Robert Kraynak: "CATHOLICISM AND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: AN AMERICAN DILEMMA ABOUT NATURAL RIGHTS"

I found this nifty 30 page article here, by Robert P. Kraynak. There is a lot to it. I think I am going to reproduce small portions in several posts with commentary.

A taste:

Roman Catholics have never been entirely "at home" in America. As we know from history, the first settlers were mainly Protestant Reformers and restless adventurers, along with a few Jesuit missionaries from neighboring colonies. The American Founding Fathers were mostly Protestant by background and often Deists or Masons by conviction; and the only truly American religion is probably Mormonism. The Catholic immigrants who arrived in the nineteenth century from Ireland, Germany, and Italy often faced intense antiCatholicism and took several generations to become mainstream Americans; and they frequently paid the price of admission by diluting their faith and practice. Pope Leo XIII even referred to "Americanism" in a public letter of 1899 (Testem Benevolentiae) as the heretical tendency to trim the faith to fit modern culture .... 

Some ... imply[] that the relation of Catholicism and Americanism is essentially a marriage of convenience or at best a prudent alliance between a medieval, hierarchical church and a modern, democratic, capitalistic society. Others argue that an inner affinity or principled harmony can be found, even if it was not always recognized by past generations. The case for finding a principled harmony between Catholicism and Americanism has been strengthened by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which specifically endorsed religious liberty, constitutional democracy, and a qualified version of human rights for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church. ...  

In this paper, I will try to untangle the relation by sorting out areas of agreement and disagreement. I will begin by describing six sources from which the American political tradition is derived-namely, Protestant Christianity, English common law, classical republicanism, the natural rights theory of the Declaration of Independence (drawn mostly from john Locke), the ideal of gentleman statesmanship, and James Madison's modern republicanism. I will then argue that, of the six sources, the natural rights theory of the Declaration has become the predominant one, transforming and incorporating the others so that we now measure political legitimacy by the protection and expansion of natural rights.

Yes, Dr. Kraynak, like others, seems to endorse the amalgam theory. Though he breaks down the different ideologies into six sources.