Church And State
Church and State
An understanding of the relationship that should exist between Church and State in a Catholic country such, at present, as Italy , requires a clear perception of the nature and functions of each. Both are perfect societies. That is, each has its own paramount purpose to attain, and each is endowed with the rights and powers necessary to secure that end. The purpose of the State is to provide for the natural well-being and happiness of its citizens, and to this end it has dominion, within the scope of its rights, over all individuals and groups that comprise it, with power of coercion limited only by the Divine law either of nature or of revelation. The purpose of the Church is to secure the supernatural well-being of her members, that is, to prepare them for the state of supernatural beatitude after death to which the Divine Will has destined them. The spheres, then, of these two societies are separate, that of the State being whatever concerns the material welfare, the peace and order of human society, and that of the Church being what concerns the spiritual welfare of men. Their jurisdiction, however, is over the same individuals. Both are of Divine origin, the State indirectly through the natural law and the Church directly through the ordination of Christ. Each is supreme in its own field and not subject to usurpation of its rights by the other. Should a question arise, however, of disputed jurisdiction, and agreement is impossible of attainment, strictly speaking the position of the Church should prevail as being a higher society than the State in its origin and end. However, as Leo XIII points out, in his Encyclical Christian Constitution of States, the two powers can find a way of agreement or modus vivendi, as the present pope has done and is still doing in so many instances. Furthermore, since the natural welfare of men cannot be dissociated from their supernatural welfare, the State should protect the Church, foster its interests, and recognize it as the public and official State religion. On the other hand, the Church should respect the jurisdiction of the civil power as supreme in its own sphere, and teach respect and obedience to that authority as of divine obligation. This mutual relationship should hold where the majority of its citizens are Catholics. Where the majority of the citizens of a state are not Catholics, the Church for reasons of policy does not insist on recognition as the State religion. In a non-Christian State recognition of the Church as the State religion is out of the question as the Church has no jurisdiction in right or in fact over unbaptized persons. There the Church should be accorded the toleration and protection given to any corporate body with full freedom to administer its own affairs. This is the practical position of the Church today in all countries where it is not the State religion.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Church and State
The Church and the State are both perfect societies, that is to say, each essentially aiming at a common good commensurate with the need of mankind at large and ultimate in a generic kind of life, and each juridically competent to provide all the necessary and sufficient means thereto. The State is ethically demonstrated to be such, and the Church has a like demonstration from the theology of Christian Revelation. By reason of coexistence on the earth, community of subjects, and a need in common of some of the same means of activity, it is inevitable that they should have mutual relations in the juridical order. To declare these relations in brief from an ethical viewpoint, which is the scope of the present article, it will be necessary to state: I. The basis of their respective rights; II. The range of their respective jurisdictions; III. Their mutual corporate relation; IV. The union of Church and State; V. Counter theories.
I. THE BASIS OF RIGHTS
All rights and duties on earth come ultimately from God through the Divine Law, either natural or positive. The character of our natural rights and duties is determined by the purpose to which the Creator shaped the nature of man, and natural knowledge of them is acquired by human reason from the aptitudes, tendencies, and needs of nature. Duties and rights descending from positive Divine Law are determined by some additional purpose of God, over and above the exigencies of human nature, and are to be learned only from Divine Revelation, either in its explicit declaration or its rational content. Man has one ultimate purpose of existence: eternal happiness in a future life. But man also has a twofold proximate purpose: to earn his title to eternal happiness, and to attain to a measure of temporal happiness consistent with the prior proximate purpose. The State is a natural institution, whose powers, therefore, come from the natural law and are determined by the character of the natural purpose of the State plus whatever limitation God has, because of qualifications in the last end of man, ordained in the Divine Positive Law. The Church is a positive institution of Christ the Son of God, whose powers, therefore, are derived from the Divine Positive Law and are determined by the nature of the purpose He has assigned to it, plus whatever further concession He has made to facilitate the accomplishment of that purpose. In any consideration of the mutual relations of Church and State the above propositions are fundamental.
The goal of the State is the temporal happiness of man, and its proximate purpose the preservation of external juridical order and the provision of a reasonable abundance of means of human development in the interests of its citizens and their posterity. Man himself however, as we have said, has a further goal of perfect happiness to be realized only after death, and consequently a proximate purpose to earn in this life his title to the same. In the pursuit of this latter purpose, speaking in the abstract, he had a natural right to constitute a social organization taking over the worship of God as a charge peculiarly its own. In the concrete however, i. e., as a matter of fact, God by positive law has vacated this natural right and established a universal society (the Church) for Divine worship and the securing of perfect happiness in the hereafter. God, furthermore, has appointed for man a destiny which cannot be attained by mere natural means, and consequently God has conceded to man additional means commensurate with this ultimate purpose, putting these means at the disposal of man through the ministration of the Church. Finally, He has determined the form of external public worship to be rendered, centring it about a sacrifice, the efficacy of which is from itself, being, as it is, a repetition of the Sacrifice of Calvary. The goal, then, of the Church is the perfect supernatural happiness of man; its proximate purpose, to safeguard the internal moral order of right and wrong; and its external manifestation, to care for Divine worship and minister to man the supernatural means of grace. The State, then, exists to help man to temporal happiness the Church, to eternal. Of these two purposes the latter is more ultimate, man’s greater good, while the former is not necessary for the acquisition of the latter. The dominating proximate purpose of man must be to earn his title to eternal salvation: for that, if needs be, he must rationally sacrifice his temporal happiness. It is clear, therefore, that the purpose of the Church is higher in the order of Divine Providence and of righteous human endeavour than that of the State. Hence, in case of direct collision of the two, God’s will and man’s need require that the guardian of the lower purpose should yield. Likewise the argument for the extension of the powers of the higher society in a measure into the domain of the lower will not hold for such extension from the lower into the higher.
II. THE RANGE OF JURISDICTION
As there are many distinct States of equal natural right the subjects of each are restricted in number, and its government of them is practically confined within the limits of its own territory. Within this territory it has full power to govern them, defining their rights and in some cases restricting the exercise of these rights conferring purely civil rights and imposing civil duties, holding its citizens to a proper condition of public morality, owning property and qualifying private ownership of the same–all within the exigencies of the civic purpose of preserving external juridical order and Promoting the prosperity of the citizens, and over all bound by the enactment of the Divine Law, both natural and positive. In a word,the State controls its own subjects, in the pursuit of its own natural end, in all things where a higher right does not stop it. A higher right will be a right existent because of an ulterior or a more essential destiny of man than the purpose which civil society pursues for him. The Church has the right to preach the Gospel everywhere, willing or nilling any state authority, and so to secure the rights of its members among the subjects of any civil polity whatever. The Church has the right to govern her subjects wherever found, declaring for them moral right and wrong, restricting any such use of their rights as might jeopardize their eternal welfare, conferring purely ecclesiastical rights, acquiring and holding property herself, and empowering her subordinate associations to do the same–all within the limits of the requirements of her triple purpose, as laid down by the Divine Positive Law, of preserving the internal order of faith and morals and its external manifestation, of providing adequate means of sanctification for her members, and of caring for Divine worship, and over all bound by the eternal principles of integrity and justice declared in the natural and positive Law of God.
In all purely temporal subject-matter, so long as it remains such, the jurisdiction of the State over its own subjects stands not only supreme, but, as far as the Church is concerned, alone. Purely temporal matter is that which has a necessary relation of help or hindrance to man’s temporal happiness, the ultimate end of civil society or the State, in such wise that it is at the same time indifferent in itself as a help or hindrance to man’s eternal happiness. It is of two kinds: primarily it includes all human acts so related, and secondarily persons or external things as far as they are involved in such acts. In all purely spiritual subject-matter, so long as it remains such, the jurisdiction of the Church over her ecclesiastical subjects obtains to the complete exclusion of the State; nor is the Church therein juridically dependent in any way upon the State for the exercise of its legitimate powers. Purely spiritual subject-matter is primarily made up of human acts necessarily related as help or hindrance to man’s eternal happiness, the last end of the Church, and at the same time indifferent in themselves as a help or hindrance to man’s temporal happiness; secondarily it extends to all persons and external objects as involved in such acts. In all subject-matter not purely spiritual nor purely temporal, but at the same time both spiritual and temporal in character, both jurisdictions may enter, and so entering give occasion to collision, for which there must be a principle of solution. In case of direct contradiction, making it impossible for both jurisdictions to be exercised, the jurisdiction of the Church prevails, and that of the State is excluded. The reason of this is obvious: both authorities come from God in fulfillment of his purposes in the life of man: He cannot contradict Himself; He cannot authorize contradictory powers. His real will and concession of power is determined by the higher purpose of His Providence and man’s need, which is the eternal happiness of man, the ultimate end of the Church. In view of this end God concedes to her the only authority that can exist in the case in point.
In a case where there is no direct contradiction but a possibility of both jurisdictions being exercised without hurt to the higher, though neither jurisdiction is voided, and they both might, absolutely speaking, be exercised without mutual consultation, practically there is a clear opening for some adjustment between the two, since both jurisdictions are interested in avoiding friction. Though concordats were not devised precisely for this purpose, they have in many cases been used for such adjustment (see CONCORDAT). Consistently with the superiority of essential purpose indicated above, the judicial decision as to when a question does or does not involve spiritual matter, either purely or in part, rests with the Church. It cannot lie with the State, whose jurisdiction, because of the inferiority of its ultimate end and proximate purpose, has not such judicial faculty in regard to the subject-matter of a jurisdiction which is as far above its own as the ultimate end and proximate purpose thereof is above that of the State. In analogous fashion every higher court is always judge of its own jurisdiction as against a lower.
All the above is matter of principle, argued out as a question of objective right, and it supposes that the jurisdiction is to be applied through the respective subjects of the same. In point of fact the duty of submission in a citizen of a State to the higher jurisdiction of the Church does not exist where the citizen is not a subject of the Church, for over such the Church claims no governing power. It may also be by accident subjectively obscured in one who, though in point of right the Church’s subject, in good faith fails, through an erroneous conscience, to recognize this fact, and, by consequence, the Church’s right and his own duty. The subject of the State has been made fairly clear by human law and custom; but the frequent rebellion, continued through centuries, of great numbers of the Church’s subjects has confused in the mind of the non-Catholic world the notion of who is by revealed law a subject of the Church. The juridical subject of the Church is every human being that has validly received the Sacrament of Baptism. This birth into the Church by baptism is analogous to the birth within the territory of a State of the off spring of one of its citizens. However, this newborn subject of the State can, under certain circumstances, renounce his allegiance to his native State and be accepted as the subject of another. Not so one born into the Church by baptism: for baptism is a sacrament leaving an indelible character upon the soul, which man cannot remove and so escape legitimate subjection. Yet, as in a State, a man may be a subject without full rights of citizenship; may even, while remaining a subject, lose those rights by his own act or that of his parents; so, analogously, not every subject of the Church is a member thereof, and once a member, he may lose the social rights of membership in the Church without ceasing to be its subject. For full membership in the Church, besides valid baptism, one must by union of faith and allegiance be in fellowship with her, and not be deprived of the rights of membership by ecclesiastical censure. Hence, those validly baptized Christians who live in schism or, whether by reason of apostasy or of initial education, profess a faith different from that of the Church, or are excommunicated therefrom, are not members of the Church, though as a matter of objective right and duty they are still her subjects. In practice the Church, while retaining her right over all subjects, does not–except in some few matters not of moment here–insist upon exercising her jurisdiction over any but her members, as it is clear that she cannot expect obedience from those Christians who, being in faith or government separated from her, see no right in her to command, and consequently recognize no duty to obey. Over those who are not baptized she claims no right to govern, though she has the indefeasible right to preach the Gospel among them and to endeavour to win them over to become members of Christ’s Church and so citizens of her ecclesiastical polity.
III. MUTUAL CORPORATE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Every perfect society must acknowledge the rights of every other perfect society; must render to it all duties consequent upon such rights; must respect its autonomy; and may demand the recognition of its own rights and the fulfilment of obligations arising therefrom. Whether one may also command such recognition and fulfilment is another question: one does not involve the other; thus, for instance, the United States may demand its rights of England, but cannot command England to acknowledge them, as the United States has no authority over England or any other nation. Prescinding from this for the moment, the Church must respect the rights of the State to govern its subjects in all purely temporal matters, and, if the subjects of the State are likewise subjects of the Church, must hold the latter to the fulfilment of their civil duties as an obligation in conscience. On the other hand, in principle, as a matter of objective duty, the State is bound to recognize the juridical rights of the Church in all matters spiritual whether purely so or of mixed character, and its judicial right to determine the character of matters of jurisdiction, in regard, namely, to their spiritual quality. The State, furthermore, is bound to render due worship to God, as follows from the same argument from the natural law which proves man’s obligation to external worship, namely, that man must acknowledge his dependence upon God and his subjection to Him in every capacity in which he is so dependent, and therefore not only in his private capacity as an individual but also in that public, corporate capacity whereby he and his fellow citizens constitute the State. Due worship, in the present economy, is that of the religion of Christ, entrusted to the care of the Church. The State must also protect the Church in the exercise of her functions, for the reason that the State is bound to protect all the rights of its citizens, and among these their religious rights, which as a matter of fact would be insecure and fruitless were not the Church protected. The State is even under obligation to promote the spiritual interests of the Church; for the State is bound to promote whatever by reaction naturally works for the moral development of its citizens and consequently for the internal peace of the community, and in the present condition of human nature that development is necessarily dependent upon the spiritual influence of the Church.
There being, then, an obligation upon the State as such, arising out of the Natural and the Divine Positive Law, to render public Divine worship in accordance with the guidance of the Church, in whose charge Christ has placed the worship due in the present order of things, an obligation also to protect the Church and to promote her interests, the Church clearly has a perfect right to demand the fulfilment of these duties, since their neglect would infringe her right to the benefit proceeding from the fulfilment. To have the further right to command the State in their regard implies that the Church has a right to impose the obligations of her authority in their regard, to exact them authoritatively from the State. Now in purely temporal matters, while they remain such, the Church cannot command the State any more than she can command the subjects of the State, even though these are at the same time her own subjects. But in spiritual and mixed matters calling for corporate action of the State, the question depends upon whether the physical persons who make up the moral personality of the State are themselves subjects of the Church. In case they are, then the Church has in consequence jurisdiction therein over the State. The reason is that owing to the supremacy in man’s life purposes of his eternal happiness, man in all his capacities, even of a civil nature, must direct his activities so that they shall not hinder this end, and where action even in his official or civil capacity is necessary for this ultimate purpose he is bound to place the action: moreover, in all these activities so bearing on this end, since they are thereby spiritual matter, every subject of the Church is under the jurisdiction of the Church. If, then, the physical persons constituting the moral person of the State are the subjects of the Church, they are still, in this joint capacity, subject to her in like matters, namely, in the fulfilment of all civil duties of the State towards religion and the Church. The Church, because of the uselessness of her insistence, or because of greater evils to be so avoided, may waive the exercise of this jurisdiction; but in principle it is hers.
In practice we distinguish, from a religious point of view, four kinds of civil authority. First, in a Catholic State, in which, namely, the physical persons constituting the moral personality of the State are Catholic, the Church’s jurisdiction in matters of her competency is in every way complete. Secondly, in a non-Christian State, for instance that of the Turks, where the constituency is not even baptized, the Church claims no jurisdiction over the State as such: the foundation of such jurisdiction is lacking. Third, in a Christian but non-Catholic State, where the constituency, though by baptism subjects, are not members of the Church, per se the jurisdiction of the Church would stand, but per accidens its exercise is impossible. Fourth, a mixed State, one, namely, the constituents of whose moral personality are necessarily of diverse religions, practically lies outside the reach of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, since the affiliation of some of the constituents could not make a subject of the Church out of the moral personality constitutionally made up of elements not all of which share such affiliation. The subordination here indicated is indirect: not that the Church does not directly reach spiritual and mixed matters, but that in their regard it directly reaches only its immediate subjects, and indirectly, through them, the State which they constitute. Again, the State as such does not in such matters directly act for the supernatural purpose of the Church (the eternal happiness of its subjects), but for its own temporal purpose inasmuch as such action will make for their temporal happiness; and so it acts for the Church by indirection.
There is no parallel argument to give the State indirectly jurisdiction over the Church in matters purely temporal, and therefore of the State’s sole competency. The Church is universal and cannot be a member or subject of any particular State. Even were there but one universal State in the world, the Church would not be a member thereof, for its members are not citizens of the State to the extent that in every capacity they must submit their activities for the purpose of the State, particularly not the activities concerned directly with the higher purpose of eternal life. Moreover, the Church is not constituted merely by the exercise of the natural rights of the men who are citizens of the State, but by the supernatural endowment of the Divine Positive Law. Finally, the Church in its corporate capacity is not bound to seek the temporal happiness of her members as a means to their eternal welfare, while the State as such is bound to Divine worship and to the protection and promotion of the Church in the interests of religion, because this is a necessary element involved in the perfect temporal happiness of the Catholic citizen. The State, therefore, has not, either in temporal or in spiritual things, any authority over the Church as such, however much it may have in things purely temporal over the members of the Church, who are subjects of the State. The State can, as was said above, demand its rights of the Church: it cannot command them.
IV. UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE
There is some confusion in the public mind about the meaning of the union of Church and State. The essential idea of such union is a condition of affairs where a State recognizes its natural and supernatural relation to the Church, professes the Faith, and practises the worship of the Church, protects it, enacts no laws to its hurt, while, in case of necessity and at its instance taking all just and requisite civil measures to forward the Divinely appointed purpose of the Church–in so far as all these make for the State’s own essential purpose, the temporal happiness of its citizens. That this is in principle the normal and ethically proper condition for a truly Catholic State should be evident from the religious obligations of the Catholic State as above declared. That in practice it has in the past sometimes worked evil to both Church and State, is an accidental effect consequent upon the frailty and passion of the human instruments then ruling in Church, or in State, or in both. As a partial attempt at security against such evil consequences, the Church has for centuries established concordats with Catholic States; but even these have not always saved the situation. For concordats, like all other agreements, however firm in principle, are in practice only as strong as the conscientiousness of those whose duty it is to observe them. The conscienceless can destroy them at pleasure. Between the Church and a non-Christian or a Christian, but non-Catholic, State a condition of separation, as meaning a condition of indifference of the State towards the Church, is to be expected, as the foundation of the specific obligations involved in union are wanting. Such a separation for a Catholic State would be criminal, as ignoring the sacred obligations of the State.
For a State once Catholic and in union with the Church to declare a separation on the ground that it has ceased to be Catholic is an action which as a matter of objective right has no standing; for in objective truth the duty of the people would be to regain their lost faith, if they had really lost it, or to live up to it if in reality it were not lost. But on the supposition that the essential constituency of a State has been transformed from Catholics to those who, not by hypocritical pretence, but in the fulness of good faith, are not Catholics–a condition easier of supposition than of realization–the State through such mistaken conscience might seek for separation without subjective fault, provided the separation were effected without the summary dissolution of existing contracts, without the violation of vested rights of the Church or its members. It may be noted in passing that in the recent instances of separation in France and Portugal, i. e., the breaking up of an existing condition of union between Church and State, the separation has been effected where the bulk of the people is still Catholic, has been conducted in violation of rights and contracts both natural and positive, and has resulted, as it was aimed to do, in an attempt at complete subsection of the Church and of all civil subjects in the matters of religion to the tyranny of administrations which scoff at all religion. That in States whose personality is constitutionally made up of every complexion of religious faith, much of it in its diversity sincere, there should be a governmental abstention from any specific denominational worship or profession of belief, and a general protection and encouragement of the individual in the practice of religion according to his own religious principles within the limits of the Natural Law, or of a general acceptance of Christianity, seems a practical necessity of evil times, when unity of faith is so widely lacking, and a modus vivendi which, if sincerely carried out, seems to work as little harm to objective right as can be expected in a condition of consciences sincerely differing in the matter of right established by the Divine Positive Law.
V. COUNTER THEORIES The theories opposed to the Catholic position on the true relations between the Church and State are threefold, differing in latitude of negation of ecclesiastical right.
A. Absolute Liberalism
Absolute Liberalism is the most extreme. Having its source in the principles of the French Revolution and beginning with those who denied the existence of God, it naturally takes the position that the State prescinds from God: the State, it says, is atheistic. Undertaking, with the elimination of revelation and the Divine Positive Law, to get back to purely natural principles, it accepted from Rousseau and the Utilitarians the principle that all right comes from the State, all authority from the consentient wills of the people of the State. The position logically followed that the Church has no rights–not even the right to existence–save such as are conceded to it by the civil power. Hence it is not a perfect society, but a creature of the State, upon which it depends in all things, and upon which it must be directly subordinate, if it is to be allowed to exist at all. (See LIBERALISM.)
B. Qualified Liberalism
Qualified Liberalism, as formulated by Cavour and Minghetti in Italy at the close of the first half of the nineteenth century, does not go so far. While claiming to admit that the Church is more or less a perfect society with foundations in the Divine Positive Law of Christian Revelation, it contends that the Church and State are disparate in such fashion as to prosecute their respective ends independently in behalf of the individual, having no subordination whatever one to the other. Consequently, in all public affairs the State must prescind from every religious society, and deal with such either as private associations existing within the State or as foreign corporations to be treated with accordingly. The axiom of this newer Liberalism is “A free Church in a free State”, which in point of fact means an emasculated Church with no more freedom than the shifting politics, internal and external, of a State chose to give, which in the event, as was to be foreseen, amounted to servitude. (See ITALY: Political and Civil Government: Church and State.)
C. Regalism
The Theory of the Regalists conceded to the Church a certain amount of social right from its Divine Founder, but conditioned the exercise of all social powers upon the consent of the civil government. This theory, originating with Gallicanism, practically denied the Church to be a perfect society inasmuch as it made its jurisdiction depend for its valid exercise upon the civil power. The theory gradually extended its contentions so far as to make the Church indirectly subordinate to the State, attributing to the State the authority to forbid the Church any juridical act that might work to the detriment of the State and to command the Church in case of necessity to put forth her full powers to promote the interests of the State.
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CHARLES MACKSEY Transribed by Tomas Hancil and Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Church And State
1. Pagan Nations. In the Pagan states the religious life has been, on the whole, part of the political, and religion an affair of the state. In general, the priestly dignity was vested in the chief of the state government. In Athens and other Greek republics the popular assemblies had the final decision on religious affairs. In Rome the priestly dignity was originally united with the person of the kings; after the establishment of the republic, the Senate had supreme control of religious affairs; on the establishment of the empire, the emperor became Pontifex Maximus.
2. Among the Jews. Among the Jews, the whole government of the state was based upon the idea that Jehovah was the ruler of the people. All the national institutions were destined to promote the worship of the King of Israel, and to make the people obedient to his precepts as they were laid down in the Old Testament. God, the king of Israel, ruled the people through the organs which he appointed through Moses, Aaron and his descendants, Joshua and the judges, and the prophets. The demand of the Jews for a king was therefore censured by Samuel as a weakening of the perfect theocracy; but even the king always remained in the Jewish law the earthly representative of Jehovah, and he had no right to give new laws, but simply to execute and enforce the laws given directly by Jehovah. SEE THEOCRACY.
3. Teaching of Christ and the Apostles. The teaching of Christ on the relation of the Church founded by him to the state was very plain. He distinctly recognized the absolute law-giving power of the state governments in all secular affairs, and enjoined upon his followers to obey the state laws in everything that was not opposed to the precepts of their religion. His reply to the Pharisees, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s (Mat 22:21), distinctly pronounces the separation between the Church and the State. He declares the powers of the civil rulers to be of divine authority by saying to Pilate, Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above. The apostles enjoin upon Christians obedience to the existing state governments: thus Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom 13:1-2), Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive unto themselves damnation. Similar precepts are given in 1Ti 2:1-2 Tit 3:1; 1Pe 2:13. Only in case of demands directly contrary to the Christian religion, obedience was to be refused. Thus Peter and the other apostles, when commanded not to teach in the name of Jesus, answered, We ought to obey God rather than men (Act 5:29).
4. Christianity in the Time of Constantine. In compliance with these teachings of Christ and the apostles, the first Christians conformed themselves to all secular laws; and only when things were demanded of them contrary to Christian law, such as the open renunciation of their faith, they refused obedience, but submitted to the penalties imposed upon them. The persecutions which the Christians had to suffer during the first three centuries arose not from any active opposition on their part to the Roman laws, but chiefly from the application of the ancient laws, which forbade any Roman citizen to worship divinities not recognized by the state, and any conquered nation to propagate its religion in other parts of the empire. Hence the more the outward distinction of the Christians from the Jews became apparent, the more they exposed themselves to the application of the Roman law. Most of the persecutions were, however, of short duration, and some of the emperors even showed themselves favorable to the Christians. As civil and military offices frequently brought the occupants into situations in which they had to pay some homage, direct or indirect, to the pagan state religion, the Christians naturally regarded it as dangerous to perform the duties of such offices. The fact, however, that Christian senators and Christian soldiers are mentioned in the early history of the Church, shows that the holding of such offices was, in itself, not deemed incompatible with the religious duties of a Christian.
5. From Constantine to Charlemagne. A new era in the history of the relation between Church and State begins with the reign of Constantine the Great. In the years 312 and 313 full freedom was guaranteed to the Christian Church throughout the empire. Soon imperial edicts granted many privileges to the clergy. They received the same immunities which were possessed by the pagan priests, and soon were preferred to the latter; the particular churches obtained the right of receiving legacies; the bishops received some kind of independent jurisdiction. The emperor, in conferring these rights, acted from the old Roman standpoint of chief of the state in matters religious as well as secular. Thus the first exhibition of a Christian state churchism was a direct emanation from pagan views transferred to the Christian Church.
The emperor retained the insignia and the name of Pontifex Maximus. Gratian was the first who laid aside the insignia, but the name was retained much longer. On the coins Constantine placed the cross, as a symbol of Christianity, by the side of the sun-god, as the representative of the old religion. The emperors thus from the start began to view themselves more as patrons than as members of the Christian Church, and the chiefs of the Church were, on the whole, well pleased with the privileges which were conferred upon them, and thought little of disputing the influence which the emperor gradually claimed to exercise upon Church affairs. In the East, this subjection of the ecclesiastical authorities to the state governments went much further than in the West, and has remained a characteristic of the Eastern churches up to the present day. The emperors convoked the synods, and claimed the right of sanctioning their resolutions. Even doctrinal formulas were sometimes drawn up by the emperors, and only promulgated by the bishops. The banishment of bishops for not concurring in the resolutions passed by synods convoked by the emperors, and frequently acting under the direct influence of the emperors, began even during the reign of Constantine.
In the western countries of the empire, the prominent position which was early awarded the bishop of Rome, and subsequently the local separation from the seat of the empire, weakened the power of the emperor in Church affairs. Some of the most prominent bishops and priests (Anbrose, Jerome, etc.) repelled in energetic language the right claimed by the emperors to decide Church questions. Several of the Eastern emperors thought it, moreover, in their interest to gain the friendship of the Roman bishops by making to them large concessions, and thus encouraged the aspirations of the latter to a supreme power in the Church. The Roman bishop Gelasius, in 494, claimed a superiority of the ecclesiastical over the secular power, and a synod convoked by the Roman bishop Symmachus, in 502, condemned the encroachment of king Odoacer upon the rights of the Church. When the German tribes, and in particular the Franks, became Christians, their kings gave to the clergy great privileges, and a great influence upon the administration of national affairs, but in return claimed the supreme power in ecclesiastical as well as secular affairs. Meetings of the clergy could not take place without royal permission, and all their resolutions needed, before being promulgated, the sanction of the kings. Even the appointment of the bishops soon came to be regarded as a royal prerogative.
Charlemagne, who was crowned by Pope Leo III as Roman emperor, conceived the bold idea of a universal Christian monarchy. In his opinion, it was the chief duty of the emperor to defend the Church of Christ everywhere against pagans and infidels, and to extend her territory. The Church, on the other hand, was to aid in the execution of this plan by spiritual means. The pope, in his eyes, was the first clergyman of the empire, whose election, as well as that of the bishops, had to be ratified by the emperor. He was anxiously intent upon avoiding all conflicts between Church and State, but reorganized the whole ecclesiastical constitution of the empire, and even issued decisions on doctrinal questions, as, for instance, the heresy of the Adoptianists.
6. From Charlemagne to the Reformation. The weak successors of Charlemagne were not able to carry through the ideas of the great emperor; and the natural tendency of the Church, and in particular of the popes, to elevate their dignity at the expense of that of the emperors, met with but little resistance. The synods of this time generally propounded the doctrine that the pope held the highest position in the government of the Christian Church, and the emperor the highest position in the secular government of the Christian world; but that the Church was more important than the state, and the dignity of the pope higher than that of the emperor. This doctrine was in particular propagated by the pseudo- Isidorian decretals, which about this time obtained a leading influence upon Church legislation. The independence of the imperial power found, however, some very energetic champions even among the bishops; as, for instance, Hincmar of Rheims ( 881). During the ninth and tenth centuries the authority of the papal see greatly suffered from the immoral character of some of its occupants, and it was therefore easy for the great German emperors of this time to increase the imperial power at the expense of the papal.
The emperors still deemed it their duty to execute the laws of the Church, and excommunication was frequently followed by the ban; but, at the same time, the emperors recovered their former influence upon the election of the popes. This lasted until the middle of the 11th century, when the papal see, under the influence of the monk Hildebrand, began to exhibit greater strength, and put forth more exorbitant claims than ever before. In 1059 Nicholas II annulled the direct power of the emperors in the election of popes, which was transferred to the College of Cardinals, while to the emperor only the confirmation of the pope elect was left. When Hildebrand himself, in 1073, under the name of Gregory VII, ascended the papal throne, he boldly and vigorously proclaimed a new theory of the relation between Church and State. He claimed for the Church alone a divine origin, ascribing to all secular institutions, and in particular to the state itself, a human origin. The Church, therefore, was to be the highest power in society, and the state, for its legal existence, required the sanction of the Church. In the Church he enforced the law of celibacy, in order to separate the clergy entirely from the laity, and the absolute subordination of priests to bishops, and of both to the pope, in order to concentrate all power in the hands of the latter, and to make him the real head of the universal Christian monarchy. Gregory and his successors had an unceasing conflict with the German emperors with regard to this theory, and in particular as to the appointment of bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries by the secular power. Many bishops and priests took sides with the emperors, who repeatedly caused the election of anti-popes. Nevertheless, the theory which maintained the superiority of the Church to the state continually gained ground.
The views of Gregory VII were further developed by Alexander III and Innocent III. The latter maintained that the State and the world had not the nature of a divine institute, but were the products of human power and will. The Church, which is of divine origin, is therefore higher than the state. The state, in itself, is only a body which is dead until a soul is infused into it. This soul is the Church. The state is like the moon, an opaque body, which needs to be illumined by the Church. Christ gave to Peter the government over all the world, and the pope is the legitimate successor of Peter. To him, therefore, belongs the final decision in all affairs, and in particular the decision as to who is to govern the states. A
ll the decrees of secular rulers require the sanction of the popes. But neither Innocent nor any of the following popes succeeded in carrying out these theories fully in practice. The emperors and kings, aided in general by the laity and a large number of the clergy, opposed the papal claims, in spite of all the excommunications which were hurled against them. Even men like Bernard of Clairvaux expressed their dissent from these ultrapapal theories. The last pope who endeavored to enforce these claims was Boniface VIII, who, in his notorious bull, Unam Sanctam, maintained it to be necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman popes had power over everything on earth. Boniface had to pay for this extraordinary assumption of power with imprisonment and ill-treatment which caused his death. The transfer of the papal see to Avignon, and subsequently the Great Schism, were fatal blows to the practical execution of the mediaeval theory of Church and State, although the theory itself was never formally renounced, and the notorious bull, Unam Sanctam, of Boniface VIII, which, as far as France was concerned, had been revoked by one of the Avignon popes (Clement V), was formally restored by Leo X in 1516. But the popes had not sufficient power to prevent the emperors and kings from passing laws by which the rights of the state governments were enlarged, and many salutary reforms introduced into the churches.
7. From the Reformation to the present Time. The great reformers of the 16th century Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, Melancthon, and others were all agreed in condemning the confusion by the Church of Rome of spiritual and secular power. They all insisted on keeping the two powers apart, and especially in their earlier writings favored the self-government of the Church. But these views were not consistently carried through. As all the bishops opposed the reform of the Church, the princes and the municipal governments were invited by the reformers to see to the execution of the Church reform, and to the reconstruction of the Reformed churches. No provision being made for a common bond of union between the Reformed churches in different countries, the power of the state government in each particular country over the Church grew almost without opposition. To this must be added that most of the reformers adhered to the idea of a Christian state whose authorities were invested with the right to punish those who denied the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. SEE SERVETUS.
Thus State-Churchism was established in all the Lutheran and Reformed countries, and developed the more rapidly, as the churches had never so powerful a representative as the Church of Rome had had during the Middle Ages. The constant efforts of the Roman Catholic states to root out Protestantism by force naturally led to retaliatory measures on the part of Protestant princes, and thus the dangerous principle came gradually to be developed, Cujus regio ejus religio (the religion of a country must conform to that of the prince). The application of this principle led, on the one hand, to many and bloody wars, but, on the other, it induced the Roman Catholic princes to claim, like the Protestant princes, a greater influence over religious affairs than the popes had ever conceded during the Middle Ages. The success of the Reformation had shown the weakness of the popes, and their opposition to the radical changes in the relation of the Church of Rome to the states was more nominal than efficient. The last coronation of an emperor of the West by the pope was that of Charles V in 1530. The popes protested in 1648 against the peace of Westphalia, in 1701 against the creation of a kingdom of Prussia, and in 1815 against the treaty of Vienna, but all these and similar acts had no influence whatever.
The growth of rationalism and infidelity in the 17th and 18th centuries accustomed princes and statesmen to regard the churches as part of the state organism, and just as absolutely subject to the government of every territory as the civil administration. This is the aera of the territorial system, the period of the greatest debasement of the Christian churches. Nearly all the Church assemblies, viz. the convocations in England; the national synods and general assemblies of the Protestant churches in France, Germany, and other countries; the national, provincial, and diocesan synods of the Church of Rome, were forbidden, or fell into general disuse. In the Church of Rome, during this period, the claims of the pope were not only denied by the state governments, but strenuous efforts were made in France, Germany, Italy, and other countries to reduce the papal prerogatives in matters purely ecclesiastical, and to increase that of the bishops and of the national churches. These efforts, however, were less successful than those of the state governments.
The French Revolution of 1789 shook the structure of society of Europe, political as well as ecclesiastical, to its very foundations. The principles of the Revolution did not prevail, but the governments of Europe saw the necessity of reconstructing the administration of the states. Several important changes date from the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The long alliances of Protestant and Roman Catholic governments in the war against France, and the territorial changes introduced by the Congress of Vienna, led to an interchange of toleration, as far as the Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic churches were concerned. Some states recognised all three as state churches, entitled to support by the state governments; and in most of the others there was at least a gradual approach to giving to the members of the three churches equality of political rights. The relation of the Roman Catholic Church, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant countries, to the pope was regulated by concordats and conventions, SEE CONCORDATS, which stipulated what rights the state governments should allow the pope to exercise upon the Church of a particular country, and what influence the state governments (even the Protestant) should have upon the election of bishops, the appointment of other ecclesiastical dignitaries, the direction of Roman Catholic schools, the management of Church property, and other denominational affairs. In the Protestant churches, a consciousness awoke of the unworthy servitude into which the Church had been forced in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the demand grew stronger and stronger for the restoration of at least a part of the self- government of the churches, by means of convocations, synods, assemblies, and councils.
A new impulse was given to these demands by the revolutionary movements of the year 1848, and by the agitation for political reforms which has since been going on in nearly all the European states. The regular convocation of elective Church assemblies, and the transfer to them of a greater or lesser part of the government of the Church, has, since 1848, been the general tendency in all the Protestant churches of Europe. As regards the Church of Rome, public opinion more and more declared itself against the conclusion of concordats, and in favor of a regulation of the Roman Catholic affairs of every particular country by special laws, due regard being had to the recognition by the Roman Catholics of the pope as the head of the Church. While the Lutheran and Reformed churches assumed almost from their very beginning the character of state churches, a number of minor sects sprang up in the 16th and the following centuries, which, meeting, on the hand of the state governments, with nothing but persecution, were led to demand from the state not only toleration for themselves, but freedom of religious belief in general. Especially was this the case in England, where the Nonconformists gained greater strength and influence than any dissenters on the Continent of Europe, and became true pioneers of the principle of a complete separation between Church and state. Persecution drove many of the dissenters to the New World, and here their principles found a genial soil. In some of the colonies Church and State were united, more or less closely, until after the Revolution. At the declaration of independence, the United States established the absolute separation of Church and State, and the legal equality of all forms of belief, as fundamental institutions. The United States have always remained true to this principle, and in the several states of the Union it is now practically carried out.
The prosperous growth of the free American churches, and their influence upon society, has had great effect upon opinion in the Old World. The experience of America has largely added to the number of the friends of free churches in Europe. The number of dissenting churches which claim absolute independence of the state is everywhere on the increase, and with them sympathize a large political party of Radicals, who make entire separation between Church and State a part of their political platform: In 1848, the principle of separation of Church and State was formally acknowledged in the new constitutions of France, Austria, Prussia, and other states. This triumph of the American principle was of only short duration; but none of the European countries have since ceased to have a large political party which aims at conforming legislation on Church affairs to that of the United States, and at carrying through the principle of entire separation between Church and State. It is a very remarkable fact that even men like Dr. Pusey have of late shown themselves favorable to the separation of Church and State, in order to put an end to the servile condition of the Church. One of the most prominent Protestant statesmen and writers of France, Count de Gasparin, speaks on the subject as follows: Let no one be surprised at the extreme importance I attach to the separation of Church and State. For two centuries past the Church and society have been at war. In abolishing the unjust and worn- out pretences of both Church and State, their separation would give both to the Church and to society the peace they require. It would seem nowaday as though the citizen and the Christian were two different persons, having different rights and different duties. The Christian is taught to curse liberty as the poisonous fruit of philosophy and revolution; the citizen is taught to look upon the Church as the natural enemy of modern institutions. Thus arises a sullen enmity, a deep-rooted anxiousness in the minds of the people, and, so to speak, two nations within the same society.
Yet nothing would be more erroneous than this distinction. Christianity is so far from being the enemy of free institutions, that these institutions have never existed but in Christian countries; the nations which obey the law of Brahma, of Buddha, and of Mohammed, know of no other form of government than despotism. Liberty is the fruit of the Gospel; it proceeds from the only religion which intrusts the individual with the care and the salvation of his own soul; materialism kills it, faith makes it live; and, in return, by an intimate and mysterious connection, despotism kills faith, liberty nourishes it. What is this opposition which divides the Church and society? Nothing but a misunderstanding, whose mist shall disappear before the sun of liberty. The ideal of the Christian is also the ideal of the citizen. The state would gain no less than the Church by their mutual independence. We never attempt with impunity to rule that which God has created to be free. For two centuries the state has dragged on the Church, or has been dragged by it; the result was mutual suffering and mutual servitude. Separation restores each to its proper place. The state has no longer but citizens to deal with; it has no longer to fear the murmurs of conscience, or those invisible enemies which sap and weaken its foundations. Free in its action, authority gains both in strength and in respect; the vestry-quarrels, which are the plague of all state religions, are at an end. Union made the Church the enemy of the state, separation makes them friends. Conscience revolts against the hand of the state, it loves a power which guarantees it freedom. SEE TOLERATION.
Among the Liberal party of the Roman Catholic countries of Europe the principle of a separation between Church and State has likewise found many advocates. Of the great statesmen of Europe in modern times, few have given so cordial an adhesion to the principle as count Cavour, who, during his whole political career, stood up for a free Church in a free state; and baron Ricasoli, whose famous letter to the Italian bishops, dated Nov. 26,1866, is a complete commentary on the subject, and a document which, in the history of European State-Churchism, will remain of lasting importance. We give the following extract from it: The decisions adopted by the government arise from the desire that perfect liberty in the relations between Church and State should pass from the abstract religion of principle in which it had hitherto remained into the reality of fact.
The government, therefore, desires that Italy may very soon enjoy the magnificent and imposing religious spectacle now afforded to the free citizens of the United States of America by the National Council of Baltimore, wherein religious doctrines are freely discussed, and whose decisions, approved by the pope, will be proclaimed and executed in every town and village without exequatur or placet. It is liberty which has produced this admirable spectacle; liberty, professed and respected by all, in principle and in fact, in its amplest application to civil, political, and social life. In the United States every citizen is free to follow the persuasion that he may think best, and to worship the Divinity in the form that may seem to him most appropriate. Side by side with the Catholic Church rises the Protestant temple, the Mussulman mosque, the Chinese pagoda. Side by side with the Romish clergy the Genevan consistory and the Methodist assembly exercise their office. This state of things generates neither confusion nor clashing. And why is this? Because no religion asks either special protection or privileges from the state. Each lives, develops, and is followed under the protection of the common law, and the law, equally respected by all, guarantees to all an equal liberty. The Italian government wishes to demonstrate as far as possible that it has faith in liberty, and is desirous of applying it to the greatest extent compatible with the interests of public order.
It therefore calls upon the bishops to return to their sees whence they were removed by those very motives of public order. It makes no conditions save that one incumbent upon every citizen who desires to live peaceably namely, that he should confine himself to his own duty and observe the laws, The state will insure that he be neither disturbed nor hindered; but let him not demand privileges if he wishes no bonds. The principle of every free state, that the law is equal for all, admits of no distinctions of any kind. The government would be glad to cast off all suspicion and abandon every precaution, and if it does not now wholly act up to this wish, it is because the principle of liberty which it has adopted and put into practice is not equally adopted and practiced by the clergy. Let your lordships remark the difference between the condition of the Church in America and the condition of the Church in Europe. In those virgin regions the Church is established amid a new society, but which carried with it from the mother country all the elements of civil life. Representing the purest and most sacred of the social elements, the religious feeling which sanctions right, and sanctifies duty, and carries human aspirations far above all earthly things, the Church has here sought only the empire pleasing to God, the empire of souls. Companion of liberty, the Church has grown beneath its shelter, and has found all that sufficed for free development and the tranquil and fecund exercise of its ministry.
It has never sought to deny to others the liberty which it enjoyed, nor to turn to its exclusive advantage the institutions which protected it. In Europe, on the other hand, the Church arose with the decadence of the great empire that had subjugated the earth. It was constituted amid the political and social cataclysms of the barbarous ages, and was compelled to form an organization strong enough to resist the shipwreck of all civilization amid the rising flood of brute force and violence. But while the world, emerging from the chaos of the Middle Ages, re-entered the path of progress marked out by God, the Church impressed upon all having any relation with it the immobility of the dogma intrusted to its guardianship. It viewed with suspicion the growth of intelligence and the multiplication of social forces, and declared itself the enemy of all liberty, denying the first and most incontestable of all, the liberty of conscience. Hence arose the conflict between the ecclesiastical and the civil power, since the former represented subjection and immobility, and the latter liberty and progress.
The conflict, from peculiar circumstances, has greater proportions in Italy, because the Church, thinking that a kingdom was necessary to the independent exercise of its spiritual ministry, found that kingdom in Italy. The ecclesiastical power, from the same reason, is here in contradiction not only with the civil power, but national right. The bishops cannot be considered among us as simple pastors of souls, since they are at the same time the instruments and defenders of a power at variance with the national aspirations. The civil power is therefore constrained to impose those measures upon the bishops which are necessary to preserve its rights and those of the nation. How is it possible to terminate this deplorable and perilous conflict between the two powers-between Church and state? Let us render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,’ and peace between Church and state will be troubled no more.
See Herzog, Real-Encyklop. vol. 19 (Supplem.), s.v. Staat und Kirche; a complete history of the relation of the Christian Church to the state was begun by Riffel (Romans Cath.), but not completed (Geschichtliche Darstellung der Verhaltnisse zwischen Kirche und Staat, vol. 1, Mainz, 1836, embracing the time from the foundation of Christianity to Justinian I); Vinet, Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses et sur la separation de l’eglise et de l’tat envisagee comme consequence necessaire et comme guarantie du principe (Paris; 1842; translated into English, Lond. 1843, 12mo); Laurent, L’E’glise et l’E’tat; Hundeshagen, Ueber einge Hauptmomente in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung des Verhaltnisses zwischen Staat und Kirche, in Dove’s Zeitschrift fiur Kirchenrecht, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1861); Roscovany (Romans Cath.), Monumenta Cathovica pro independentia ecclesice ex potestate civili, tom. 1 (Quinque Ecclesiis, 1847); Richter, Geschichte der evangel. Kirchenvsrfassung in Deutschland (Leipzic, 1851); the manuals of Church law (Kirchenrecht) by Richter, Walter, Philips, and others. Lord Montague pleads for the State Church in The Four Experiments in Church and State (London, 1863), maintaining that only four forms of Church and State are possible: 1. When the Church is identical with the state, i.e. when it is a national Church; 2. When the Church is under the state; 3. When the Church overrides the state; 4. When there is no Church at all. In the author’s opinion, the national is the only normal form of Church and state. In each of the other forms the Church and state are depraved. See also Dupin, Traite de la Puissance eccles. et temporelle (Paris, 1707); Dupin’s Manuel du Droit Ecclisiastique (Paris, 4th ed. 1845; claiming the rights of Roman Catholic state governments over the Church of Rome); Zachariee, Einheit des Staats und der Kirche (1797); De Maistre, Du Pape (the most celebrated defense of ultra-papal theories); Archbishop Wake, The Authority of Princes; Warburton, Alliance of Church and State (1736); Hobbes, Leviathan (1608); Gladstone, State in Relation to Church (2 vols. 4th ed. 1841); Pusay, Royal Supremacy (1847); Coleridge, Constitution of Church and State (1830): Chalmers, National Churches (1838); Vincent, Protestantisme enz France, p. 190; Brownson’s Review (Romans Cath.), Oct. 1854; Dexter, Congregationalism (Bost. 1865), p. 209; D’Aubigne, Essays (N. Y. ed.), p. 239; Palmer, On the Church, 2, 291 sq.; Church of England Quarterly, Jan. 1855, art. vi; Schaff, Church History, 2, 90, 356; Calvin, Institutes, bk. 4, ch. 20; English Review, vol. 11 and foll. (many articles); Catholic World, April, 1867, art. 1; Wardlaw, On Church Establishments (London, 1839, 8vo); Noel, On the Union of Church and State (N. Y. 1849,12mo); Cunningham, Discussion of Church Principles (Edinb. 1863, 8vo).