Why is Persephone on our Capitol Building?

Her historical name is Persephone. She stands atop the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

But how did Persephone (officials gave her the name Freedom) achieve her place of honor over Washington? Who put her there? When? Under what circumstances? What is the theological history of this “only authorized Symbol of American heritage”? What is her future?

Persephone was the Graeco-Roman goddess of the psyche or soul. She was abducted by Saturn’s son Hades, who enthroned her as queen-consort of his dominion, the underworld. Significantly, Persephone was distinguished by fifth-century Athenian scholastics for her... immaculate conception.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX issued an encyclical defining Immaculate Conception, an unbiblical scenario which holds that the Virgin Mary, like her son (and like Persephone), was “preserved free from all stain of original sin in the first instant of her conception.”

Within days, federal legislators in Washington became obsessed with expanding the Capitol dome. According to one official publication, “Never before or since has an addition to the Capitol been so eagerly embraced by Congress.” Legislation was hastily passed which incorporated the new papal doctrine into the new dome’s cupola. A week later, the “immaculately-conceived” goddess Persephone was ordained to surmount the legislative center of the United States.

Persephone was sculpted in Rome and installed atop the Capitol on the 47th anniversary of the death of America’s first Roman Catholic Bishop, John Carroll. The event was heralded by 47 gunshots, thirty-five from a field battery on Capitol Hill, twelve from the surrounding forts.

The Capitol, incidentally, is erected on property owned by Bishop Carroll’s family. In the 1663 Maryland records, the exact site was recorded under the title “Rome,” its owner a man named “Pope.”

Roman Catholicism is a universal secular government domiciled at the Vatican City State in Rome. Its sovereign, the Pope, is an absolute ruler who is deemed infallible. In the political context, the Roman Catholic Church has been determined by the United States District courts to be a foreign State (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Case No. 85-1309).

The Roman Catholic Church State, if it may be so called, requires universal obedience to the decrees of its omnipotent pope and his various councils. Vatican Council II’s Constitutions on the Church (1964) require secular officials, “whoever they are, to expend all their energy for the growth of the Church and its continuous sanctification.”

Are the American people being ruled by a foreign sovereign for whom the United States is a useful tool in his management of world order?