The article reports on a discussion at The Heritage Foundation where commentator Michael Knowles argued that the U.S. Constitution reflects St. Thomas Aquinas’s “mixed regime” and a broader natural law tradition, suggesting a philosophical alignment between the American founding and Catholic political thought. Knowles, a Catholic, acknowledged the founders’ Protestant roots but claimed their intellectual inheritance, filtered through figures like Suárez and Bellarmine, produced a system compatible with Catholic ideals. He cited the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Declaration’s reference to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” as evidence. The article presents this as a harmonious convergence, ignoring the fundamental incompatibility between the American system’s foundational principles and the integral Catholic faith.
The Naturalistic Heresy of “Catholic” Political Philosophy
The central error of the article and the speakers it cites is the reduction of Catholic political order to a mere philosophical preference for “natural law” and a “mixed regime,” divorced from the supernatural end of the state and the exclusive, necessary reign of Christ the King. This is not a return to Aquinas; it is the repackaging of Modernist indifferentism in scholarly language. The article’s entire premise rests on the fallacy that a political structure can be “Catholic” without being formally Catholic, that is, without acknowledging the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation and the social reign of Jesus Christ as the indispensable foundation of law and order.
1. The Omission of Christ the King: A Denial of Catholic Social Doctrine
The most damning silence in the entire discussion is the complete absence of the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ. This is not a minor point; it is the very cornerstone of Catholic political theology, defined with absolute clarity by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas, which the article’s authors conveniently ignore.
Pius XI taught that the kingdom of Christ “encompasses all men” and that “it matters not whether individuals, families, or states,” for all are subject to His authority. The Pope explicitly condemned the secularism of the American model: “when God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The encyclical mandates that “rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and that all law must be ordered “on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles.” The U.S. Constitution, by design, establishes a secular state with no reference to Christ, His law, or His Church. It is the very “plague” of secularism, or “laicism,” that Quas Primas denounces. To praise this system as “in line with the natural law tradition” while ignoring its deliberate excision of the supernatural order is to preach a naturalistic, Pelagian heresy. It suggests that man, by his own reason and without the grace and law of Christ, can order society toward its true end. This is condemned by the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX, which anathematizes the proposition that “the civil power… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41) and that “the State… is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (Error 39). The American system is built on precisely these errors: the separation of church and state and the sovereignty of the people.
2. The “Mixed Regime” Fallacy: Form Without Substance
Knowles’s appeal to Aquinas’s “mixed regime” is a textbook example of taking a doctrinal concept out of its Catholic context and emptying it of its meaning. For Aquinas, as for all Catholic political thought, the best regime is one where the temporal authority is explicitly subordinated to the spiritual authority of the Church and governs according to divine and ecclesiastical law. The “mixed” element refers to the *distribution of temporal power* (monarchical, aristocratic, democratic) within a society that is fundamentally ordered to its supernatural end. The American “mixed regime” is mixed in a purely naturalistic and often anti-clerical sense, designed precisely to *prevent* any one faction (including a potential Catholic one) from imposing a common good defined by supernatural truth. It is a system of checks and balances against the very idea of a society united in the worship of the one true God. The article quotes no Aquinas, no papal social teaching, to support the claim that Aquinas’s model is compatible with a state that is constitutionally neutral toward God and actively protects the public propagation of false religions. This neutrality is itself a denial of God’s rights, as Pius IX condemned in Error 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which… he shall consider true.” The U.S. Constitution enshrines this very indifferentism.
3. The Poison of “Natural Law” Without Revelation
The article repeatedly invokes “natural law” as a bridge between Catholicism and the founding. This is the old Modernist trick. The Syllabus of Errors, in its section on “Moderate Rationalism,” condemns the notion that theology can be treated like a philosophical science “without taking any account of supernatural revelation” (Error 14). True natural law is not a set of principles discoverable by unaided reason in a vacuum; it is the participation of the eternal law in rational creatures, a law whose full knowledge and binding force depend on Revelation and the teaching authority of the Church. The American founders’ “natural law” was a vague, deistic, and often rationalist construct, severed from the Incarnation, the sacraments, and the Church. It was a tool for justifying revolution and establishing a new order based on the will of the people, not the will of God. To equate this with the Catholic natural law tradition is to commit the error condemned by Pius IX: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood” (Error 3). The Declaration’s “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is a prime example of this rationalist, vague theism, not Catholic doctrine.
4. The Sedevacantist Reality: No Legitimate Catholic Influence
The article speaks of “Catholicism” influencing America, citing figures like Bellarmine. This is utterly meaningless in the current reality. Since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the See of Rome has been occupied by a series of antipopes, beginning with Angelo Roncalli (“John XXIII”). The Second Vatican Council, which these antipopes have promoted, is a syntheses of all the errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and by Pius IX in the Syllabus. It introduced religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), which Pius IX condemned as “false” and “hurtful” (Syllabus, Errors 15-18), and ecumenism, which destroys the uniqueness of the Catholic Church. Therefore, any “Catholic” who participated in or supported the conciliar revolution—and this includes virtually all post-1962 “bishops” and “popes”—has placed themselves outside the Catholic Church. The scholars on the Heritage panel, the “pope” they implicitly acknowledge (Leo XIV, Robert Prevost), and the entire conciliar structure are part of the “abomination of desolation.” Their “Catholicism” is a counterfeit. To speak of “Catholic political philosophy” being realized in America while acknowledging the legitimacy of these antipopes is to collaborate in apostasy. The true Catholic faith, which alone can inform a truly just social order, endures only in those who reject the conciliar sect and hold to the integral doctrine taught before 1958.
5. The Blasphemy of a “Catholic Character”
Knowles’s concluding remark that America has a “profoundly Catholic character” is nothing short of blasphemous. It equates a nation founded on indifferentism, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state with the Mystical Body of Christ. It ignores the torrent of blood of martyrs who died rather than acknowledge the supremacy of the state over the Church, from the early Roman persecutions to the martyrs of the 20th century in Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union. It ignores the constant teaching of the Popes that the state must recognize the Catholic religion as the sole true religion and forbid the public exercise of error. Pius IX’s Syllabus (Error 21) declares: “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion.” This is condemned. The American system is built on the opposite principle. To call this “Catholic” is to spit on the doctrine of the exclusive salvation found in the Catholic Church (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus) and to mock the sacrifice of the saints. It is a satanic reversal, calling evil good and good evil.
Conclusion: A Call to Repudiation
The Heritage Foundation event represents a desperate and futile attempt by conservative elements within the conciliar sect to find historical and philosophical legitimacy for the American project within a Catholicism they have already gutted of its supernatural content. They offer a “Catholicism” without the Church’s authority, without the Social Kingship of Christ, without the duty of the state to repress false religions, and without the absolute rejection of religious liberty. This is the “synthesis of all heresies” condemned by St. Pius X. It is a naturalistic, Pelagian, and modernist parody. True Catholics, adhering to the faith of our fathers, must repudiate this analysis with utter contempt. The U.S. Constitution is a product of the Enlightenment and Freemasonic principles, as Pius IX identified in his allocutions on secret societies. It is a document of a nation under the curse of God for its official rejection of His law. No amount of Thomistic terminology or appeals to a vague “natural law” can sanctify this fundamentally anti-Catholic foundation. The only political philosophy compatible with the Catholic faith is the one that demands the public and official recognition of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords, and the submission of all law and government to His divine law and the teaching authority of His one true Church. The American experiment, from its founding principles to its current state of apostasy and moral corruption, stands as a monumental rejection of that demand.
Source:
Michael Knowles: America’s Founding Mirrors Catholic Political Philosophy (ncregister.com)
Date: 19.03.2026