“Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?”

—  John Adams

1820s
Source: Letter to Thomas Jefferson (19 May 1821), published in Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807842303&id=SzSWYPOz6M8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kTAZL3ImRq&dq=%22Adams-Jefferson+letters%22&sig=tVGzBe0XVhXaF2p0FQLGy4GK6bk#PRA2-PR17,M1 (UNC Press, 1988), p. 573

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?" by John Adams?
John Adams photo
John Adams 202
2nd President of the United States 1735–1826

Related quotes

Ray Comfort photo

“It wasn't the Christian Church that arrested Gallileo, it was the Roman Catholic Church, which is a non-Christian religion based on tradition and not the Bible.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“It is a plan to abolish all existing religions — Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Speech: “Navy and Total Defense Day Address” (Oct. 27, 1941), Roosevelt, D. Franklin, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (1941) vol. 10, p. 440
1940s
Context: Your Government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions — Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.

Koenraad Elst photo

“In a sociological sense, I am still part of the Catholic community,… Nevertheless, I am no longer a Roman Catholic. I am a secular humanist with an active interest in religions, particularly Taoism and Hinduism, and keeping a close watch on the variegated Pagan revival in Europe.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

The Problem of Christian Missionaries , 7 June 1999. https://web.archive.org/web/20190311003524/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/chr/missionaries.html
1990s

Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo
Milton Friedman photo

“The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government.”

Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15
Context: The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

John F. Kennedy photo

“I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Context: But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Leonid Feodorov photo

“If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey. As for teaching the Catechism, the Catholic Church holds that children must be taught their religion, no matter what the law says. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.”

Leonid Feodorov (1879–1935) Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church

Captain Francis McCullagh, "The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity," Dutton and Company, 1924, page 192.
Adressing the court during his political show trial in 1923.

Robert H. Jackson photo

“The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion — except for the sect that can win political power.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

343 U.S. 325
Judicial opinions, Zorach v. Clauson (1952)

Related topics