Brian Rainwater

“All this motivates a new “backdoor apologetics”: instead of debating theology, backdoor apologetics wins converts through political science. Any secular or Protestant fan of limited government should be strongly persuaded by the requirements of republicanism to convert to the point of view that uniquely affirms it . . . or else to abandon the position of limited government. And this should happen automatically after he sees that a republic can function only upon the corpus of Catholic presuppositions about the universe! It is time that Catholics, Protestants, and secularists in America affirm how republics and natural rights (along with chapter 2’s subsidiarity, chapter 3’s popular morality, chapter 4’s humanism, chapter 5’s political economy, and chapter 6’s proper science) may only function from a certain point of view. And since proponents of limited government already embrace our conclusion, it is simply a matter of showing them that neither the post-Enlightenment nor the post-Reformation point of view can affirm these things with any internal consistency.”
― Timothy Gordon, Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome

“Whether it is popularly emphasized much or not, Catholic teaching in the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII tracks Thomas Aquinas’s quote above very closely: “Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary” (22). Immediately after this passage in Rerum, the famous encyclical repeats Thomas’s above words. Taken together, all this underscores the Catholic call to public aid, not by heavy taxation but by private charity instead. The same paragraph in Rerum Novarum refines this concept even further: “Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind [which cannot be taxed!], has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others.”
― Timothy Gordon, Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome

“Just like Irenaeus appealed to Apostolic Succession to prove a Church teaching, later theologians would do the same throughout the centuries. The fact that some modern theologians are teaching doctrines that would’ve been foreign to the Apostles is enough to disregard them and stick to the Deposit of Faith. This appealing to the early Church is one of the things that most firmly set me on my path towards Catholicism, because when you read the early Church Fathers you can only come away with one conclusion; they were all Catholic.”
― Charles S. Johnston, The Beauty Of The Mass: Exploring The Central Act Of Catholic Worship

“Neither the English Whigs nor the American founders could have waged revolution in 1688 or 1776 without secretly plagiarizing Catholic ideas. And this means that the American founding was unequivocally Catholic. Now how simple is that?”
― Timothy Gordon, Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome