The following presents, by contrast, what a Christian society should look like.
"This book is a detailed examination of the official statements of the Vatican on economic and political matters. It demonstrates the collectivism and totalitarianism of the Roman Catholic Church-State. It is the only such book written by a Christian in the twentieth century.
"This book explores the conflict between Roman Catholic social thought and human freedom, relying on official pronouncements from the Vatican to show that the political and economic theory of the Roman Church-State justifies feudalism, corporativism, liberation theology, the welfare state, and fascism.
"Dr. John W. Robbins attended Grove City College (A.B. 1969) and The Johns Hopkins University (M.A. 1970, Ph.D. 1973). He has served as chief of staff for a Member of Congress [Ron Paul of Texas], editor of The Freeman magazine, Economist for The Heritage Foundation, and Professor of Political Philosophy in The Freedom School." -- Publisher's Annotation

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. -- John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902) in a letter to Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 quoted by Gertrude Himmelfarb in Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, pp. 335-36 (1972)

"As the world focuses it attention on the papacy, we ought to recall Lord Acton, the great Roman Catholic historian of the 19th century. Many have heard the aphorism, 'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely,' though it is usually misquoted as 'Power corrupts.' Few who have heard it, however, know who its author was: John Emerich Edward Dalberg, better known as Lord Acton. Fewer still realize that Acton used the aphorism in opposing the papacy, the absolute monarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
"Acton's criticisms of the papacy and the Roman Church are some of most damning ever leveled against those institutions, and they are virtually unknown today. Yet to anyone seriously concerned about religious and political freedom, Acton’s views on the Roman Church, his own church, in particular his condemnation of the papacy, ought to be of great interest. Unfortunately, contemporary theological correctness has a taboo against criticism of Catholicism.
"Acton kept a notebook on the Inquisition in which he wrote:

[The] object of the Inquisition [was] not to combat sin -- for the sin was not judged by it unless accompanied by [theological] error. Nor even to put down error. For it punished untimely and unseemly remarks the same as blasphemy. Only unity. This became an outward, fictitious, hypocritical unity. The gravest sin was pardoned, but it was death to deny the donation of Constantine. [The Donation of Constantine was a document forged in the eighth century in which the Roman Emperor Constantine willed the Western Roman Empire to the Pope. The Roman Church taught that the Donation was genuine, and the legal basis for the pope's civil authority, for centuries. -- JR] So men learnt that outward submission must be given. All this [was] to promote authority more than faith. When ideas were punished more severely than actions -- for all this time the Church was softening the criminal law, and saving men from the consequences of crime: – and the Donation was put on a level with God's own law -- men understood that authority went before sincerity.

"Acton believed that the Inquisition was the institution by which the medieval papacy had to be condemned or acquitted. Just as a man charged with murder is judged for a single act, though be may be kind to his mother and a great philanthropist, so the papacy must be judged for the Inquisition. To Mandell Creighton, an Anglican priest, Acton wrote:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. . . . For many years my view of Catholic controversy has been governed by the following chain of reasoning: 1. A crime does not become a good deed by being committed for the good of a church. 2. The theorist who approves the act is no better than the culprit who commits it. 3. The divine or historian who defends the theorist incurs the same blame. . . . To commit murder is the mark of a moment, exceptional. To defend it is constant, and shows a more perverted conscience.

"Acton turned his attention to other crimes of the Roman Church as well. Beginning on Sunday, August 24, 1572, tens of thousands of French Huguenots were massacred by the Catholics. Overnight, thousands were murdered, and the murders continued for several months. The massacre began in Paris. The sign of the cross was everywhere, and the murders took on the air of a crusade, a holy war against the infidels. The banks of the Seine became a slaughterhouse. Men, women, children, and infants were stabbed or dragged by a rope around the neck to be thrown into the river. The murder, looting, and rape went on for days in Paris.

"The Pope, Gregory XIII, reacted immediately to this Catholic Holocaust: He delivered a complimentary speech, and commended the King of France, Charles IX, who 'has also displayed before our Most Holy Master and this entire assembly the most splendid virtues which can shine in the exercise of power.' The Pope commissioned a mural in honor of the great occasion; he ordered salutes fired for Charles; he had a commemorative seal struck; and in a horrible blasphemy he ordered a special Te Deum sung. Less than two years later, at the age of 24, King Charles died in extreme pain with blood oozing from his pores. His last words were pleas to God for pardon for the murders.

"The massacre was a matter of controversy in 1868 when Acton wrote an essay in the North British Review. He concluded his long essay by saying that there was no evidence to absolve the Roman Church of premeditated murder. Acton argued that it was not only facts that condemned the papacy for this heinous crime, but the whole body of casuistry developed by the church that made it an act of Christian duty and mercy to kill a heretic so that he might be removed from sin. Acton pointed out that only when the Roman Church could no longer rely on force but had to make its case before public opinion did it seek to explain away its murders. 'The same motive which had justified the murder now promoted the lie,' he wrote. A bodyguard of lies was fabricated to protect the papacy from guilt for this monstrous sin. Acton wrote:

The story is much more abominable than we all believed. . . . S.B. [St. Bartholomew's] is the greatest crime of modern times. It was committed on principles professed by Rome. It was approved, sanctioned, and praised by the papacy. The Holy See went out of its way to signify to the world, by permanent and solemn acts, how entirely it admired a king who slaughtered his subjects treacherously, because they were Protestants. To proclaim forever that because a man is a Protestant it is a pious deed to cut his throat in the night. . . .

"For three centuries the Roman church's canon law had affirmed that the killing of an excommunicated person was not murder, and that allegiance need not be kept with heretical rulers. Murder and treason were part of the Roman church’s official teachings. Charles IX was acting as a good Catholic, and he was highly praised by the pope for his murders.

"In 1867 Pope Pius IX summoned a general council of the Roman Church to be held in Rome in 1870. It was the first general council of the Roman Church since the sixteenth century Council of Trent, at which the schismatic Roman Church had condemned all the truths of the Reformation. This time the Pope was determined to establish himself as the infallible sovereign of the Roman Church.

"Acton thought that the time of the council would be better spent abolishing many of the 'reforms' made by the Council of Trent, reforms which had perpetuated in the Roman Church a spirit of intolerant absolutism and 'austere immorality.' He opposed the doctrine of papal infallibility, because, as an historian, he knew the popes were not infallible. Acton wrote:

A man is not honest who accepts all the Papal decisions in questions of morality, for they have often been distinctly immoral; or who approves the conduct of the Popes in engrossing power, for it was stained with perfidy and falsehood; or who is ready to alter his convictions at their command, for his conscience is guided by no principle.

"After studying the history of the popes, Acton wrote:

The papacy contrived murder and massacre on the largest and also on the most cruel and inhuman scale. They were not only wholesale assassins but they made the principle of assassination a law of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation. . . . [The Papacy] is the fiend skulking behind the Crucifix.

Massachusetts Attorney General, "The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston," Thomas F. Reilly, Massachusetts Attorney General
"The mistreatment of children was so massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable," says the July 23 [2003] report of Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly. More than 1,000 minors were likely abused by priests over the past six decades."
This is the 79-page report in its entirety.

http://www.votf.org/ago/archdiocese.pdf

Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Samuel Rutherford, John Owen, Thomas Manton, The Westminster Assembly, James Renwick, Archibald Mason, Christopher Ness, Francis Turretin, The Reformed Presbytery, David Steel, James R. Willson, Alexander M'Leod, William L. Roberts, James Aiken Wylie, Andrew Wilet, Henry Wilkinson, James Wylie, Patrick Fairbairn, James Aiken, Andrew Wilet, Alexander Hislop, Francis Nigel Lee, Arthur W. Pink, and so forth, and so on, have all believed and argued in print that the seated Pope is the Anti-Christ of the Bible.
The Roman Church-State is "the world's oldest, largest, most powerful and most influential politico-ecclesiastical institution" and it "may also be the world's wealthiest." It is the ultimate model for every ruler who lusts for power and wealth. The playing out of its political and economic thought may be seen in nearly every institution or organization in the world.

Pope's visit means 3 White House firsts.
President says 'man of faith' and conviction deserves the special treatment
Associated Press, April. 13, 2008
"WASHINGTON - The leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics has been to the White House only once in history. That changes this week, and President Bush is pulling out all the stops: driving out to a suburban military base to meet Pope Benedict XVI's plane, bringing a giant audience to the South Lawn and hosting a fancy East Room dinner.
"These are all firsts.
"A crowd of up to 12,000 is due at the White House on Wednesday morning for the pope's official, pomp-filled arrival ceremony. It will feature the U.S. and Holy See anthems, a 21-gun salute, and the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Both men will make remarks before their Oval Office meeting and a send-off for his popemobile down Pennsylvania Avenue.
"The president explained the special treatment -- particularly the airport greeting.
" 'One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith,' Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network in an interview aired Friday. He added that he wanted to honor Benedict's conviction that 'there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies. . . .' "
"This week makes Bush the record-holder, with a total of five meetings with two popes. . . ."
"The current pope's approach may be softer than that of John Paul, who turned from Bush's presentation to him of the Medal of Freedom in 2004 to read a statement about his 'grave concern' over events in Iraq."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24096388/
Bush Scandals
An extensive resource. Includes websites for the Savings and Loan Scandal of the 1980s, considered the largest theft in the history of the world, involving Neil Bush, a brother of George W., the Florida's Voting Scandal of 2001 in which Al Gore lost the presidential election. Jeb Bush, another brother of George W., was Governor of Florida and had promised to deliver the state for his brother. Other sites treat George W. Bush's suspected involvement in 911 [911 is, of course, analagous to Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor]. Note particularly "Bush Family Machinations, 1918-2000," a time-line of Bush Family crimes prior to Election 2000.

http://news4florida.tripod.com/index1.html
The Panic of '08. Lew Rockwell Interviews Ron Paul, September 18, 2008
A podcast.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/?p=episode&name=2008-09-18_029_ron_paul_t... ( )