With the Management of Earthquakes, Pestilence and Famine—Nay with the misterious, awful Incomprehensible Power of Creating out of Bread and Wine the Flesh and Blood of the great Creator of the Universe. And all these opinions, they were enabled to propagate and rivet in the Minds of the People, by reducing the Minds of the Common People them to a State of Sordid Ignorance and staring Timidity, and by infusing into them a religious Horror of Letters and Knowledge of every Kind. Thus was human Nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, deplorable Servitude, to him and his Subordinate Tyrants, who it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called God and that was worshiped. In the latter We find another System, Similar in many Respects to the former: which, altho it was originally formed, perhaps for the necessary Defense of a barbarous People, against the Inroads and Invasions of her neighboring nations; Yet for the Same Purposes of Tyranny, Cruelty and Lust, which had dictated the Cannon Law, it was soon adopted by allmost all the Princes of Europe and wrought into the Constitution of their Govt. It was originally a Code of Laws 110for a vast Army in a Perpetual Encampment. The General was invested with the Sovereign Propriety of all the Lands within their Territory—of Him the first Rank of his great officers, held the Lands, immediately, and the other subordinate Ranks, held of them, and all held by a Variety of Duties and services, tending to bind the Chains the faster on every order of Mankind. In this Manner the Common People were held together in Clans and Herds in a State of Servile Dependance on their Lords, bound by the tenure of their lands to follow them to their Wars whenever they commanded, and in a state of total Ignorance of every Thing divine and humane, excepting the Use of Arms and the Culture of the Lands. But another Event, still more calamitous to human Liberty, was a wicked Confederacy between the two Systems of Tyrany above described. It seems to have been even stipulated between them that the temporal Grandees, should contribute every Thing in their Power to maintain the Ascendancy of the Priesthood, and the Spiritual Grandees in their turn, shold employ that ascendancy over the Consciences of the People, in impressing on their Minds a blind, implicit obedience to civil Magistracy. [emphasis added]
By QV.tv July 2, 2026