The U.S. Constitution and the False Promise of Catholic Political Harmony

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.