Just past midnight on 20 November 2005, Samuele Bacchiocchi told me:

I am still in London.  My wife died three hours ago. I have over 500 messages in my mail box.  I do not have time to gather the information you are asking. The CD-ROM should be ready in a couple of weeks.  You are welcomed to order it.  You will find all sorts of documentation.

After I congratulated him on his remarriage, he informed me:

Thank you for your congratulations, but not for a remarriage.  I have been married for 45 years to the same Italian girl, Anna.  I will be glad to accept your congratulation for our 45th wedding celebration.

So congratulations - 45 years is a long time!

As for the death of his wife:

Thank you for bringing to my attention the mistake that I made.  I meant to say "my mother died three hours ago."  It was my mother, not my wife.

May she rest in peace.

Samuele Bacchiocchi, well-known Adventist teacher, has remarried this year.

In his latest Endtime Issues newsletter entitled "Ellen White and the Bible" (#152 - not online yet as I write this), he says:

Greetings from Jesolo (Venice, Italy) where my wife and I are spending a few restful days, enjoying the sunshine, the spectacular Adriatic beach, the delicious food, and visiting our relatives.

In spite of our differences, I wish him well with his new marriage.  I hope that this holiday in Italy was their honeymoon.

Update July 2006: she's the same wife - 45 years married!

Here's another delightful gem from the guy on alt.religion.christian.adventist who claims Catholicism changed the Bible.

He chopped out the word "commandments" in Exodus 16:28, and replaced it with "Sabbaths" - he may well be quoting from the Clear Word Bible, but I am not sure of that.  The Clear Word Bible is an Adventist composition that makes tremendous changes to the actual text in order to support Adventist teachings. [1] [2] [3]

The real Exodus 16:28 reads as follows in the KJV:

Exo 16:28  And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

Today, 23 July:

"I. B. Wonderin" <posting@groups.com> wrote in message
news:RaPwg.71251$Lm5.65047@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
>
> "Stephen Korsman" <skorsman@theotoko.co.za> wrote in message
> news:0ZudnQP-eOg4Gl7ZnZ2dnUVZ_sednZ2d@is.co.za...
> >
> > "I. B. Wonderin" <posting@groups.com> wrote in message
> > news:UcKwg.133766$H71.48686@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
> > > To man in the garden of Eden.
> >
> > Actually, the Bible tells us otherwise.
>
> Way to throw genesis 2 out of the bible!
>
> > I've already shown you the
> > evidence - in fact, you kept it quoted in this message.  Those verses
> tell
> > us that the Sabbath was NOT given prior to Moses.  Ignore it if you
> like.
> >
>
> "How long refuse you to keep my Sabbaths?" - EX 16. That's the Lord
> Jesus speaking and He hadn't even coomanded "Remember the Sabbath" from
> Sinai yet...

[Click here for the original post on Google Groups.]

[Click here for the full thread on Google Groups.]

That's verse 28 he's adapted, and the Sabbath was first mentioned in verse 23.

Prior to that, there is no mention of the word "Sabbath" in the Old Testament.

Since the Bible says that it was to Israel that God revealed the Sabbath, it couldn't have existed prior to Israel.

(Deut 5:3) The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

What covenant?  The one mentioned in the verses immediately following - the 10 Commandments.

Deu 4:13  And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.

(Neh 9:14) And madest known unto them thy holy sabbath, and commandedst them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses thy servant

By Moses thy servant.  Not by Adam or by Abraham.

(Ezek 20:12) Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them.

Who?  Those he led out of Egypt.

For more on whether the Sabbath was known to man prior to the time of Moses, see here, and here, and here.

He actually changed the text to say "Sabbaths" instead of "commandments."  And he accuses Catholicism, falsely no less, of altering the Bible?

Wow!  Not often you see something like that.

Adventists often make the claim that Catholicism claims to have changed the Sabbath.  They then cite their proof - unofficial texts, usually newspaper quotes, statements that disagree with the official Catholic position.  This is a classic Adventist ploy.  I've discussed it further here.  Without that, Adventism can't pinpoint which pope they claim changed the Sabbath, as I've pointed out here.

Usually they quote statements from newspapers or other texts that would never be considered to be an official source of Catholic teaching, such as a papal encyclical or a document from an ecumenical council.  Sometimes the quotes are downright inaccurate, while sometimes they are just quoted for their ability to be misinterpreted.  It must be remembered that we believe that the Apostles were the first Catholic leaders, and that when someone says "The Catholic Church instituted Sunday observance" it needs to be understood in that context - that we believe that it was the Catholic Church, in the persons of the Apostles, that instituted Sunday observance.

Whether or not you agree with the Catholic view on the Apostles, or the Catholic view of how Sunday observance began, understanding such statements in the context of Catholic teaching is the only honest way to interpret them.  That, however, is too inconvenient for many Adventists, who need to use it as evidence to try to convince Sunday-keeping Protestants that Sunday is just a Catholic plot.

Someone on alt.religion.christian.adventist just had to get rid of all his newspaper clipping quotes, and cut his evidence down to books with the title "catechism" in them.  But even these are not official statements of the Catholic Church - the one below is merely a view put forth by the Diocese of New York in 1876, and the other doesn't have a date or location given.  Neither is an official statement from Rome.

Here is an example of a text that should be interpreted as being the Catholic Church in the persons of the Apostles -

Q. Have you any other way of proving that the Church has power to institute festivals of precept?
A. Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.
Source:  A Doctrinal Catechism by Stephen Keenan, Imprimatur by John Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop of New York, Copyright 1876 by T. W. Strong, p. 174.

It should be noted that the Catholic Church does believe it has such authority, and that this authority was demonstrated in Acts 15.  There, the Apostles, without a previous command from Jesus, and without an angel appearing to explain things, debated circumcision and similar Jewish issues, and set limits on what was necessary.  They exercised very real authority in making that decision, and Catholicism believes that that authority was not just a temporary thing.  But whether or not you believe what the Catholic Church teaches, don't lose sight of the point of the exercise - demonstrating what the Catholic Church actually teaches, versus what Adventists claim it teaches.

Here is an example of a text that is in error, contrary to historical evidence, and the official view of the Catholic Church (see below for quotes of official - really official, not the Adventist type of official - statements on this issue) -

Question - Which is the Sabbath day?
Answer - Saturday is the Sabbath day.
Question - Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
Answer - We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic  Church, in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 364), transferred the solemnity from  Saturday to Sunday."
The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, p. 50,3rd ed.

Our friend on alt.religion.christian.adventist has been arguing back and forth about what Catholicism really teaches.  On several issues now, each time strong biblical evidence comes up against his position, he - and some others - change their tactics and try to claim that I don't know what Catholicism teaches.

After providing compelling evidence that Catholicism teaches that the Apostles initiated Sunday observance, he made the following statements:

One day (22 July) he says [I've hit the reply so the relevant references appear as well]:

"I. B. Wonderin" <posting@groups.com> wrote in message
news:UNuwg.177174$F_3.48057@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net...
> Rome changed the law concerning the Sabbath to the 1st day of the week.
> Rome made laws starting with Constantine and on up through the years.
> Just as those Catholic Catechism quotes I supplied said. The Catholic
> Church claims to have changed the law and the time of the observance of
> the Sabbath Commandment to the first day of the week. Rome says she did
> this in 364AD at the council of Laodicea. Rome does not claim to have
> done any of this lawmaking in the days of the apostles,.

[Click here to see it on Google Groups.]

The next day (23 July) he says:

"I. B. Wonderin" <posting@groups.com> wrote in message news:GcJwg.133503$H71.48300@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
> You are lying again. I already posted to you I acknowledged what you
> posted. I accept that Rome also teaches that the apostles changed the
> Sabbath, I just don't happen to believe it's true, or all that Rome
> teaches about this.

[Click here to see it on Google Groups.]

And the same day (23 July) he says:

"I. B. Wonderin" <posting@groups.com> wrote in message news:aoOwg.178300$F_3.166551@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "Stephen Korsman" <skorsman@theotoko.co.za> wrote in message
> news:k7KdnS-RysgFGl7ZnZ2dnUVZ_vmdnZ2d@is.co.za...
> "I accept that Rome also teaches that the apostles changed
> > the Sabbath" but "Rome says she did this in 364AD at the council of
> > Laodicea. Rome does not claim to have done any of this lawmaking in
> the days
> > of the apostles,."
> >
> > Sounds confused to me.  Sounds like a contradiction.
>
> No it's not.

[Click here to see it on Google Groups.]

Click here for the original thread in full on Google Groups.

This is what the Catechism of the Council of Trent says:

"The Jewish Sabbath Changed To Sunday By The Apostles

"The Apostles therefore resolved to consecrate the first day of the week to the divine worship, and called it the Lord's day. St. John in the Apocalypse makes mention of the Lord's day; and the Apostle commands collections to be made on the first day of the week, that is, according to the interpretation of St. Chrysostom, on the Lord's day. From all this we learn that even then the Lord's day was kept holy in the Church."

This is what HH Pope John Paul II wrote in Dies Domini:

20. According to the common witness of the Gospels, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead took place on "the first day after the Sabbath" (Mk 16:2,9; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1). On the same day, the Risen Lord appeared to the two disciples of Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-35) and to the eleven Apostles gathered together (cf. Lk 24:36; Jn 20:19). A week later, as the Gospel of John recounts (cf. 20:26), the disciples were gathered together once again, when Jesus appeared to them and made himself known to Thomas by showing him the signs of his Passion. The day of Pentecost, the first day of the eighth week after the Jewish Passover (cf. Acts 2:1), when the promise made by Jesus to the Apostles after the Resurrection was fulfilled by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 24:49; Acts 1:4-5), also fell on a Sunday. This was the day of the first proclamation and the first baptisms: Peter announced to the assembled crowd that Christ was risen and "those who received his word were baptized" (Acts 2:41). This was the epiphany of the Church, revealed as the people into which are gathered in unity, beyond all their differences, the scattered children of God.

The first day of the week

21. It was for this reason that, from Apostolic times, "the first day after the Sabbath", the first day of the week, began to shape the rhythm of life for Christ's disciples (cf. 1 Cor 16:2). "The first day after the Sabbath" was also the day upon which the faithful of Troas were gathered "for the breaking of bread", when Paul bade them farewell and miraculously restored the young Eutychus to life (cf. Acts 20:7-12). The Book of Revelation gives evidence of the practice of calling the first day of the week "the Lord's Day" (1:10). This would now be a characteristic distinguishing Christians from the world around them. As early as the beginning of the second century, it was noted by Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, in his report on the Christian practice "of gathering together on a set day before sunrise and singing among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a god".(19) And when Christians spoke of the "Lord's Day", they did so giving to this term the full sense of the Easter proclamation: "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil 2:11; cf. Acts 2:36; 1 Cor 12:3). Thus Christ was given the same title which the Septuagint used to translate what in the revelation of the Old Testament was the unutterable name of God: YHWH.

Obviously the tactics are failing miserably.  The only way to keep the argument going is by misrepresenting Catholic teaching.  By claiming that the Catholic Church, at a date later than the Apostles' time, changed the Sabbath to Sunday, they can escape from dealing with the biblical evidence in favour of Sunday observance and against Sabbath observance for Christians.

The fact is that nowhere in the Bible is the Sabbath commanded for Christians.  Nowhere in the Bible do we see Christians setting us an example by keeping the Sabbath.  Any gathering attended by Christians on the Sabbath is clearly a non-Christian Jewish service.

If you don't believe me, click here, and take a look at all the verses from the Acts of the Apostles.

More absurdities from Adventist prophetess Ellen White:

In her book, An Appeal to Mothers, p. 27, she gives this information concerning masturbation:

Females possess less vital force than the other sex, and are deprived very
much of the bracing, invigorating air, by their in-doors life. The results
of self-abuse in them is seen in various diseases, such as catarrh, dropsy,
headache, loss of memory and sight, great weakness in the back and loins,
affections of the spine, the head often decays inwardly. Cancerous humor,
which would lay dormant in the system their life-time, is inflamed, and
commences its eating, destructive work. The mind is often utterly ruined,
and insanity takes place.

Note that she is inspired, with no difference in quality or degree of
inspiration to that of the Bible:

We believe that Ellen White was inspired by the Holy Spirit and that her
writings, the product of that inspiration, are applicable and authoritative,
especially to Seventh-day Adventists. ... We do not believe that the quality
or degree of inspiration in the writings of Ellen White is different from
that of Scripture.

Join the discussion at alt.religion.christian.adventist.

Recently I've seen a fair bit written on how many Adventists tend to lower the Bible in order to raise Ellen White to the same level.  Ellen White's writings are considered divinely inspired by some, a claim she herself made for them.  Because of the errors they contain, many Adventists who still want to see her as inspired have taken to trying to demonstrate that similar errors exist in the Bible.  The intent is to show that not even God's inspired prophets and writers in the Bible get things right all the time, so Ellen White doesn't need to be any different.

I've got two articles on this phenomenon on my website -
Adventist pastor - Bible contains truth, but also "opinion"
Adventist pastor - uninspired statements by Paul in the Bible

The latest Proclamation! magazine of May/June 2006 has an excellent article on this by Dr Verle Streifling.

While looking for things on this issue and Ellen White's amalgamation theory that certain races of humans resulted from mating between humans and animals, I found a few statements made by Samuele Bacchiocchi that put him in the category of Adventist I describe above.

In his Endtime Issues No. 74, 6 September 2001, he says the following regarding her amalgamation theory:

Whether or not Ellen White’s statements about the amalgamation between humans and animals, are correct or incorrect, it is not for me to decide. No one knows what happen before the Flood. All what Scripture tells is that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" [Gen 6:5].

As an aside, it's noteworthy that Bacchiocchi won't comment on whether or not her views that human-animal mating resulted in some of the human races we have today.  Considering that he has plainly said that she is incorrect on other issues, why side-step this one?

And he says nobody knows what happened before the flood.  If he was aware of what Ellen White wrote, he'd know she referred to both the time before the flood, and the time after it.

He goes on:

Do Inspired Writers Make Mistakes?

The method used to discredit Ellen White has been repeatedly used by critics to discredit the Bible. They point to the alleged mistakes and contradictions found in the Bible. This strategy is based on the popular assumption that people inspired by God never made a mistake, because they were constantly supervised by the Holy Spirit in everything they said or wrote. This popular assumption is faulty because it ignore the mysterious blending of the human and divine elements present in inspired writers. A careful reading of Scripture confronts us with the presence of the human element.

So he defends the criticism of the Bible.  It's necessary.  He can't continue with Ellen White as a prophet without degrading the Bible's status.

The issue of the "mysterious blending of the human and divine elements" is well-covered in the Proclamation! article.  I recommend that you read it.  Click here if you also want to see other back issues.

Bacchiocchi then gives an example from the Bible:

To illustrate this point, let us consider Paul’s counsel found in 1 Corinthians 7:8: "To the unmarried and the widow I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do." There is no question that Paul’s terse advice contradicts God’s explicit statement: "It is not good that the man should be alone" [Gen 2:18]. If God Himself stated at creation that living alone without a marital partner "is not good," what business did Paul have to encourage people to remain single like himself? Would it not have been wiser for Paul to keep his personal opinion to himself?

Undoubtedly Paul did not foresee the problems his personal advice would cause during the course of Christian history.

Further on, Bacchiocchi makes this astounding statement (emphasis mine) -

Frankly, I wish that the Holy Spirit had restrained Paul from expressing his personal views and also guided him to write with greater clarity on such important issues as the relationship between law and grace. Countless scholars have tried to reconcile the apparent contradictions between Paul’s negation of the law [Rom 3:28] on one hand and affirmation of the law [1 Cor 7:19] on the other hand. Much of the existing confusion could have been avoided if the Holy Spirit had controlled Paul’s mind and literary style, to ensure that the apostle would define relationship between law and grace with clarity and simplicity for the lay person to understand.

It is evident that this is not the way God chooses to operate. He does not suppress the individual freedom, even when writing about eternal truths. What this means is that we do not reject Paul’s writings and discredit his ministry because some of the things he wrote are unacceptable.

Some of the things Paul wrote are unacceptable, says Bacchiocchi.

Enough said.

My reply to the anti-Catholic mentioned in the most recent blog post:

Thanks for your e-mail.

I've responded on my website.

http://www.theotokos.co.za/blog/post/index/224/Example-of-an-antiCatholics-rhetoric

I doubt it will help much discussing these things further, if your attitude
is going to be like this.

His response from webmaster@answeringcatholicism.com:

Subject: catholic retoric (sic) gets funnier every day

I read your website why do you think I send you an email?
 
But i figured you would give me this futile and weak reply.
If you are asking yourself why my attitude is arrogant and may sound a bit angry
its because the Bible is truth not man, The Bible is truth not priests, The Bible is truth not popes.
The Bible is truth not your private interpretation, The Bible is truth and refutes your claim.
 
Now either reply with an honest attempt to "back" your heretical claim or do not claim it!
 
G-d bless,
 
Erol

My response:

It is merely your private interpretation that priests and popes are not biblically-based concepts.

I will continue to claim what I claim, because it is not heretical, and because you have not refuted it.

If you're not willing to engage in polite discussion, don't.  But don't expect me to spend time on this.

Your website says enough.

I don't have enough time to get through most of my e-mail.  I really don't have the time to natter on with people who are not willing to listen, who yell "LIARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and asks ridiculous things of me like:

Show me where G-d did not made the sabbath holy on the very 7th day of creation!

SHOW ME....

If people are not willing to be civil, to engage in reasonable discussion, I'm not interested.  I have no time for rhetoric and misguided propaganda.  How can they claim to be answering Catholicism when they aren't able to even represent its teachings properly when they disagree with them?  They can serve as an example ... that's all such a discussion can do.  So here it is.

I got this e-mail from Erol, who appears to be a Sacred Names Modalist of sorts, making some rather arrogant claims.  Not a very nice e-mail - no swearing like some people who don't like my views - but rather things like "LIARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and "I challenge you to proof (sic) using scripture alone" - clearly in-your-face and quite stroppy about it.

I'm not going to waste my time with people who are not interested in rational discussion, but I think it's good to show what sort of people there are out there.

From Erol - eialici@vqme.com

Hi,

You have a nice work of fiction on your website.

http://www.theotokos.co.za/adventism/

I challenge you to proof using scripture alone where the Bible does not
say G-d made the sabbath to last FOREVER [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
It being his sign between him and israel (the body of christ now)to
remember that he is the L-rd our G-d.

Go ahead, i'm waiting, show me where the scripture contradicts itself
according to you since you said it was not forever. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Also show me where the Bible says the 7th day was changed to the 1th, I
pay every person that can do that $25.000 as posted on my website
www.answeringcatholicism.com.

Show me where G-d did not made the sabbath holy on the very 7th day of
creation!

SHOW ME....

However you can try all you like but you wont find one shred of scriptural evidence for your claim.

The only mentioning of 1th day service was BEFORE sunrise on Sunday and since the jewish sabbbath is from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset this thus was on the 7th day! [1] [2]

You know, i am amazed by you roman catholic heretics, all you can do is
assume claim and most of all ignore facts.

The very mentioning of sola scriptura offends you cause it will totally
destroy your church her claims.
Hench Yeshua is your enemy for the scripture very clearly says that Yeshua is the word made flesh!

You are with the father of accusation, he was a murderer of man from the
beginning, when he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it!

LIARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am eagerly waiting for your impossible "evidence" and no I am not a 7th day adventist but a member of the real true church Yeshua founded which is JEWISH in origine with Christ as its SOLE FOUNDATION and our rock, not a mere man called peter whom Yeshua called satan! [1]

G-d bless,

Erol
www.answeringcatholicism.com

I've put a few links / references in brackets - links that deal with his claims.

Oddly, he makes a lot out of offering $25000 to see where in the Bible it says that the 7th day was changed to the 1st.  Not only is the 7th day still the 7th, and the 1st still the 1st, but the Sabbath is still the 7th.  It just applies to the Old Covenant.  It's odd that such an issue is made, when Sabbath keepers cannot find any evidence for their own practice in the New Testament, yet claim that the Sabbath is so important for Christians.

Visiting his website, one sees several links about Catholicism.  If you look at them, they badly misrepresent Catholic teaching - so what they're attacking is not really Catholic teaching at all.  They don't understand properly what Catholic teaching is.  They're attacking a religion that doesn't exist.

Saying that "Catholics DO worship Mary!" is much like me telling his denomination that they reject the New Testament.  They don't, and their interpretation of it may be faulty, but they don't reject it.  Likewise with Catholicism - worship is an act of the will, of the spirit, not a function of body posture or misinterpreted words.  Catholics do not worship Mary.  To argue that we do makes them lose credibility from the outset.

Reading further on their site will not help them gain back any credibility they lost with their poorly-informed rantings.

Looking at their statement of beliefs page, they appear to be a Sacred Names group who reject the Trinity, and subscribe instead to a form of Binitarianism (a term coined in the Church of God movement that sprang up in the mid-1900's under Herbert Armstrong) or a form of modalism.  They seem to claim Monarchianism.  They tell us they reject the Trinity, but virtually all Catholics and Protestants also reject what this site describes as the Trinity.  They can't even get the definition of what they reject right.

They reject Trinitarian baptism ... which is commanded in the Bible.

They seem to have had some influence from the Armstrongite sector - indicated by things such as their taking issue with Armstrongite teachings such as the Wednesday crucifixion theory elsewhere on their site.

By Scriptures, we mean the 66 books of the Old and New Testament Canon.

In other words, they follow the Reformers who chose to go by the Old Testament defined at the Council of Jamnia.

Yet they follow this later with:

Aquila was the apostate translator of the Septuagint version used in the Synagogues after 129AD. We reject the decisions of the Council of Jamia (sic) in 90AD.

So they reject Jamnia's decisions, but follow them anyway.  Odd.

They also reject the Septuagint, used by Christ and the Apostles, and the most commonly quoted version of the Old Testament used by them in the New Testament.  Strange.

There are a lot of groups that teach that Jesus, and the Jews of his time, were black people.  Some are extremely adamant about this, and act as if it's an essential article of faith, without which one is lost.  This denomination doesn't state that ... but it is odd that a statement of beliefs, a creed, actually includes something so obscure and irrelevant, unless it is actually a key teaching of this group.

We read this embedded in a paragraph on racism ... which may alleviate the importance of it:

Racism is contrary to the teachings of Jesus. ... Since we believe the original Jews were not white, we get a picture of brown or black Apostles converting white people to a Jewish religion. ... Jewish racism against Gentiles because of a person's ancient bloodline is silly. White racism against those of black skin is stupid. Black racism against whites shows someone has perverted Bible truth. Any racism against any person is contrary to the work of God. God loves all people in all nations and races.

Paranoia and conspiracy theories - downright myths and unresearched propaganda - appears throughout the site.  One example - they think Pope John Paul II was a cyanide salesman for the Nazis.  And they seem to subcribe to the same sort of ideas as the notorious Nicholas from the RemnantOfGod website - widely known as quite a crackpot on UseNet.

In summary, this seems to be a denomination on the very fringe of Christianity, even further out than the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, who also have a peculiar set of beliefs.  They appear to be Oneness Pentecostals ... who, in my experience, are not good at honesty when it comes to Catholicism and others they disagree with.

It looks like there is a strong case for the Catholic origins of modern democracy.  Modern democracy can be traced back to Catholic roots, and was not the product of the reformation.  There is convincing evidence that Thomas Jefferson, , knew of the political teachings of Robert Bellarmine, a Catholic Cardinal.  Even before Bellarmine, a Jesuit, Thomas Aquinas taught the idea.

Furthermore, the American Declaration of Independence may have been drawn up with Cardinal Bellarmine's teachings in mind.

Ironic, considering the views of many fundamentalists regarding Jesuits.

Catholic Sources and the Declaration of Independence by Fr John Rager has the following to say:

The principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence are identically the political thought and theory predominant and traditional among representative Catholic churchmen of the time. It would appear that the framers of this great document drew inspiration, encouragement, and political ideals from Catholic sources. Father Rager shows goes further in showing that democracy is not a discovery of modern political thought, but rather has its roots in ancient and medieval theories of government. In fact the ancient Church, which is often depicted as retarding modern enlightenment, liberty, and democracy, was the very agency which produced the great protagonists of democracy in the period of its greatest danger.

...

Democracy then is not a discovery of modern political thought. Its sources are to be sought in ancient and medieval theories of government. Christianity injected something into the governments of nations that worked for democracy, that emphasized the natural equality and liberty of men. We can think of real Christianity only as democratic, never as aristocratic or autocratic. The Middle Ages were democratic and the Middle Ages were Catholic. Western civilized Europe was Catholic for a round thousand years. The doctrine of St. Thomas, as just quoted, gives eloquent testimony of the democratic political thought representative of that age.

...

The question might be asked: Why was it at all necessary for men in the eighteenth century to make such emphatic declarations of democratic rights? The answer is: Because the two preceding centuries had fairly destroyed the ancient rights of the people and the medieval democratic principle of government by popular consent. In its place there was elaborated at that time the new theory of the "Divine Right of Kings" which enthroned royal autocracy and absolute monarchy.

A Protestant concept, that.

Modern democracy is often asserted to be the child of the Reformation. Nothing is farther from the truth. Robert Filmer, private theologian of James I of England, in his theory of Divine right, proclaimed, "The king can do no wrong. The most sacred order of kings is of Divine right." John Neville Figgis, who seems little inclined to give Catholicism undue credit, makes the following assertions. "Luther based royal authority upon Divine right with practically no reservation" ("Gerson to Grotius," p. 61). "That to the Reformation was in some sort due the prevalence of the notion of the Divine Right of Kings is generally admitted." ("Divine Right of Kings," p. 15).

...

"Luther denied any limitation of political power either by Pope or people, nor can it be said that he showed any sympathy for representative institutions; he upheld the inalienable and Divine authority of kings in order to hew down the Upas tree of Rome." "There had been elaborated at this time a theory of unlimited jurisdiction of the crown and of non-resistance upon any pretense" ("Cambridge Modern History," Vol III, p. 739). "Wycliffe would not allow that the king be subject to positive law" ("Divine Right of Kings," p. 69). Lord Acton wrote: "Lutheran writers constantly condemn the democratic literature that arose in the second age of the Reformation."..."Calvin judged that the people were unfit to govern themselves, and declared the popular assembly an abuse" ("History of Freedom," p. 42).

Odd, that the reformers did away with the people's right to govern themselves, yet their teaching resulted in the people interpreting the Bible according to their own whims and fancies.  I suppose that when your true rights are removed, you assert rights you don't even have.  It's a normal reaction.  Instead of the successors of the Apostles, appointed by God to lead the faith, as we see in the New Testament, Protestantism became a religion "of the people, for the people, by the people," because government had been removed from their power and turned into an autocracy run by a king claiming to be appointed by God.  Even today, at least nominally, the Church of England is headed by the British Monarch.

Protestantism turned reality on its head.  It is the faith once delivered that is not up for vote, not to be determined "by the people."

There exist "sufficient reasons to believe that the framers of the Declaration of Independence drew inspiration and political ideals of democracy from the political doctrines of Cardinal Bellarmine, whose writings were well known and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic."

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... the American Declaration, which was so admirable and dignified an expression of the American mind is at the same time an accurate expression of the Catholic mind, medieval and modern.

There is, however, this comment that follows in the same paragraph:

This statement does not wish to infer that the American Declaration is not an expression as well of the non-Catholic American mind.

The article concludes:

With this identity of American and Catholic political principle established, and with plausible evidence of most probable contact of the formulator of our American Declaration with prominent Catholic sources of democratic theory, why should it be taken from the Catholic American citizen proudly to claim identity and uniformity of political thought with that of his fellow-citizen, and why should he not rejoice in the belief that his co-religionist forebears have taken actual part in the laying of that political foundation upon which rests, today, the greatest, happiest and most prosperous nation in the world?

Traditionally, America is seen by some as being a Protestant nation founded by Protestants on Protestant principles.  It seems that Catholic principles are just that - catholic, universal, and were seen by the founders of the USA to be worth incorporating into their own government.