The Preface to the above-titled articles states:

In early June of this year, WWN’s Associate Editor, Dennis Tevis, was notified of an exposition of Christian relics that was hosted and being held at a Roman Catholic Church in Cresco, Iowa. The event was presented by "Treasures of the Church," a traveling "ministry of evangelization of the Catholic Church." Its purpose, so stated: “Is to give people an experience of the living God through an encounter with the relics of his saints in the form of an exposition.”

The fact that a traveling "ministry of evangelization of the Catholic Church" now involves expositions of "Christian relics" is rooted in a massive transformation of America into a Catholic Nation. When America was predominantly a Protestant nation, such brazen displays of Roman Catholicism were not possible. How has the transformation been accomplished? It has been a long process; over such an extended period of time that the American nation was oblivious of the fact that Protestantism was progressively being strangled out of existence:

Anti-Catholicism in the United States

Anti-Catholicism in the United States is historically deeply rooted in the anti-Catholic attitudes brought by British Protestants to the American colonies. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society and continued into the following centuries. The first, derived from the theological heritage of the Protestant Reformation and the religious wars of the sixteenth century, consisted of the Biblical Anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon variety and dominated anti-Catholic thought until the late seventeenth century. The second type was a secular variety which derived in part from xenophobic and ethnocentric nativist sentiments and distrust towards increasing waves of Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Mexico. It often focused on the alleged intrigues of Catholic states or Catholic peoples against the majority Protestant United States. . .

After 1980, the historic tensions between evangelical Protestants and Catholics faded dramatically. In politics the two often joined together in conservative social and cultural issues, such as opposition to gay marriage. In 2000, the Republican coalition included almost half of Catholics and a large majority of white evangelicals. . .

After 1980 the historic tensions between evangelical Protestants and Catholics faded dramatically. In politics the two often joined together in fighting for conservative social and cultural issues, such as the Pro-Life and traditional marriage movements. Both groups held tightly to traditional moral values and opposed secularization. Ronald Reagan was especially popular among both evangelicals and ethnic Catholics known as Reagan Democrats. By 2000 the Republican coalition included about half the Catholics and a large majority of white evangelicals.

In 1980 the New York Times warned the Catholic Bishops that if they followed the church's instructions and denied communion to politicians who advocated a pro-choice position regarding abortion they would be "imposing a test of religious loyalty" that might jeopardize "the truce of tolerance by which Americans maintain civility and enlarge religious liberty".

Starting in 1993, members of Historic Adventist splinter groups paid to have anti-Catholic billboards that called the Pope the Antichrist placed in various cities on the West Coast, including along Interstate 5 from Portland to Medford, Oregon, and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One such group took out an anti-Catholic ad on Easter Sunday in The Oregonian, in 2000, as well as in newspapers in Coos Bay, Oregon and in Longview and Vancouver, Washington. Mainstream Seventh-day Adventists denounced the advertisements.

It is reasonable to conclude from the march of events that the Romanization of America had become irreversible by 1980. It reached a pinnacle in 2015 with the State visit of Pope Francis. It is noteworthy that Seventh-day Adventist dissidents have been in the forefront of opposing the Catholicization of America, and remarkable that mainstream Adventists have denounced them. This denunciation goes beyond disapproval of the dissidents' methods. Mainstream Seventh-day Adventism has repudiated the historic role of the denomination in warning about the prophetic role of the papacy in suppressing freedom of conscience and forcing her teachings on the world.

The long process of making America Catholic had its beginning in the papacy of Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903. He has been described as the first modern pope, marking a shift from the Counter-Reformation to the New Evangelization (Pope Leo XIII was the First Modern Pope.) Of him it has been written, "He always showed the greatest interest in science and in literature, and he would have taken a position as a statesman of the first rank had he held office in any secular government. He may be reckoned the most illustrious pope since Benedict XIV, and under him the papacy acquired a prestige unknown since the middle ages." (LEO XIII)

This is the Pope of whom Seventh-day Adventist preacher and scholar A. T. Jones stated in his sermon THE PAPACY, (THIRD ANGEL’S MESSAGE #3, 1895 General Conference):

The papacy is very impatient of any restraining bonds; in fact, it wants none at all. And the one grand discovery Leo XIII has made, which no pope before him ever made, is that turn which is taken now all the time by Leo and from him by those who are managing affairs in this country--the turn that is taken upon the clause of the Constitution of the United States: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Leo has made the discovery that the papacy can be pushed upon this country in every possible way and by every possible means and that congress is prohibited from ever legislating in any way to stop it. That is a discovery that he made that none before him made and that is how it is that he of late can so fully endorse the United States Constitution. . .

Thus the papacy in plain violation of the Constitution will crowd herself upon the government and then hold up that clause as a barrier against anything that any would do to stop it. And every one that speaks against this working of the papacy, behold! He "is violating the Constitution of the United States" in spirit, because the constitution says that nothing shall ever be done in respect to any religion or the establishment of it. When a citizen of the United States would rise up and protest against the papacy and all this that is against the letter and the spirit of the constitution, behold! He does not appreciate "the liberty of the constitution. We are lovers of liberty; we are defenders of the constitution; we are glad that America has such a symbol of liberty" as that. Indeed they are. That is why Pope Leo XIII turns all his soul, full of ideality, to what is improperly called his American policy. It should be rightly called his Catholic universal policy. . . (N.B. The pope recognizes the fact that democracy is the coming state.)

This same pope was no friend of Separation of Church and State and democracy.

Thus, since the turn of the 19th-20th century the process of eroding American democracy has been in progress, and the ultimate goal was to be accomplished by "Making America Catholic." this was the title of a chapter of the heavily documented book Facts of Faith. by Seventh-day Adventist minister and author Christian Edwardson. That the goal of" making America Catholic" has now been accomplished is verified by secular publications:-

Stephen Douglas Mumford is an American expert on fertility and population growth. The astute observer will detect in the expertise of Dr. Mumford the inevitability of conflict with the Roman Catholic ideology on abortion and contraception. A well-documented chapter of his book American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security (1984) is titled "The Origins of Vatican Power in America: A Guide for Population and National Security Specialists." Dr. Mumford writes:

To understand the population problem and the inertia currently seen in dealing with this problem, one must understand the origins of Vatican power. The Catholic hierarchy, unchallenged, has used American freedom as a cloak to undermine the population movement and, thus, U.S. security. Their methods deserve close scrutiny.

The pope and his hierarchy claim that papal or Vatican power originates from God. However, there are more earthly explanations for the origins of their power. Very few Americans have ever been exposed to the more earthly explanations. If the intentions of the founding fathers in their drafting of the United States Constitution had prevailed until today, those freedoms of thought, expression, speech, and the press, which we cherish, would not be jeopardized by the Vatican, a sovereign foreign power, influencing the American democratic process and domestic and foreign policy.

American Protestants are taught as children that you simply never criticize another person’s religion, that you should not think about the negative aspects of another person’s religion, that freedom of religion means that other people have the freedom to do whatever they want to do in their religion, that criticism of religion is always inappropriate, that we should be tolerant.

Roman Catholicism was a relative latecomer to the United States. At the time of the American Revolution, Catholics accounted for less than one percent of the population. Catholics had virtually no influence on the creation or form of the American government. It was not until the great migrations of the late 1800s and early 1900s that the proportion of Catholics became significant. Until then, the United States was a nation of Protestants. A complete taboo on criticizing another person’s religion had become a strong national ethic before the arrival of a significant Catholic presence.

Surrendering the freedom to think that another person’s religion might have certain negative implications in a Protestant America seemed to have produced no ill effects. (Only the Mormon Church was organized for the specific purpose of attaining political power, but this came later!)

However, with the arrival of a significant presence of the Catholic Church, this national ethic was soon to be exploited by a church with a long history of lust for political power. It had already become dominant in a province in Canada, as well as in Mexico, Central and South America, most of Europe, much of Africa, and the Philippines, and had tamed many Asian countries including India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and, until recently, Vietnam.

In order to enhance our cherished freedom, the freedom of religion, we denied the possibility that another person’s religion might do a wrong. The problem is, when one no longer talks about something, one ceases to think about that thing. By the time of my birth in 1942, the freedom to think about another person’s religion was extinguished.

This was fatal to two other cherished freedoms. When some people in this country became aware, at last, of the negative influence of the Catholic Church hierarchy on American democracy, the freedoms of speech and the press were diminishing. The Vatican had succeeded in exploiting an innocent America. How? What characteristics of the Catholic Church led to this exploitation?

The Church as a Totalitarian Institution

This characteristic of the Church is essential to our discussion. It is a fact that the best interests of the Vatican and the best interests of the United States are not always the same. This is the source of the conflict. If the American Catholic Church were a democratic institution, like most other mainstream American religions, I believe that I can say with some certainty that it would have been unnecessary to write this book. . .

The totalitarian character of the Roman Catholic Church has been noted for some time. In 1948, Karl Barth, a leading European Protestant theologian wrote of the kinship between Catholic and communist political policy in a comment he made to a Jesuit journalist:

To be honest, I see some connection between them [Roman Catholicism and communism]. Both are totalitarian; both claim man as a whole. Communism uses about the same methods of organization (learned from the Jesuits). Both lay great stress on all that is visible. But Roman Catholicism is the more dangerous of the two for Protestants. Communism will pass; Roman Catholicism is lasting.

Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical, Chief Duties of Christian Citizens, stated that Catholics owe “complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and to the Roman Pontiff, as to God Himself.” The pope sits on the throne of St. Peter and, as television has shown Americans, is worshipped as a king. The infallible spokesman of God, he is also worshipped “as God Himself.” This is by intention. . .

Noted British Catholic Christopher Dawson, who was named as one of the “forty contemporary immortals” among the Gallery of Living Catholic Authors, said:

 . . . There seems to be no doubt that the Catholic social ideas set forth in the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI have far more affinity with those of fascism than with those of either liberalism or socialism. In the same way, it is clear that Catholicism is by no means hostile to the authoritarian ideal of the state. Against the liberal doctrines of the divine rights of majorities and the unrestricted freedom of opinion, the Church has always maintained the principles of authority and hierarchy and high conception of the prerogatives of the state. The ruler is not simply the representative of the people, he has an independent authority and a direct responsibility to God. His primary duty is not to fulfill the wishes of the people but to govern justly and well, and so long as he fulfills this duty any resistance on the part of the people is a grave sin.

Thus, to resist a government that is fulfilling its duty to govern “justly and well,” as judged by the Vatican, is a “grave sin.” This control of the people is often offered by the Church to right-wing dictatorships in return for special privileges.

This concept of grave sin is but one of many controls exercised by the Vatican. . . (Underscored and italicized emphasis added.)

Note in the underscored passage above, its concurrence with documentation cited by Christian Edwardson.

Of special significance is the statement of Christopher Dawson quoted above by Stephen Mumford which asserts an affinity between the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI and fascism. From the insight of Christopher Dawson it can be deduced that the election of a man with fascistic tendencies, if not ambitions, such as Donald Trump can be laid squarely on the Catholicization of America. The threat of fascism looms over the American nation at this very time:

Trump: None Dare Call It Fascism

The tired dogma of the past that Donald Trump resurrects is Fascism. Do not compare Trump to the Nazis and Hitler. Compare Donald Trump to Mussolini, the founder of the Fascist ideology developed in Italy and adopted unsuccessfully in WWII Italy and Germany and quite successfully in Franco’s Spain, a regime that survived right into the 1970s. Fascism as defined by Merriam-Webster:

“…is a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” . . .

Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, clearly follows fascist principals [sic] and invokes fascist language. Russia’s historic mission, dying for the nation, restoring greatness are not the Soviet Union’s language; it is the language of Mussolini, Hitler and sundry other fascists. Socialism and communism are repudiated for the rule of elites usually from business, military and religion.

Trump’s actions follow the path well worn by fascist leaders from Putin all the way back to early last century. His goal is clearly to destroy faith in national institutions and establish himself as the only person who can ‘fix it’. Trump’s cabinet appointments provide graphic evidence of intent to undermine the very government institutions protecting the government and the people. (Underscored emphasis added.)

With the looming specter of totalitarian government, the following article is illuminating on the role of the Supreme Court of the United States:

The Decline of American Democracy

The United States is no longer a fully functioning democracy. This according to the Intelligence Unit of The Economist magazine. The Democracy Index 2016, released in January 2017, now lists the United States as a flawed democracy. The basis for the decline was not the most recent presidential election. Instead, the report argues that Donald Trump benefited from a lack of popular trust in American government, a lack that also led to the demotion.

Indeed, the ranking of the United States had been dropping for a number of years; the country was just barely included at the bottom of the list of fully functioning democracies in 2015. The magazine uses five measures, with the U.S. doing well in “electoral process and pluralism,” “political culture,” and “civil liberties.” The weak points are “functioning of government” and “political participation,” and it would seem reasonable to place the blame for these shortcomings on the Supreme Court of the United States.

There are two lines of cases that can be cited. The first, the refusal to find any constitutional violation in political gerrymandering, has contributed to a breakdown in deliberative democracy. With so many members of the United States House of Representatives and the state legislatures coming from districts that have been drawn so as to make their seats safely Republican or safely Democratic, there is no longer any incentive to compromise. A member who compromises, thereby moving to the center of the electorate, moves away from the center of those who vote in his or her party’s primary. In a safe district, it is the primary that matters, and winning the primary requires ideological purity. Compromise calls that purity into question. That affects the functioning of government. It can also impact political participation, when voters find themselves in safe districts in which their votes don’t really matter.

The other line is the Court’s repeated striking down of any attempts to limit the influence of money in politics. While the Court has accepted contribution limits to avoid actual, or the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption, it has been completely unwilling to limit expenditures by anyone, including corporations and unions, supporting the election or defeat of candidates. Somehow, the Court does not see the corruption this may cause. It may also impact the functioning of government, in the sense that government is not responsive to the people but instead to those who have the capacity to spend in favor of, or against, reelection of members of the legislature. It is also likely to affect political participation; people may choose to take no part in the process, if they believe that government is bought and paid for.

It is ironic that a line of decisions the Supreme Court saw as protecting democracy through an expansive understanding of expression instead contributed to a decline in democracy. This refusal to allow any reining in of the influence of money is also in stark contrast to the law in most to all of the countries that remain fully functioning democracies. Those countries limit spending, including spending by non-candidates in support of those seeking election, or they lessen the need for money. The lessening comes through bans on purchasing television advertising, often accompanied by the provision of free time in the media for candidates to reach the voters.

The first line of cases described above focuses attention on the gerrymandering which is but one of the major actions taken by Republican legislatures to achieve one-party government of the United States - Other decisions of the right-wing Catholic majority on the Supreme Court have targeted voting rights for classes of voters who are predominantly supporters of the Democratic Party:-

Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval.

The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and the nation’s progress in rooting out racial discrimination in voting. At the core of the disagreement was whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination.

“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

The decision will have immediate practical consequences. Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval. Changes in voting procedures in the places that had been covered by the law, including ones concerning restrictions on early voting, will now be subject only to after-the-fact litigation. . .

How the Supreme Court is changing the rules on voting

The Supreme Court continues to deliver an implicit message to civil rights advocates challenging state election practices as discriminatory: States can do what they want.

The conservative bloc under Chief Justice John Roberts has made plain that it believes states should be freer to determine their own voting maps and election practices, and that concerns about race discrimination simply do not carry the weight of earlier eras.

By a 5-4 vote on Monday, the court upheld Texas congressional and legislative districts that a lower court declared discriminated against Latinos. Earlier this month, the same 5-4 lineup of Republican-appointed justices against Democratic-appointed justices affirmed an Ohio law for purging citizens from voter rolls that challengers said would disproportionately hurt minorities.

The Texas and Ohio cases, combined with the court's recent actions declining to rule on claims of partisan gerrymandering, and a landmark ruling on the Voting Rights Act five years ago, suggest a freer rein for states.

These decisions are likely to reverberate in upcoming elections and the post-2020 Census redistricting. As was seen in the Texas and Ohio cases, voting rights challenges typically comes from liberal, Democratic-leaning groups against Republican-controlled state legislatures. The Supreme Court trend might only strengthen the GOP hold on states and Congress.

The second line of cases cited above is summarized in Campaign Finance and the Supreme Court. The alarm voiced by prominent, well-informed thinkers on the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission points to this case as posing a serious threat to democracy. The decision was handed down by an ideologically right-wing Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court, which had been shaped by three Republican presidencies beginning with that of Ronald Reagan in 1980. That it was designed to accelerate the Catholicization of America is evidenced by the ecstatic reaction of Catholic Online, a Roman Catholic publication, as the name reveals:-

Supreme Court Decision in 'Citizens United v. FEC' Empowers New Citizen Action

The decision handed down in 'Citizens United' opens the door for our work. It is a 'game changer'.

The fact that the Court overruled its prior decisions is very significant to anyone who has set their sites on overturning Roe v Wade and engaging in the kind of massive political action such a result will require. We must persuade the Court to reverse Roe and Doe. This will take massive organizational development as well as effective and sustained political and legal activism. It will also take a lot of money. . .

The decision handed down in Citizens United v. FEC is what they call in political and policy activism circles a "game changer." . . .

We must change this Nation’s laws in order to ensure that the Fundamental and inalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are protected for all of our neighbors - including our young, our infirm and our elderly. This opinion helps us along the path to victory. We should be emboldened by this Supreme Court decision. We should also use it as a blueprint for our future political and legal activism. It is time to follow our President’s example in at least one way, by becoming “community organizers.” Wielding the language set forth in this opinion we need to build – and massively fund - the organizations, associations, and movements desperately needed in this urgent hour. It is time for boldness! A truly free nation must recognize the first freedom, the freedom to be born, or it will lose freedom itself. In the Wake of the March for Life, the Supreme Court Decision in “Citizens United’ Empowers a New Citizen Action.")

This is a naked declaration of the Catholicization of the American body politic, and it has been wildly successful! The evidence is overwhelming that this was the intention of the Supreme Court in Citizens United and other cases since Republican ascendancy in the governance of America began to accelerate markedly from 1980. This has shaped and empowered a Roman Catholic ideological right-wing majority on the highest Court in the land:-

Religion, The Supreme Court And Why It Matters

Lots of controversial cases at the intersection of religion and the law wind up before the Supreme Court.

And, for most of U.S. history, the court, like the country, was dominated by Protestant Christians. But today, it is predominantly Catholic and Jewish.

It has become more conservative and is about to get even more so with President Trump's expected pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is stepping down from the court at the end of July.

Everyone on Trump's shortlist, but one, is Catholic. So what, if anything, do the current justices' and potential nominees' faiths tell us — and how has the religious makeup of the Supreme Court changed?

"It's extraordinary and unprecedented in American history," said Louis Michael Seidman, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church. "There was a time when, for example, there was tremendous anti-Catholic bias ... and, of course, there was a time when there was a lot of anti-Semitism, and a lot of that has gone away."

Politics

Supreme Court's Religious Makeup Evolves As Members Change

A majority Catholic court

Today, six of the nine justices are Catholic — if you count Neil Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic and has attended an Episcopal Church. The other three are Jewish.

Trump's potential nominees — Judges Brett Kavanaugh [the ultimate choice,] Amy Coney Barrett, Thomas Hardiman and Amul Thapar — are all Catholic. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports, according the Federalist Society, Judge Raymond Kethledge is evangelical. . .

Except Justice Sonia Sotomayor, all of the Catholic justices on the Supreme Court are conservatives, appointed by Republican presidents. And there's reason for that.

While there is a liberal, social-justice strain in Catholicism, there is a sharp divide between them and more conservative Catholics. And their dominance on the court has to do with ideology, said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who once clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"I think it's because the Catholic vote can be relatively predictable on abortion," Hamilton said. "Now, that doesn't fit with Justice Sotomayor, but with respect to the male Catholics that have been on the court, they have been largely devoted to decreasing the power of Roe v. Wade."

That's a major goal for many conservatives, and one supported by Catholic theology. . . (Underscored emphasis added.) [Cf. ON THE OFFENSIVE IN DEFENCE OF ROMAN CATHOLIC DOGMA]

Why the Catholic Majority on the Supreme Court May Be Unconstitutional

I agree with my fellow participants in this Symposium that the fact that the current Supreme Court has five Catholics—the most it has ever had at one time—is a positive, significant achievement for Catholics in the United States; however, I must otherwise dissent. . . These developments are encouraging and noteworthy, but they hardly tell the whole story of how, or why, we have a Catholic majority on the Roberts Court. We know, as Sheldon Goldman explains, that presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush had specific political objectives in making their respective Supreme Court appointments;' however, the critical question is whether the criteria these presidents used to implement their objectives included the nominees' conformity with particular religious beliefs or traditions.

In this Article, I examine two ways in which our national leaders may have damaged the rule of law in the course of appointing the current Catholic majority on the Roberts Court. First, in their zeal to control the Court through their appointments, our national political leaders may have demonstrated (perhaps unintentionally) a regrettable lack of faith in the rule of law. Their approach to selecting justices possibly evinced an apparent agreement with most political scientists who believe that justices do not follow the law, that law in the form of precedents does not constrain justices from either directly voting their policy preferences or manipulating precedent to maximize their personal or political preferences. Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush—and many Republican senators in 2005-2006—wanted to do what other previous leaders had failed to do: end liberal judicial activism, do away with the Supreme Court precedents they did not like, and transform the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court, into consistent, if not enduring, conservative bastions. To achieve those objectives, they could not depend on the law to constrain justices to interpret the Constitution as they preferred. To the contrary, the people in charge of selecting Supreme Court nominees had to find justices who would rigidly adhere to their ideological preferences, and thus perform consistently with the expectations of the dominant social science models of the Court. Fulfilling the expectations of the nominating presidents came at the expense of our longstanding commitment to—and faith in—the principle that ours is a government of laws and not of people, even if those people had the right kinds of ideological (or religious) commitments. Insisting that the maintenance of a government of laws depends on appointing people with the right kinds of ideological commitments sacrifices another principle on which our faith in our system as a government of laws in turn depends, a principle which I call the golden rule of constitutional law: on the Supreme Court, justices recognize that they must treat others' precedents as they would like their precedents—the ones with which they approve—to be treated. Those who purport to speak truth to power must assess the possible damage done to the rule of law and the golden rule of constitutional law by the repeated insistence that ideology matters more than law.

A second, serious problem with the process through which we acquired a Catholic majority on the Court may have been that some, if not all, of the appointments which made it possible may have been unconstitutional. The selections of at least some of these justices may have been unconstitutional—possibly violating Article VI's express prohibition of religious tests for federal office, the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, or the First Amendment's prohibition against the stablishment of religion—because they might have been deliberately based in part on the nominees' religious convictions. The possible, ensuing violations are all the more unfortunate because it would have been easy to assemble a Catholic majority on the Court without sacrificing some of our constitutional commitments. (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is clear that the U.S. Supreme Court has been Catholicized, and astonishingly this has been accomplished by Presidents who were nominally Protestants. This could not have happened without the Catholicization of America, with particular concentration on Evangelicals who now disregard the history of the Church of Rome:-

How a Catholic-Majority SCOTUS Fulfilled an Evangelical Dream

This is not a majority Catholic court. It's the Supreme Court that the strange alliance of the religious right built. [But the alliance was engineered by Roman Catholics.]

If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court (and do not doubt that he will be), the country’s highest court will remain, as it has been for over a decade, a majority Catholic institution. It will also mean that, depending on how we count Neil Gorsuch (more on that in a second), there hasn’t been a single Protestant on the Court since the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens in 2010. Every justice has been and will continue to be either Catholic or Jewish.

Historically, this is a huge shift. Only 5 Catholics had ever served on the Court before Antonin Scalia’s appointment in 1986. Similarly, before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed in 1993 there had been only 5 Jewish justices. One-hundred-and-thirteen people have sat on the Supreme Court; Scalia was the 103rd. And while this might appear to be a story about the arrival of Catholics into the mainstream of American life, it’s really the story of the religious right’s journey to dominance in U.S. politics through a powerful kind of coalition building. In other words, the Court, without a single Protestant on its bench, is the greatest triumph of a theocratically-minded American evangelical Protestantism.

A number of theories have been advanced to explain the Catholic and Jewish ascendency on the Supreme Court. Many of them point to the ways in which both Judaism and Catholicism have traditions of legal inquiry and the importance of higher education in Jewish and Catholic communities in the United States. What these theories miss, however, is how starkly the Catholic justices differ ideologically from the majority of American Catholics. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, five of the Court’s six Catholic justices will be reliable conservative votes, with Sonia Sotomayor as the sole exception. But polls indicate U.S. Catholics on the whole are a fairly progressive group. According to a recent Pew Survey, for example, 53 percent of U.S. Catholics support legal abortion and 67 percent favor marriage equality.

This phenomenon cannot be merely explained by the country’s general shift to the right over the past thirty years; it’s about a key factor in that rightward shift. The rightward movement of American politics up to and including the election of Donald Trump has been driven by a specific demographic, a demographic defined by religious and racial identity: namely, white evangelical Protestants. Few demographics poll more consistently conservative on a variety of issues from abortion to immigration. None is a more loyal or reliable source of Republican support. The latest poll fresh off the press reveals that white evangelicals are the only faith group that believes the country is headed in the right direction.

And yet not a single Protestant, let alone an evangelical one, sits on the nation’s highest court, . .

Through their alliance with white evangelicals, conservative Catholics and other religious conservatives, often minorities within their communities, became the most visible members of those respective communities in politics. And white evangelicals got numbers at the polls and access to the more highly educated Catholic community from which to draw people for key roles like Supreme Court justice. With this in mind, it seems hard to accept as coincidence that the current Court’s demographics began to take shape in the 1980s, a decade that marked the arrival of the religious right to the highest levels of political power. . .

Abraham Lincoln said, "Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much."--(December 10, 1856 Speech at Chicago.) It is therefore worthy of note that propaganda is another means by which America has been Catholicized. As referenced in and earlier segment of this analysis, Evangelical leaders were first seduced by Rome on the subject of abortion, then proceeded to seek Scriptural support for the Roman Catholic dogma that they had previously spurned, and followed this by re-educating their followers. Simultaneously, there has been a barrage on all sides to condition popular opinion in general to receive the principles of the Roman Catholic Social Doctrine, which have thus been foisted on the nation.

The Catholicization of the American Right

In the past two decades, the American religious Right has become increasingly Catholic. I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Literally, Catholic writers have emerged as intellectual leaders of the religious right in universities, the punditocracy, the press, and the courts, promoting an agenda that at its most theoretical involves a reclamation of the natural law tradition of Thomas Aquinas and at its most practical involves appeals to the kind of common-sense, “everybody knows,” or “it just is” arguments that have characterized opposition to same-sex marriage. There is nothing new about Catholic conservative intellectuals — think John Neuhaus, William F. Buckley, Jr. What is new is the prominence that these Catholic thinkers and leaders have come to have within the domains of American politics that are dominated by evangelical Protestants. Catholic intellectuals have become to the American Right what Jewish intellectuals once were to the American Left. In the academy, on the Court, Catholic intellectuals provide the theoretical discourse that shapes conservative arguments across a whole range of issues. Often these arguments have identifiable Thomistic or Jesuitical sources, but most of the time they enter the mainstream of political dialogue as simply “conservative.”

Meanwhile, in the realm of actual politics, Catholic politicians have emerged as leading figures in the religious conservative movement. Again, there is nothing new about Catholic political leaders nor Catholic politicians, although from Al Smith through John Kennedy they were more often Democrats than Republicans (Pat Buchanan is an exception). What is new is the ability of self-identified Catholic politicians to attract broad support from the among the evangelical Protestant religious right. . .

To understand what is going on, we need to move from the role of Catholic individuals to a broader, more metaphorical idea of a Catholic style of political reasoning. “Catholic” in this exercise means responding to leadership; focusing on outcomes (think “doctrine of works”); and a Manichean view of the world in which the Church — as opposed to mere churches — stands as a bulwark against equally great opposing forces, so that outside the Church there can be only chaos. In this sense a Catholic Republican voter would be someone looking for a commanding general to lead Christian soldiers on a crusade, would care about a candidate’s policies rather than his soul, and respond to a call to view the Republican Party as the last bastion of civilisation in a howling wilderness. Extending the metaphor, a “Protestant” conservative should reject the idea of leaders in favour of grass roots communalism; local self-direction in the congregationalist model; care about character and personal values more than specific stances or doctrines; and see the world as a mass of sinners who are to be judged individually by the quality of their soul rather than by their enlistment in one party or the other.

In this metaphorical sense, the “Catholic” political style is strongest among evangelical Protestant voters, not actual Catholics. The eagerness of Catholic bishops to jump into a fight over contraception, for example, does not reflect that attitudes of their parishoners, but it gets strong support from evangelicals. . .

In political terms, the evangelical Protestant Right has become Catholicized. They do not see Catholicism as a religion very different from their own because it leads to the same positions on the battlefield, call it Fortress GOP. . . (Underscored emphasis added.) [Cf. EXEGESIS OF REVELATION - The Beast and the False Prophet at bookmark The second beast. N.B. the deadly wound has clearly long been healed.]

The hour is late - very late! This is no time for Seventh-day Adventists to be playing with the degrading spiritualistic paganism of relics worship. The perceptions of individuals can differ for various reasons; sadly, one of them being spiritual blindness. A circumstantial case has been made in this analysis that Rome has achieved her long-term objective of making America Catholic. If the reader has not arrived at the same conclusion, perhaps the case has not been stated cogently enough? However, it is an inescapable fact that democracy in America, including the critically important guarantee of Separation of Church and State is now on the brink of the extinction that is prophesied in Rev. 13. The deadly prospect has prominent political analysts, though unaware of the prophetic Word, expressing fear of the future:-

20 of America's top political scientists gathered to discuss our democracy. They're scared.

“If current trends continue for another 20 or 30 years, democracy will be toast.”

The scholars pointed to breakdowns in social cohesion (meaning citizens are more fragmented than ever), the rise of tribalism, the erosion of democratic norms such as a commitment to rule of law, and a loss of faith in the electoral and economic systems as clear signs of democratic erosion.

No one believed the end is nigh, or that it’s too late to solve America’s many problems. Scholars said that America’s institutions are where democracy has proven most resilient. So far at least, our system of checks and balances is working — the courts are checking the executive branch, the press remains free and vibrant, and Congress is (mostly) fulfilling its role as an equal branch.

But there was a sense that the alarm bells are ringing.

Yascha Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard University, summed it up well: “If current trends continue for another 20 or 30 years, democracy will be toast.”

“Democracies don’t fall apart — they’re taken apart”

Nancy Bermeo, a politics professor at Princeton and Harvard, began her talk with a jarring reminder: Democracies don’t merely collapse, as that “implies a process devoid of will.” Democracies die because of deliberate decisions made by human beings.

"No one believed the end is nigh;" but they are scared! However, what they see is consistent with the prophecies of Rev. 13, and the prophetic march of events reveals that the end is indeed nigh!

The acknowledged fear of the political scientists should awaken those Seventh-day Adventists who continue to slumber and sleep, into consciousness of the insidious spiritual snares that abound all around us, as fulfillment of Rev. 16:13-14 intensifies (N.B. "The first, second, and third angels' messages are to be repeated.") Now is the time for our thoughts to be directed to the eternal world, which is rapidly approaching. Now is the time for our minds to dwell on the cleansing of the Saints in the Final Atonement, and "the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans 8:19 (NKJV.) Perish the thought that any Seventh-day Adventists could be enticed at this late hour by the relics of Rome! Surely it cannot be?! What hope could there be for such to escape the strong delusion of 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12?!