Clerical Privilege Quotes
The Catholic Church was allied with the Fascists in Spain in the 1930’s. In the Spanish Civil War many Americans supported democracy and the Republicans. Historically in these days the Church had been associated with the power establishment and when there was a revolution as in Mexico, the Church was seen to have been part of the problem and its assets were nationalized and its influence diminished. Spellman and the Vatican were worried about the same thing in Spain and hence allied themselves with Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. As a result of backing the wrong side morally at that time, the Church after WWII became a leader in advocating freedom and democracy in many parts of the world, but still had historical ties to the right wing elements of a new nations in South America.
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Many of the founding fathers were aware of such views in England as the same issues were being debated in America in the debates on Ratification of the Constitution and the required inclusion of the Bill or Rights—specifically the First Amendment.
Note that Madison’s criticism of Christianity is not theological, but humanistic and political. See {620779} for his view on religion in general.
Jefferson’s concern over issues of church state separation and independence was expressed early when he was a young lawyer.
i.e., a clergyman representing a congregation The theory of this particular expulsion applied not to clergy in general, but to clergy who represented a Congregation. In the absence of strict separation of church and state, clergy representing congregations had representative and legal roles in other aspects of the government and therefore represented a problem of separation of powers within the government. The same logic, for example prohibited Sheriffs and Tax Officials from the House of Commons as well as Judges sitting in the Lords. With strict separation of church and state however, the separation of powers argument does not hold, and hence there is no such current prohibition. However, at the end of the 20th century, the Roman Catholic and some other religious institutions had reached the conclusion that clerics serving as elected representatives to various civil legislative bodies potentially had an inherent conflict of interest and divided loyalty and banned the practice from the religious end although the civil laws did not preclude it.
