State of the Question
This year is the semiquincentennial (250th) anniversary of the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution. It arose from growing tensions between the people of Great Britain’s thirteen North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown.

Conflicts between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord kicked off the armed conflict on April 19, 1775. George Washington responded to the accounts of Lexington and Concord:
The once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?
By the following summer, the Americans were waging a full-scale war for their independence.
President Donald Trump, who is inaugurated to his second term on January 20, 2025, has pledged to arrange “the most spectacular birthday party” to celebrate America’s 250th birthday in 2026, the anniversary of the declaration of independence. He said he would convene a White House task force called “Salute to America 250” which is responsible for coordinating with state and local governments to ensure an entire year of festivities across the nation, starting on Memorial Day 2025 and continuing through July 4th, 2026.
So there are many things to celebrate this year and on the year following.
But occasionally, among the traditional Catholics in America, there is raised the question, was the American Revolution, which was raised against King George III of England, justified.

It is a fair question, since King George proclaimed the secession of the colonies to be an “open and avowed rebellion,” and further said:
We do accordingly charge and command all our officers, civil and military, and our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which they shall know to be against us, our Crown and dignity. (George III’s proclamation of rebellion, August 23rd 1775)
Since the Catholic Church opposes revolutions, and King George was the legitimate ruler of the thirteen colonies, can we defend the revolution against him? And also, since the Catholic Church has traditionally preferred monarchy, the secondary question is, can we defend the constitutional system and democracy of America? After all, the US Supreme Court has defined that “the United States is a constitutional democracy,” because “its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials.” (Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 1944)
In this writing I’ll answer yes to both of these questions. I’ll seek to show that the Catholic Church has always defended the rightful deposition of tyrants, and that though it might be disputed who can become involved in an active rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and under what circumstances this can be done, there is nothing anti-Catholic or against the Faith in the position which accepts active resistance against a ruler who usurps his authority. As the source I have used the book Catholic Church and Christian State, volume II. It was written by Cardinal Joseph Hergenröther (d. 1890) and if you wish to check the original text and the footnotes, the book is available on Internet Archive.
Chapter 1
Catholic Justification of Active Resistance
Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers teach, as a general rule, that the subjects have the duty of obedience towards all authority, good or bad, Christian or heathen. They furthermore teach that neither the personal wickedness of the ruler nor his profession of a false religion exempt the people from this duty.
It is also unanimously maintained, that when a ruler abuses his authority by commanding anything plainly incompatible with the divine or natural law, or with justice, or with the constitution, passive resistance is not merely a right, but, when divine or moral law is in question, a duty. The reason for this is that passive resistance violates no right appertaining to the ruler. For he has stepped upon a domain in which he has no authority and beyond the limits of his proper sphere. Where there is no right to command there can be no duty to obey.
But it is disputed among the Church Fathers and the theologians whether active resistance, carried to the length of deposition, expulsion, or death, might, in extreme cases, be lawfully employed against a legitimate ruler who governed unjustly.
At an early period it was generally held that there were cases in which subjects might withdraw their obedience from a ruler, going so far as actively to resist him. The cases were when the ruler entirely misused his authority, was tyrannical and oppressive, and when the self-preservation of the people required it.
The ancients said that when self-preservation was in question, all the bonds of society were loosed, paternal authority ceased, as well as the authority of the husband over his wife, of the master over his servant. The authority of the ruler followed the same course. They looked upon the tyrant as an enemy of the law and of the people, who forfeited, therefore, his authority. A tyrant with them was not merely one who usurped the government unlawfully. A lawful ruler also was a tyrant if he governed unjustly, oppressed his subjects, and led to the ruin of the commonwealth, but especially if he used his power to oppress citizens for his private advantage.
Chapter 2
When is Rebellion Justified?
So there was no question that a resistance against a tyrant was justified. The question which was discussed was who possessed that right, and under what conditions it was allowed to rebel against a tyrant, whether usurping or legitimate, and deprive him of his power to do evil.
The majority of theologians did not concede the right to private persons, but reserved it to the whole people, who were often regarded as the real holders of the sovereign power, and to them only when all endeavors had been exhausted. They considered that in such cases the verdict of reason and natural law made it allowable to offer forcible resistance, as an extreme measure, for defense and protection against public oppression.
In the Middle Ages all theologians started from the principle that the rights of the king are not more holy and inviolable than those of the humblest subject, except so far as they are intended for the protection of the rights of all others.
John of Salisbury (d. 1180), Bishop of Chartres, in his book Policraticus, says that tyranny means an abuse of the power conferred by God. According to him, tyranny is not merely a public crime. It is, if possible, more than this: “The man who does not pursue a public enemy fails in duty towards himself and towards the whole human commonwealth.” “The prince defends the laws and liberty of the people. The tyrant in every way sets the laws at naught, and seeks to bring the people into servitude.” “The prince should be honored and loved; often the tyrant should even be put to death.”
But John of Salisbury does not dispute that tyrants are servants of God, inasmuch as they chastise the sins of the people. He says further: “The will of the ruler depends upon the will of God, and causes no injury to liberty. But the will of the tyrant serves greed, and in opposition to law – which fosters liberty – seeks to lay the yoke of servitude upon his fellow-servants.” Gedeon (Judges 6-8), John says, is the model of a good ruler. For, although the liberator of his people, he desired not his own government, but the government of God. The tyrant is typified by Antiochus Epiphanes, who tore and burnt the books of the divine law (1 Machabees 1), and raged against his subjects. The history of Julius Caesar and other pagan emperors illustrates the right of putting tyrants to death, in case no other remedy remains for preventing the continuance of tyranny.

The same thing, John says, is shown by the history of the Jews, especially in the books of Judges and of Judith, but with the limitation that no one should aim at or strive for the downfall of one to whom he is bound by honor and oath. Everything should be done without injury to religion or honesty. Laws appear to be presupposed which permit tyrants to be put to death. Poisoning is inadmissible, on the ground that no law permits it. Still, he thinks, pointing out the lamentable end of all tyrants, like Pharao, Achab, Sennacherib, Nabuchodonosor, Julian the Apostate, and others, that the best and safest way of overcoming tyrants is for the oppressed to turn to God, and having purged themselves from sin to pray to Him for help. For the sins of the people are the tyrant’s best support.
Chapter 3
The Teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiæ, says that “a tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to the common good, but to the private good of the ruler.” Consequently “there is no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant’s rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant’s government.”
Saint Thomas continues that rather than the unhappy subjects, “it is the tyrant rather that is guilty of sedition, since he encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely.”
In his treatise “On the Governance of Rulers” (De regimine principum), Saint Thomas further explains that if the tyranny is not immoderate, it is best to suffer through it. For the bad rule cannot last forever, and its removal may often occasion greater evils than its existence.
Thus the question of active resistance, as spoken by Saint Thomas, is limited to a despotism so extreme that it is insupportable. But even in this case the right to rebel does not, he says, belong to private individuals. Before any measures are taken against tyrants, the verdict of the country to that effect should have been publicly expressed, and the various cases carefully examined. Tyranny can be proceeded against only when the public judgment of the entire society has been given.
Concerning democracy, Saint Thomas points out that wherever the people have the right to elect their king, it cannot be unlawful for them to depose him if he is false to the obligations he entered into. Or the people may restrict his power for the time to come, as we see in Roman history. When the right of appointing a ruler appertains to some higher authority (for example, in vassal states), it is to this higher authority that an oppressed people should turn for relief, as the Jews applied to the Roman emperor against Archelaus, the son of Herod. If all human help is wanting against the tyrant, then recourse, Saint Thomas says, should be had to God, the King of kings, Who might convert or displace him. Prayer would be efficacious if sin, the source of all evils in the people, were removed.
Chapter 4
The Church Condemns Tyrannicide
In 1407 Louis I, Duke of Orléans, the younger brother of Charles VI of France, was assassinated. He had hoped to become the ruler himself, but his immorality and cruelty made him extremely unpopular. He was killed on the orders of John the Fearless, a duke who also had ambition to rule France.
On the occasion of the murder of Louis, French theologian Jean Petit (d. 1411), defended the proposition that it was lawful for an individual subject to kill, or to cause to be killed, a false vassal or perfidious tyrant. This act is known as tyrannicide.
The teachings of Petit elicited an emphatic condemnation of his propositions from the learned Jean Gerson (1363-1429), Chancellor of the University of Paris. In a sermon delivered before the king, Gerson strongly denounced the propositions of Petit as heretical and scandalous. Gerson cited John of Salisbury and Saint Thomas Aquinas in favor of his view. The king asked Gerard de Montaigu, Bishop of Paris, and the inquisitor of France to examine Petit’s propositions, which they did, and the book containing them was publicly burnt.
At the 15th session of the Council of Constance in 1415, the following proposition was condemned:
Any tyrant can and ought to be killed, licitly and meritoriously, by any of his vassals or subjects, even by means of plots and blandishments or flattery, notwithstanding any oath taken, or treaty made with the tyrant, and without waiting for a sentence or a command from any judge.
The council declared this doctrine to be “erroneous in the faith and with regard to morals,” and rejected it as “heretical, scandalous and seditious and as leading the way through perjury to frauds, deceptions, lies and betrayals.” It also declared and defined that those who assert to this doctrine are “heretics and are to be punished as such according to canonical and legitimate sanctions.” Pope Gregory XII authorized the Council’s sessions 14 to 20, including the condemnation of tyrannicide, on 4 July 1415.
Discussions on this question became still more animated after the rise of Protestantism.
At the rise of Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, several conflicts and rebellions were started by the supporters of the new religion. Reformation era saw conflicts of the Huguenots in France, Scotch risings inspired by John Knox, revolutions in England long before the execution of Charles I, and wars of the rebellious Netherlanders against the Spaniards. Many followers of John Calvin defended the proposition that the people might take up arms and expel, dethrone, or otherwise get rid of their rulers if they were bad or hostile, or threatened their religion. They preached the strictest obedience to princes who embraced the new doctrines of the Reformation, but armed resistance to those in authority who opposed the introduction of these doctrines. It was the opinion of Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) that it was not merely lawful to resist a tyrant if he were grievously oppressive and in case of necessity to put him to death, but that it was even desirable if a brave man could be found who should kill Henry VIII of England.
Protestants, in general living under princes who had embraced the new doctrines, were extremely desirous of binding Catholics to an absolute obedience towards their rulers. But when they themselves lived under Catholic sovereigns they claimed the most complete liberty of conscience. This later laid the groundwork for the French Revolution. Revolution, when taken not as the lawful resistance against a ruler who has usurped his authority, but instead as an expansion of one’s personal liberties, is not a product of the doctrine taught by Catholic theologians.
Chapter 5
Origin of the Jesuit Myth
At the end, it is useful to address the false idea that the Jesuits are somehow special proponents of revolutions and active resistance against authority. The origin of this myth lies in the above-mentioned wars of the Reformation era. At the end of the 1500s, France was ruled by a tyrannical king, named Henry III. At the death of his brother, the heir presumptive to the French throne was Henry of Navarre, who had been raised to the Calvinist faith.
The idea of a Protestant on the French throne was too much for many Catholics, who then formed the Catholic League (Ligue catholique), headed by Charles, Duke of Mayenne, who declared that obedience was no longer due to the king. The University of Sorbonne, in a document of the January 7, 1589, declared that the people were free from any duty to Henry III, and might take up arms in the cause of the endangered religion.
King Henry III at length openly allied with the Huguenots, as the French Calvinists were called. And when he was assassinated in 1589 by Jacques Clément, the League compared the deed with that of Judith in the Bible. The League also wished to have the exclusion from the throne of the Henry of Navarre. Still, not all who approved the revolt against the king who had endangered religion approved the assassination. And not all who held that no Protestant could mount the French throne were in favor of an armed revolt.
The justification of the League in their rebellion against Henry III and the new king Henry IV was that if, as the theologians taught, the right of refusing obedience to lawful rulers was conceded to the people in certain cases in the interests of their temporal welfare, with a greater reason, therefore, was it conceded when their eternal salvation was concerned. The people cannot be bound to obey the civil government when this is abused to endanger and destroy religion. An oath of obedience, in this case, is not binding; to keep it would be a grave sin against God and against His law. The divine command to guard the Faith and be steadfast to God till death is a higher command than that of obedience to civil authority. On May 7, 1590, the University of Paris formally denounced Henry IV as a heretic. And in 1591 Edmond Richer (1559-1631) produced in the Sorbonne the thesis that the estates of the kingdom were superior to the king, and that Henry III, as a tyrant, had been lawfully assassinated. Jean Boucher (1548-1646) of the University of Paris, made similar assertions from the pulpit and his discourses were also printed.
But the Catholic Church never supported the League’s rebellion against Henry III and Henry IV, or approved the theological arguments of their religious uprising. After the triumph of Henry IV, the League was dissolved. Afterwards, all these statements were ascribed exclusively to the Jesuits, who were, furthermore, charged with having originated the doctrine of tyrannicide. Yet the Jesuits had spoken only in the same manner as other theologians. They had treated the subject merely theoretically and as an abstract question, while their opponents, especially in the university, had pointed out the particular tyrants. For example, the much-calumniated Father Claude Mathieu had emphatically protested against the murder of Henry III.
In general, it was not in France but in Spain, that these questions had been mostly discussed by Jesuits. Their founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, had desired that politics should be altogether excluded from his Society. But in the 1500s all court affairs, all diplomatic negotiations, and even wars, had more or less of a religious stamp. They all tended either to uphold or stamp out the Catholic Faith. Jesuits were thus obliged to share in the movement of ideas, social and political. And when Claudio Acquaviva, the Jesuit Superior General in 1581-1615, asked from Pope Sixtus V that he should issue a prohibition of any political activity on the part of the Jesuits, the Pope did not grant his request.
Perhaps the most celebrated Jesuit theologian of the era was Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). He distinguished strictly between an unlawful usurper and a legitimate but tyrannical ruler. The former may be removed, he says, by force, either by the whole nation or by individual members, whenever the conditions of a just warfare are present, when no other means exist for being rid of him, and when the consequences of his death will not be worse than the tyranny itself. At the same time he acknowledged that other learned men held a different opinion. But Suarez also teaches that a legitimate prince, no matter how great is his tyranny, must never be assassinated by a private individual. Only the body and commonwealth of the nation, under the condition of a just warfare, and in self-preservation, might revolt against the tyrant. But a struggle of the people against a ruler who is neither a tyrant nor a usurper he condemns as a wicked rebellion.
It has been particularly objected to Suarez that he assumes that a legitimate ruler who has been lawfully deposed is to be treated as an illegitimate usurper, because, having been rightly deposed, he has ceased to be a legitimate ruler. The objection rests on a confusion of two distinct matters. The question here is not so much who has the right of deposing a ruler, and whether such a right exists at all, but rather whether a ruler, the legality of whose deposition is presupposed, should be regarded as no more than a tyrannical intruder if he seeks to regain the power he had lost. It is a question whether the aforesaid supposition can be made, but if it is made, Suarez is quite consistent. For the rest, he teaches that all action in this matter should be gradual; that a deposed king may not be at once killed by any private person, and is not to be forcibly expelled, unless this was declared specifically in the sentence, or another sentence or command were issued to that effect.
Chapter 6
Summary and Conclusions
What was seen above, can be summarized into these points:
Catholics are bound of obedience to all secular rulers, good or bad, Catholic or non-Catholic
All Church Fathers and theologians are unanimous that active resistance against an unjust ruler, tyrant, or intruder is permissible
The circumstances when such conditions of resistance do exist can be disputed, but not the principle itself
Similarly, the circumstances differ who has the right to engage into such justified resistance, but everyone agrees that it is not granted to a private individual
A rebellion or a revolution, which seeks merely the extension of people’s liberties, is not justified
To apply these principles to the American Revolution, it can be seen that George Washington and other revolutionaries can be conceded to have had a just cause to rebel against the other George, King George III of England. One does not have to take this position, but it cannot be denied either. The American revolutionaries sought to stop the English rule which was, not illegitimate, but tyrannical, and who king had gone beyond his authority. In his 1895 encyclical Longinqua Pope Leo XIII called the new nation’s first President “the great Washington,” who not only achieved liberty and independence for America, but also guaranteed full liberty to the Catholic Church.
From the words of Leo, and from the teaching of the theologians, we also see, that the Church approves any form of government, democracy or monarchy included, which faithfully guards the natural law and the freedom of Catholic worship. Though the Catholic Church has traditionally favored monarchy, the method how the leaders of different nations are constituted, is left to the domain of the states themselves. Pope Leo XIII, in his letter to the French Cardinals in May 1892, said:
When, therefore, in a society, there is a working and constituted authority, the common good is linked to this power, and for this reason we must accept it as it is. It is for these reasons and in this meaning which We have said to the French Catholics: Accept the Republic, that is to say the power constituted and existing among you; respect it; be subject to it as representing the power that comes from God. (Acta Sanctæ Sedis, Vol. XXIV, p. 644)
All American traditional Catholics have, therefore, the full liberty to celebrate their country’s independence, salute the flag, and pay their respect to the heroes of the revolutionary war.
Fr. Vili Lehtoranta
January 20, 2025
Feast of Saint Henry of Uppsala
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