Many Americans would be surprised to learn that one of the greatest opponents of civil and religious liberty is the Roman Catholic Church.

No one knows about the Roman Catholic hatred of liberty because history textbooks in public schools and colleges have been, for the most part, purged of nearly all things negative about papal Rome’s bloody history. Many Jesuits and other supporters of Catholicism have allegedly joined textbook selection committees in order to censor negative comments about the Roman Catholic Church. Encyclopedias in the USA have also been affected. History has been rewritten so that less and less people know about the true issues that faced the reformers and the true history of the Catholic Church.

Darryl Eberhart of Tackling the Tough Topics newsletter writes this:

Most of our encyclopedias and history textbooks do NOT tell us that the purpose of the attempted invasion of England in 1588 by the Spanish Armada was to land troops in England to be joined by local Roman Catholics in an effort to overthrow the government and bring England, by force, back under the authority of Papal Rome! The Roman Catholic King of Spain (Philip II) wanted financial “compensation” for launching this invasion. And so the Roman pontiff, Pope Sixtus V, promised King Philip II 200,000 crowns as soon as the Spanish Armada had set sail for England, and more cash to follow later. Thus the Papacy was helping to fund the planned invasion of England (all emphasis in original)!ⁱ

In 1931, Pope Pius XI explained this initiative in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno:

Under the guidance and in light of Leo’s encyclical was thus evolved a truly Christian social science, which continues to be fostered and enriched daily by the tireless labours of those picked men whom we have named the auxiliaries of the Church...The doctrine of Rerum Novarum began little by little to penetrate among those who, being outside Catholic unity, do not recognize the authority of the Church; and these Catholic principles of sociology gradually became part of the intellectual heritage of the whole human race...Thus too, we rejoice that the Catholic truths proclaimed so vigorously by our illustrious Predecessor [Leo XIII in 1891’s Rerum Novarum], are advanced and advocated not merely in non-Catholic books and journals, but frequently also in legislative assemblies and in courts of justice” (emphasis added).ⁱⁱ

Here are several quotes highlighting the Papacy's aggressive intentions:

Catholic Professor Orestes Brownson, Brownson’s Review (January, 1854): 90:

But is it the intention of the pope to possess this country? Undoubtedly. In this intention is he aided by the Jesuits and all the Catholic prelates and priests? Undoubtedly, if they are faithful to their religion.ⁱⁱⁱ

Hector MacPherson, The Jesuits in History (Edinburgh: Macniven and Wallace, 1914): 52, 85, 100:

...that the Jesuits were actively plotting for the extermination of Protestantism was no fiction of Oates, but a most certain and deadly fact...

At the Reformation the Irish race remained Romanist; and the miseries which came upon it must be in the main traced to the Jesuits, who used Ireland as a factor in their scheme of overthrowing the Protestantism of England and establishing a Roman Catholic dynasty completely under the control of the Papacy.

...wherever the Jesuits went, they placed the worldly prosperity and the political influence of their Order above all religious considerations. In accordance with their secret policy they set themselves to gain influence at Court; and, in order to carry their point, they were willing to countenance assassination, sedition, etc.

Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter Ad Tuendam Fidem (May 18, 1998), made bold statements about the need for submission to the Pope on doctrinal issues. He declared that lack of submission was worthy of punishment:

Whoever denies or places in doubt any truth that must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or repudiates the Christian faith as a whole, and does not come to his senses after having been legitimately warned, is to be punished as a heretic...whoever obstinately rejects a teaching that the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising the authentic Magisterium, have set forth to be held definitively, or who affirms what they have condemned as erroneous, and does not retract after having been legitimately warned, is to be punished with an appropriate penalty.

One of the doctrinal issues the Papacy demands submission on is the keeping of Sunday. Pope John Paul II said this, in agreement with Ad Tuendam Fidem:

A person who violates the sanctity of Sunday is to be punished as a heretic.^iv

Pope Nicholas I in a letter to the King of Bulgaria in 860 AD:

I glorify you for having maintained your authority by putting to death those wandering sheep who refused to enter the fold; and you not only have not sinned, by showing a holy rigour, but I even congratulate you on having opened the kingdom of heaven to the people submitted to your rule. A king need not fear to command massacres, when these will retain his subjects in obedience, or cause them to submit to the faith of Christ; and God will reward him in this world, and in eternal life, for these murders.

Pope Urban II's address in Clermont, France in November 1095:

If you must have blood, bathe in the blood of infidels. Soldiers of hell, become soldiers of the living God!

Pope Leo VIII, Immortale Dei (November 1, 1885):

The unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens and is by no means worthy of favor and support (emphasis added).

Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura (December 8, 1864):

Which false and perverse opinions [of democracy and individual freedom] are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests...

From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way (emphasis added).

The Syllabus of Errors Condemned by Pope Pius IX (December 8, 1864) lists several statements that the Pope called erroneous. Here are a few statements condemned by Pope Pius IX:

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

24. The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect.

77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.

The English Roman Catholic newspaper The Rambler (September 1852):

Shall I hold out hopes to the Protestant that I will not meddle with his creed, if he will not meddle with mine? Shall I lead him to think that religion is a matter for private opinion, and tempt him to forget that he has no more right to his religious views than he has to my purse, or my house, or my life blood? No! Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance itself, for it is the truth itself. We might as rationally maintain that two and two does not make four as the theory of Religious Liberty. Its impiety is only equaled by its absurdity.”

Catholic World (August 1871): 735:

We do not accept it [i.e., the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America], or hold it to be any government at all…If the American Republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the [Protestant] Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle...

"Faith," The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori Publications, 1994): 507:

Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same;.... schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion wiht the members of the Church subject to him.

Civilta Cattolica (House organ of the Jesuits):

Fascism is the regime that corresponds most closely to the concepts of the Church of Rome.

Western Watchman (A Roman Catholic publication out of St. Louis):

The [Roman Catholic] church has persecuted. Only a tyro [i.e., novice] in church history will deny that…one hundred and fifty years after [Roman Emperor] Constantine, the Donatists were persecuted and sometimes put to death…Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of the [Roman Catholic] church authorities…When she [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church] thinks it good to use physical force, she will use it.”

Protestantism is not a religion...never was a religion. The most that could be said about it was that it was a form of rape and robbery masquerading as a religion.

Father Charles Chiniquy, The Priest, The Woman and the Confessional (BiblioBazaar, 2007): 104:

Have not the popes publicly and repeatedly anathematized the sacred principle of Liberty of Conscience? Have they not boldly said, in the teeth of the nations of Europe, that Liberty of Conscience must be destroyed – killed at any cost?  Has not the whole world heard the sentence of death to liberty coming from the lips of the old man of the Vatican?”

Catholic Encyclopedia volume 14 (1911): 767-768:

There is no graver offense than heresy... and therefore it must be rooted out with fire and sword.

David Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast (Harvest House, 1994): 126:

The Constitution of the United States was condemned by the Papacy because it separated church and state and prohibited the establishment of any religion by the government. The popes, on the other hand, had long required governments to make Roman Catholicism the official religion and to prohibit the practice of any other.

Dr. William P. Grady:

During a sermon in 1850, [Roman Catholic] Archbishop John Hughes of New York, the nation’s leading Vatican spokesman, acknowledged that a conspiracy to subjugate free America did exist after all.  The Catholic press was ecstatic.  An excerpt from ‘Shepherd of the Valley’, the official journal of the [Roman Catholic] Bishop of St. Louis, declared, ‘If Catholics ever gain a sufficient numerical majority in this country, religious freedom is at an end.  So our enemies say, so we believe.’  [Catholic Archbishop] Hughes’ own paper, the ‘New York Freeman’ brazenly announced, ‘No man has a right to choose his religion.’

Bill Hughes, The Secret Terrorists (Truth Triumphant Ministries): 138:

For over 200 years, the goal [of the Jesuits] has been the complete destruction of the United States Constitution…In the religious arena, the goal of the Jesuits is to wipe out any trace of Protestantism and other religions, and to restore worldwide domination by the pope.

Darryl Eberhart, "The Papacy's Hatred of Liberty," Tackling the Tough Topics:

...the Papacy, despite its “ecumenical rhetoric”, has not changed a bit over the many centuries in the following categories:

* Its deep hatred of Jews, all independent Bible-believing Christians, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians (as recently as the 1940s we find Roman Catholic Ustashi military units in Croatia, led and urged on by Franciscan priests, monks, and friars, slaughtering from 600,000 to one million innocent Serb Orthodox Christian men, women, elderly, and children – many of the victims being first brutally tortured);
* Its long-held dream to bring all Christians under its monopolistic, totalitarian, ecclesiastical control;
* Its long-held dream to head up a totalitarian one-world religious organization; and,
* Its long-held dream to bring all world leaders – especially those in “Christian” countries – under the temporal power of the pope.

Charles Chiniquy, a Catholic priest who turned to Protestantism, warns America about these aggressive intentions of the Papacy:

Those bloody and anti-social laws of Rome, after having covered Europe with ruins, tears and blood, for ten centuries, have crossed the oceans to continue their work of slavery and desolation, blood and tears, ignorance and demoralization, on this continent. Under the mask and name of Democracy, they have raised the standard of rebellion of the South against the North, and caused more than a half million of the most heroic sons of America to fall on the fields of carnage.

In a very near future, if God does not miraculously prevent it, those laws of dark deeds and blood will cause the prosperity, the rights, the education, and the liberties of this too confident nation, to be buried under a mountain of smoking and bloody ruins. On the top of that mountain, Rome will raise her throne and plant her victorious banners.

Then she will sing her Te Deums and shout her shouts of joy, as she did, when she heard the lamentations and cries of desolation of the millions of martyrs burning in the five thousand auto-da-fes she had raised in all the capitals and great cities of Europe.^v