Americanist Celebration of Masonic Declaration as ‘Catholic Freedom’ Exposes Conciliar Apostasy
The ncregister.com portal publishes a commentary by Jerome C. Foss, assistant vice president of academic affairs at Saint Vincent College, hailing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as “Catholic Freedom Day.” Foss argues that the Masonic document of 1776 inaugurated religious liberty for Catholics in the English-speaking colonies, citing the Carroll family’s participation as proof of the harmony between Catholic faith and American principles. He concludes that the past 250 years have provided “fertile ground for the works of the Holy Spirit — the true spirit of 1776.” This panegyric to the Americanist heresy reveals the thoroughgoing naturalism of the conciliar sect, which substitutes the Kingship of Christ for the sovereignty of the people and the liberty of the Gospel for the license of the Revolution.
The Masonic Foundation of the American Project
The article’s central thesis — that the Declaration of Independence marks the beginning of “Catholic freedom” — is a direct contradiction of the Syllabus of Errors, where Pope Pius IX condemns the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error 80). The Declaration is not a charter of Christian liberty but a Manifesto of Naturalism, grounded in the Enlightenment fiction of “unalienable rights” derived from “Nature’s God” — a deistic construct that explicitly rejects the Incarnation as the foundation of political order. Foss celebrates the very document that enshrines popular sovereignty (vox populi, vox Dei) in place of Divine sovereignty (non est potestas nisi a Deo, Romans 13:1), thereby confirming the condemnation of Error 39: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.”
Historical Falsification: The Carrolls as Architects of Apostasy
Foss presents the Carroll family — Charles, John, and Daniel — as heroes of Catholic integration. In reality, they are the archetypes of the Americanist betrayal. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration, pledged his “sacred honor” to a document that declares governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” a proposition condemned by the Syllabus (Error 39, 59, 60). John Carroll, the first “bishop” of the United States, collaborated with Benjamin Franklin — a Freemason and deist — to secure the Church’s accommodation to the new regime, setting the pattern for the conciliar Church’s dialogue with the world. Daniel Carroll, at the Constitutional Convention, helped draft the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which constitutionalizes the separation of Church and State — Error 55 of the Syllabus: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” Foss calls this “Catholic liberty taken for granted under the law of the land”; the Syllabus calls it the abolition of the Church’s divine right to public recognition and the reduction of the Faith to a private opinion.
The Linguistic Camouflage: “Religious Liberty” as Idolatry
The article’s vocabulary is saturated with the newspeak of the Revolution: “freedom,” “liberty,” “equality,” “rights,” “patriotic,” “republic.” These terms function as semantic weapons to displace the Catholic lexicon of duty, obedience, hierarchy, Christendom, social Kingship of Christ. Foss writes of “the dignity of all people honored in our principles” — a phrase lifted from the Declaration of the Rights of Man, not the Gospel. He speaks of “civil liberty of every form of worship” as a good, directly contradicting Error 79 of the Syllabus, which condemns the proposition that “the civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.” The article’s tone is triumphalist, bourgeois, and entirely devoid of the supernatural — no mention of the Cross, the Mass, the Sacraments, the salvation of souls, or the final judgment. This silence is the gravest accusation: it proves the author operates in the ordo naturalis, not the ordo gratiae.
Theological Bankruptcy: The “Holy Spirit” of 1776
Foss’s peroration — “fertile ground for the works of the Holy Spirit — the true spirit of 1776” — is blasphemous. It identifies the Paraclete with the Zeitgeist of the Masonic Revolution. Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior” and that “this plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors” which “began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The Declaration of Independence is the founding charter of that denial. To claim the Holy Spirit operates through a document that omits the name of Jesus Christ, establishes no religious test for office, and enshrines religious indifferentism as constitutional law is to confuse the Spirit of Truth with the father of lies.
Symptomatic Diagnosis: Americanism as the Precursor of Conciliar Apostasy
This article is not an aberration; it is the logical fruit of the Americanist heresy condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899), which warned against those who “think that the Church should shape her teaching more in accord with the spirit of the age” and who “prefer a certain American liberty of the press, of speech, and of conscience.” The conciliar sect, having embraced Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, now canonizes the American Founding as a work of the Holy Ghost. Foss’s celebration at Saint Vincent College — a “Catholic” institution — demonstrates that the neo-church has fully internalized the Masonic principle: libertas ecclesiae in statu laico (liberty of the Church in the secular state), which is the negation of libertas ecclesiae properly understood as immunitas a potestate saeculari (immunity from secular power). The Syllabus condemns Error 20: “The ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government” — yet this is precisely the regime Foss celebrates.
The False Narrative of Persecution and Liberation
Foss recounts colonial anti-Catholic laws (Massachusetts 1647, oaths, disenfranchisement) to frame the Revolution as liberation. This is historical manipulation. The penal laws were the fruit of Protestant revolt, itself a precursor of the Revolution. The American War of Independence did not restore Catholic rights by divine providence but by Masonic design: the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause was crafted to neutralize the Church’s public authority, reducing her to one “denomination” among many. John Carroll’s 1784 Report on the State of the Catholic Church in the United States boasted that “in America, the Church enjoys a freedom unknown elsewhere” — a freedom purchased at the price of her divine constitution. Pius IX in Quanta Cura (1864) condemned the “pestiferous error” that “the Church ought to be separated from the State” — the very separation Foss hails as “Catholic Freedom Day.”
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
The ncregister.com commentary is a liturgical act of the counter-church: it offers incense to the idol of Liberty on the altar of the Republic. It proves that the conciliar sect has no longer the Faith, but a civic religion; no longer the Kingship of Christ, but the sovereignty of the people; no longer the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of 1776. As St. Pius X teaches in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (proposition 59): “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement, applied or applicable to different times and places” — this is the modernist error Foss embodies, adapting the Gospel to the American proposition. The true Catholic celebrates not the Declaration of Independence but the Feast of Christ the King, instituted by Pius XI “to address the needs of the present times and provide a special remedy against the plague that poisons human society… the secularism of our times, so-called laicism” (Quas Primas). Non est alia salus nisi in Ecclesia Catholica; non est alia pax nisi in Regno Christi.
Source:
How the Declaration Paved the Way for Catholic Freedom in America (ncregister.com)
Date: 31.07.2026