>>741990
Father Rager explains:
Democracy not a "child of the Reformation"
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). The Reformation had left upon the statute book an emphatic assertion of unfettered sovereignty vested in the king (ibid. p. 91). 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).
A closer study of the Declaration of Independence discloses its dissimilarity with the social-contract or compact theories as explained with slight variations, by Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Puffendorf, Althusius, Grotius, Hooker, Kant, or Fichte. The American Declaration, like the political doctrine of Cardinal Bellarmine, declared political power as coming, in the first instance, from God, but as vested in a particular ruler by consent of the multitude or the people as a political body.
see: Catholic Sources and the Declaration of Independence
REV. JOHN C. RAGER, S.T.D. (1928)
https:// www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/catholic-sources-and-the-declaration-of-independence.html