Thurber M. Smith, Education for Democracy (1941)

[200] [Footnote attached to the article title: A paper read at a conference on educating in democratic principles at St. Louis University, October 1940. Presidents and representatives of forty-one institutions of higher learning attended. We are pleased to print this paper with its careful and scholarly analysis of a subject which is receiving foremost attention by the country's educators. A university president stated recently, "I am convinced that the schools of this country have not earnestly and intelligently considered the nature of their responsibility in the transmission of our (American) culture in its basic social, political, and moral ingredients."]

What the future holds none of us can foretell, but one need not be a prophet to see that in all probability the next five or ten years will be among the most vitally important in the history of our nation. The things to be done, the legislation to be adopted, the leadership to be developed, our response to the problems and events that lie ahead of us in the struggle between dictatorship and democracy will inevitably modify, if not fashion, a pattern of life for us all and for our children’s children.

We, who are charged with the responsibility of education, have a duty whose importance cannot be overestimated. To us has been given the opportunity, and to us has been entrusted the sacred duty of guiding and influencing others, during the formative period of their lives. Hence, our judgments, our words, and our actions must be based not upon the emotions but upon real understanding of the issues and problems with which we as a nation are confronted.

Today we are engaged in the preliminary stages of a program of national defense. The questions confronting us transcend the interest of any party, section, or group. They affect on the one hand our political, economic, and cultural relations with other peoples of the world, and on the other hand our very doctrines and traditional views concerning the scopes and functions of our government.

It is not without profit, therefore, that in these troubled times we recall to ourselves and to those who come under our influence some of the fundamental principles which if adhered to will preserve our American way of life.

During the past few years it has become clearer that the structure of the modern world is changing. These changes are perhaps more observable in the political and economic order, but there is no doubt that they have affected, or will in time affect, the foundations of the moral and religious order as well.

[201] One of the most striking features of this changing structure is the diminishing stature of the individual human being and the increasing importance of the group. No longer is the state conceived of as the mere umpire of disputes nor a policeman to suppress open discord. The modern state, whether it be looked upon as the organ of the proletarian class as in Russia, or a racial group as in Germany, or the incarnation of national and political aspirations and ideals as in Italy, is considered to be the one social reality which absorbs the individual and replaces all other forms of social organization. It is its own absolute end and knows no law higher than its own interests. Its claims embrace the whole life of the individual whom it insists upon moulding [sic] and guiding from the cradle to the grave, in order that it may make him the obedient instrument of its will.

This, of course, is one answer to the perennial problem which has confronted human beings from the beginning of social life—the problem, namely, of coordinating the forces of liberty and authority so as to attain the highest degree of social happiness. But it is an answer which is not acceptable; the answer of tyranny. A problem is not resolved by suppressing one of its terms. However vague and ill defined our concepts of authority and liberty may be we realize at once that they are at the same time complementary and opposed: opposed in the sense that they undoubtedly restrict each other; complementary because they really support and protect each other. Unrestricted liberty is abusive license; while unlimited authority necessarily implies the negation of both liberty and authority as well as the destruction of society. Liberty and license are as far apart as liberty and tyranny; indeed license breeds tyranny. It would be no exaggeration to say that the essential question for every social group is that of combining liberty and authority properly.

In all discussions concerning the relations of the individual and the state we find, I think, that the source of differences of opinion will be found in our varying ideas of what human nature is. As Aristotle warns us of the danger of a little error at the beginning of philosophical discussions so from this source momentous consequence can grow.

There are, I think, two fundamental positions which may be taken concerning the nature of man. According to one, man is the product of a material evolutionary process, or man, nature and that entity which some thinkers are pleased to call God are identified in the same reality which is undergoing a process of emergent evolution. If this is true, then, of course, the whole Christian point of view is a delusion. The human being is not the result of creation nor may he look forward to union with God. He has no inalienable rights resulting from his divine origin and destiny, but he is completely subordinated to the state or [202] organized group which is the highest manifestation of the emergent absolute. Right and wrong and the laws commanding the one and forbidding the other are no longer based on eternal plans but merely represent the exigencies of an ephemeral situation.

The other fundamental point of view can, I think, be summed up in the memorable words of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happines [sic]. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” In this passage, I think, we find, to a large extent, the gist of our philosophy of government. First of all, our attention is called to the fact that we are children of God, created by Him and endowed with certain inalienable rights; rights which are given to us as so many means of returning to Him. We are brought face to face with two basic truths, our own human dignity and our divine destiny, and in these truths lie the explanation of all rights.

We are made by God in His own image and likeness and are destined to be happy with Him for all eternity. Indeed we are given life in order that we may freely pursue and attain everlasting happiness. In other words there are at least three basic rights which man may rightly claim in virtue of a divine heritage. They are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

This is the doctrine that our Declaration of Independence sets forth. It asserts, moreover, that governments (in God’s plan at least) are not instituted for their own selfish ends, but that they are instituted by men under the influence of a natural urge which impels them to live in society in order to secure and protect their rights and to attain their safety and happiness.

In other words the objective of man’s existence, although it means personal individual effort, is not to be attained by him in isolation from his fellows. By means of mutual assistance and cooperation with his fellowmen, man can arrive at a fuller actualization of his powers and capacities than would ever be possible by his own unaided efforts. His needs cannot be met or safeguarded except in the broader frame-work of civil or political society. Hence, civil society or the state is a normal postulate of man’s nature and destiny, an institution whose very raison [203] d'etre is the procuring of those advantages which correspond to the social nature of man, and hence to the intentions and plans of the Author and Creator of that nature.

The question, however, which concerns us more directly at the present moment is that of the limits of the authority of the state or organized group, or more generally the relations between the individual human being and the group of which he is a part. Admitting the evident difficulty of fixing the limits to civil authority in many specific cases, still there are some principles that may help as guides to their solution.

In the first place it is true that the human being is an individual and as such is a part of the group, but the human being is something more than an individual—he is a person, that is, an individual of a free, rational nature and, as such, self-directing and master of his own acts. His dignity comes from the fact that he is a person, not from the fact that he is an individual.

The state, on the other hand, is not a mere collection of identical irresponsible individuals; it is an organism involving the mutual dependence and responsibility of its members. It does not exist merely as an instrument to serve man’s needs and desires. It is an order, a sacred order if you will, in which and by which human activities are conformed to the Law of God. It is, in other words, a social expression of God’s will.

The end or purpose of the state is, of course, the attainment of the temporal felicity of all its members by the cooperation of all. By temporal felicity is meant peace and prosperity or, to use the Scholastic expression, the "bonum commune,” that ensemble of conditions necessary for its members’ or subjects’ well-being and happiness. Now this common good in the temporal order is not only material but moral in its scope. While it has a distinctive character and integrity of its own arising from its temporal end, it must not be forgotten that such an end in the Christian view is not final but intermediate. It is true that the function of the state is not precisely to guide men to Eternal Life, still its function is essentially subordinate to that ultimate end and, hence, in a very true sense it does foster the beginnings of something which transcends its own nature. It may be said, therefore, quite correctly that its purpose is to aid men to arrive at the perfection of which they are capable and not merely to aid them but to direct them and direct them authoritatively.

It seems obvious that no society, whatever its character, can accomplish its task unless it possesses authority to repress abuses and direct its members to the ends for which its was instituted. There can be no society without authority; and since human nature and the Author of [204] nature demand society, they require also the authority. Without attempting a complete analysis of the functions of authority we may describe it according to the common concepts as a moral power or right residing in a person to issue commands which are to be taken as rules of conduct by the free will of other persons.

It is to be noted: (1) That authority is not an impersonal necessity; it resides in a lawgiver. (2) It is not to be confused with physical force or coercion. Coercion may become an instrument of authority (as may persuasion) but it is not to be identified with authority as such. Such an identification leads logically to the conclusion that "might makes right." (3) Authority is not a mere substitute for deficiencies on the part of those ruled by it so that if deficiences [sic] were to disappear authority would vanish. Indeed if this were so, then theoretically anarchy would be the best government.

The essential function of authority is to provide a fixed principle assuring unity of action in a social group. Even supposing a group of adults, all intelligent and of perfect good will, that is, not handicapped by deficiencies, authority would still have its place. The group is aiming at some objective which will be a common good for all. That is part of the very concept of society. Such an object obviously demands common action arising from some decision which binds all the members. Such a decision obviously may be the unanimous agreement. But there can never be any guarantee of unanimity of judgment; it is always precarious and casual. Any member can disagree with the others. Hence the unity of action required by the pursuit of the common good will be ceaselessly jeopardized unless all agree to follow one decision and only one, whether issued by a single individual or a selected part of the group. To submit to the legitimate and reasonable requirements of civil society is to obey the order of human nature in the same sense that it is obeying the law of man’s nature to put into practice the essential duties of family life and to respect the property and rights of others.

The human mind, however, seems to find it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to face an antinomy without worshipping one or the other of its terms. Unfortunately there is a tendency among many to overemphasize the antinomic character of liberty and authority, while overlooking their complementary character. There seems to be a widespread acceptance of the assumption that growth of freedom and the decay of authority are synonymous terms; that we can have one only at the expense of the other but not both. That is why the world has oscillated between the extremes of apotheosizing the individual and deifying the group. It is not and cannot be true that we are doomed to fluctuate between tyranny and unbridled license.

[205] The exercise of authority is not necessarily an unreasonable invasion of personal liberty. The end of social life is not merely to preserve and extend freedom of choice. Freedom is not really an end in itself but a means to something else—happiness.

On the other hand, if all individual autonomy, all individual freedom of choice, is completely merged and lost in the autonomy of the state, then the person becomes a mere sacrifice to social utility. Nor do I see how this sacrifice can be logically avoided if one remains on the plane of pure naturalism. Without ultimate reference to God it seems to me impossible to rescue the individual from complete immersion in the group because on the naturalistic assumption that the community is the absolute, the highest good, man is necessarily and totally subjected to the community. Today unfortunately many states, even some who try to reject the label totalitarian, seem to think that man is made for the state and derives all his good from the state. This is totalitarianism however labeled, and I must confess it is a perfectly logical consequence of the assumption of a humanity without God.

The Christian interpretation of man and society is based on the fact that reality transcends the material, the temporal, the purely natural; and that the whole temporal order is subordinated to spiritual ends. This does not mean that the temporal and material is of no importance—much less evil, nor does it mean that matter and spirit, time and eternity, nature and supernature are identifiable. But it must never be forgotten that the common good in the temporal order is not the ultimate end of man’s activities. The temporal order is essentially subordinated to the extra-temporal and the goods of this life to the eternal interests of human personality. It is only when we appreciate this alternating rhythm of subordination that we perceive the true status of the individual human being. Considered as an individual or a part of the temporal order he is properly subordinate to the order as a whole. That is why it may be perfectly right and just that he should surrender his temporal goods and, if necessary, even his life for the welfare of the community. That is why the community may and perhaps should impose upon him, as a part of the whole, many restraints and sacrifices. But there is a limit beyond which the state or community cannot go. They cannot infringe upon the eternal interests of those human beings who are subordinate to them only from one aspect. States and nations are creatures of time. They have existed and passed away, but the souls of those men and women who once lived in them will exist for all eternity.

This concept of the state as an institution, complementing the individual powers of man, offering him a proper environment for the fuller development of his personality and a safeguard for the rights which [206] flow from his nature, protects him from the extremes of both state absolutism and exaggerated individualism. There are many today who, like Hobbes and his leviathan or "mortall [sic] God,” look upon the state, the civil power, as the sole source of man’s rights and duties, who make temporal welfare the exclusive object of all laws and the standard of all morality. It is this absolute subordination of the whole personality of its citizens which marks the absolute state as an inhuman despotism. Either the state is omnipotent and can do everything or it cannot. If it can, you have despotism under the dictatorial, oligarchic, or democratic form, benevolent or not as may be, but despotism for all that. If it cannot, then there is something beyond its power.

The dilemma which confronts the modern man is not merely a choice between rival economic or political systems. The question is much deeper and more complex. The choice, as Christopher Dawson says, is between the mechanized order of the absolute or totalitarian state (whether it be nominally Communist or Fascist or something else) or a return to that order which asserts the primacy of the spiritual, that is the subordination of the state and of the whole temporal order to spiritual ends; a return to that concept of humanity as a great community or republic in which all work out their final destinies under the rule of God. However fantastic a dream this may appear to the modern mind, it is a concept which was once accepted without question as a principle of the European social order and the foundation upon which our western culture has been built.

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Source: Thurber M. Smith, S.J., "Education for Democracy," Jesuit Educational Quarterly 3, no. 4 (March 1941): 200–

Jesuit Education and Democracy (1940)

[152] To the distant rumble of bomb explosions in Britain and along the French coasts, thoughtful people everywhere are re-examining their heritage of political ideas and institutions. The press constantly reports discussions on what science, industry, the schools, the churches can do for democracy. It is all a little frantic, perhaps; but that such soul-searching should take place is inevitable in this grave hour of history. And it may not be without profit to consider what contribution our own educational system may make to the strengthening and defense of American democracy.

I suppose we can agree that the aim of Jesuit education may be described, partially at least, as mental awareness and moral strength. Catholic education in general proceeds from a very clear and definite doctrine of human nature, founded in revelation; and to such a doctrine it can never be false. But the institutions and techniques of Catholic education are subject to change. Thus, as the various fields of knowledge have been more fully explored, and as various branches of learning have been differentiated, curricula have been enlarged, enriched—some would say, overstuffed—in the attempt to place before the student a well-balanced, if admittedly incomplete, picture of the cosmos of which he is a part. Similarly, research and years of accumulated experience have improved and facilitated the work of both teacher and student. Surely the American Jesuit college of today is very different from its European prototype of a few centuries ago. I am not arguing that what is new is of necessity superior, and still less that our present system cannot be improved on, even with our present resources. The point is that our organization of today has evolved and developed, just as our whole world has evolved and developed; that as the social patterns of successive generations have changed, our educational system has been and must necessarily be responsive to the new intellectual and social developments. To do otherwise would be to fail in our main endeavor—the moral and intellectual preparation of men for a fruitful life in the actual world.

But with all the changes in curriculum and technique, the Jesuit ideal remains the same. The chapel is still the heart of the college. The doctrine of human nature is abiding, the spirit of our teaching is unchanged; and these things are what make our work meaningful. Fundamentally, the old and the new are the same, as are the acorn and the oak; and it can fairly be said that we have kept faith with the past and are keeping faith with [153] the present. Hence the serious view we must take of our professional responsibility in facing today's problems in the organization of society.

Now, if institutionalized education within the same philosophical system has changed in the sense described above, so too has government, and more particularly, democracy. Man has always had government, because he has always needed it. But the City-State of ancient Greece and the great national "Service-State" of today are as different as a trireme and a transatlantic clipper. Changes and developments in science, philosophy, law, technology, language, geographical discovery, mechanical invention, all have played a part in the growth of governmental institutions, and have necessarily affected political thought.

For political thought cannot be static. While at its best it is no mere rationalization of a temporary status quo, one of its most important functions is to explain a given political order to those who live under it and are parts of it. As new developments in science, say, or industry affect organized life in society, the political thinker must undertake new attempts at a synthesis which will harmonize the new forces and elements with those that preceded them, interpreting and providing for legitimate human needs and aspirations as they arise. For example, political parties and labor unions were developments quite unforeseen by the democratic theorists of the late eighteenth century, but both are highly important elements in contemporary society—so important, indeed, that their forcible extinction was thought to be necessary in totalitarian states, the several Master Parties being rather more like palace guards than parties in the conventional sense.

At the same time, political theory, if it is to be of any real significance, must repose on a theory of human nature. When you are planning a house, or studying a house already built, it makes all the difference to your conclusions about it whether the house is meant for a man or for a dog. As Professor Ross Hoffmann has finely said:[1] "First things come first, and back of all politics and sociology there lie philosophy and religion.” And so the Catholic political thinker, like the Catholic educator, is capable of deeper and more intelligent and more meaningful social criticism than any other.

It is a mistake, however, to be content merely with stating first principles, or simply to echo, with little commentary and no development, the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suarez. The men for whom and about whom they wrote are fundamentally the same as the men of today; but the social organizations, then and now, are, for better or worse, different. It should be noticed, too, that Bellarmine, for example, was not content with a mere repetition of St. Thomas. In the [154] given situation, he could not have been. The conception of the Emperor as temporal head of one undivided Christendom had largely passed in Bellarmine’s day; national states and kings were rising on every hand, each claiming complete sovereignty in his own domain. Bellarmine’s problem was to legitimize reasonable claims to secular authority, and at the same time reasonably to defend the indirect power of the Pope in temporal matters. True, man still had the same origin and destiny, in society and out of it; true, authority still came from God; but actual society—the means to the end—was different from what it had been in the thirteenth century and before; and authority, divine in origin though it was, now manifested itself in ways that would have seemed strange indeed to the men of the Middle Ages.

Suarez, too, was alive to new problems. For example, in a paragraph that is big with consequences for our own time, he writes:[2]

...Though any one state, republic or kingdom be in itself a perfect community ... nevertheless each of the states is also a member, in a certain sense, of the world.... For none of these communities are ever sufficient unto themselves to such a degree that they do not require some mutual help, society or communication, either to their greater advantage or from moral necessity and need.... For this reason therefore, they need some law whereby they may be directed and rightly ruled in this kind of communication and society. 

Such a statement might have almost mystified students a few centuries earlier, when there was but one Respublica Christiana, when a barter economy based on self-sufficient villages, the feudal system, and an international culture bestowed by the Church made quite superfluous a plea for international law of the kind Suarez here seems to demand.[3]

Adjustments of the foregoing type are the problem of the Catholic political thinker today. The rate of social change has been tremendously accelerated in the last century and a half. It requires a strong effort of the imagination to picture a world in which the smoke of modern industry did not blacken the sky, in which a voyage to Europe was a matter of weeks or months, and even a trip to the county seat was an adventure. Even those who have witnessed the coming of the automobile, the airplane, and the radio are now so accustomed to them that one is startled at seeing a photograph of a national highway of 1912, with all its ruts and mud, and [155] amused and alarmed by a snapshot of an early "airship”—a nightmare contraption of wings and bicycle wheels. Yet all these things and many more have changed the pattern and the matrix of our social lives. The Political Revolution did not come alone; the Industrial Revolution was superimposed on it. It was still true that the purpose of civil government was to provide for the peace and security of those who lived under it; but the content of these general concepts had to be analyzed anew, with reference to problems—the growth of an urban proletariat, for example—which earlier generations were not called upon to face, and in terms of new channels of authority, new governmental institutions and processes. The age of "Social Politics,” to use the happy phrase of Professor Carlton Hayes,[4] had arrived. For the Political Revolution cast off various old political ties, and various social disabilities; it was, if you will, a somewhat negative movement, emphasizing "freedom from.” Later in the process, in consequence of democratization and industrialism, a positive demand makes itself felt, emphasizing greater participation, not only in the governmental process but in economic advantages, calling for positive services from the state—benefits such as unemployment insurance, standards of wages and hours, old age pensions and the like. To describe the movement would be to tell, among other things, the history of de Mun and the Social Catholics in France and elsewhere on the Continent, of Manning and the pre-1914 Liberal Party in England, and—much later—of the New Deal in this country, not to mention, ex altera parte, socialism in its many forms.

Now all this may seem remote from the problem set before us at the outset, namely, what contribution our Jesuit educational system in this country can make to democracy. I do not think, however, that we have wandered too far afield. For our problem, as I see it, is two-fold: it is, first of all, to hand on to our students, in definite and vivid terms, such a doctrine of human nature as will provide them with something basic to all their political thought, and something partaking of the nature of an absolute to which they can refer democratic doctrine. And secondly, it is to play our part, as teachers, students, writers, in interpreting the needs of our time with the aid of our age-old and immutable philosophical concepts. For both tasks, understanding of the origins of our pressing social problems is absolutely vital.

Some contemporary writers and some university professors and presidents are experiencing an uncomfortable intellectual draft as they awake to find a large proportion of young men and women, well formed in scepticism and disillusionment by their very teachers, no longer actively believe in any values, and that if these young people cling with a certain [156] instinct to a belief in democracy, this belief, lacking a radical basis in logic and human nature, is not likely to survive sudden, violent shocks. The situation has been admirably though perhaps too pessimistically described by Professor Mortimer Adler.[5] There are plenty of people who base their belief in democracy, very sincerely and very completely, on a theory of natural rights. Theirs is a fair working theory so far as it goes, and it may provide them with a more or less permanent philosophical abode. But there are almost inevitable contradictions which will beat at its windows. And when you say, "yes, but on what do you base natural rights?” the discussion becomes viciously circular.

Catholic educators do not labor under such disabilities. Their doctrine of natural rights can be traced back to verities that are pre-political, that are bound up with ethics and with theology. They do not need to plead for "faith in the democratic process”; they do not view democracy as a particular set of mores, which, in a given cultural frame of reference (blessed phrase!) enjoy a temporary vogue and a somewhat dubious respectability. But they should endeavor to communicate to their students a reasoned, vital enthusiasm for responsible representative government according to just law and reasonable interpretation of the Constitution, as that form which is most in harmony with individual dignity and social responsibility in our historical setting.

Catholic educators will be realistic; yet they shall not betray themselves and their students by hard-boiled, disillusioned cynicism about political facts—which logically ends in the overthrow of democracy and perhaps in a "revolution of nihilism.” They cannot afford to shrug their shoulders at political corruption, because, forsooth, it has "always existed,” and anyway, doesn’t the "machine” give handouts to the poor and tear up the clergy’s traffic tickets? Mr. Charles Michelson, publicity director for the Democratic National Committee, has recently given us a splendid example both of a type of political mores and of the cynical attitude we must combat. In an article released to the daily press by the North American Newspaper Alliance agency, dated Washington, November 11, 1940, Mr. Michelson offers a "critique by a publicity engineer of the technique and strategy of ... the battle for Wendell Willkie.” Speaking of the choice of Mr. Willkie as candidate for the Presidency, he writes:

I do not know that anybody could have beaten such a popular idol as Franklin D. Roosevelt, but I have in mind the type which would have had a much better chance than Mr. Willkie. He should have been a bland person, with some wealth, inherited possibly, and a record of public service—governor of a state, perhaps, or a judge, or even the head of a conspicuous philanthropic [157] organization, with a war record to take away the taint of stuffed-shirtism. A human bromide? Certainly; that’s what the occasion demanded.[6]

Whether or not Mr. Michelson is spoofing his foes, the same attitude is to be found in many political treatises by serious scholars, and I submit that the logical consequences of such statements are more dangerous to democracy than Mr. Earl Browder's noisiest rallies.

On the other hand, and at the opposite extreme, we will carefully refrain from identifying any form of governmental institutions with "Catholism,” bearing in mind the precisions of every pope since Leo XIII as to the compatibility of the Church with any form of civil society which recognizes the rights of God and the Church. Nor will we be deluded into thinking that Christianity is, to quote Mr. Christopher Dawson,[7] "like a patent medicine that is warranted to cure all diseases." The same author continues:[8]

Christianity offers no short cuts to economic prosperity or social stability. A century ago there was a tendency to treat Christianity as a kind of social sedative that kept the lower classes obedient and industrious, and the consequence was the Marxian denunciation of religion as the opium of the poor. And if today we treat Christianity as a social tonic that will cure economic depression and social unrest and make everybody happy, we shall only ensure disillusionment and reaction. It is impossible to create a Christian social order ab extra by the application of a few ready-made principles or by introducing legislative reforms.

Furthermore, just because we are by second nature so conscious and respectful of order and hierarchy in truth, we shall be very careful not to withdraw prematurely to the higher ground of abstract principle, and content ourselves with being philosophers, leaving what are called the social sciences to stew in their own thin intellectual juices. Those sciences—politics, economics, sociology—need precisely what we have to give them: an ethical bearing; but the trick can’t be done without studious application to political, economic, and sociological facts, as they actually occur in our social setting. Some day, some of our graduates may make important contributions to social theory, to law, to public life, precisely because they are Catholic scholars. Let us remember that, as educators, we have a duty to society of preparing not just good citizens, but really capable leaders, in public life as well as in the Church and other vocations.

One last word. Our concern with democracy and its problems at home [158] should not distract our attention as Catholic educators from the larger problem of world organization. In this field perhaps more than elsewhere, Catholic scholarship in America faces a challenge. Is it not fair to say that Catholics, who ought to be universalists by habit of mind, and hence better qualified to apprehend the issues at stake, have been somewhat slow to contribute anything very substantial to the raging debates about international organization and law, the concept of neutrality, intervention, national self-determination, that fill the air about us? Here the ground is shaky indeed; ethical principles have still to be formulated and developed. But perhaps in this very domain, American Catholics may make their best contribution. The vigorous Catholic social thinkers of France, the Low Countries, the Germanics, have now been silenced;[9] perhaps we can try to fill their place.

Catholic—and Jesuit—education, then, has a contribution to make to democracy, and to the American way of life. It has its Christian-humanist tradition and philosophy of man with which to give true meaning and value to our democratic institutions. But it cannot confine itself solely to abstract statement, as though the social order were static. In a changing, growing world, ever more complex, it must continually enlarge and refine its doctrine to reach and to penetrate new human problems and situations created by external forces—"omnia probate, quod honum est tenete.” In proclaiming what ought to be, Catholic education should never overlook what is: to do so would be to create an inadequate picture of the world, and risk untrue conclusions. But its view of what is will never obscure the beckoning summons of duty to that which ought to be, to those things which will create a better world for free yet responsible men.

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Footnotes:

1. The Will to Freedom, London, 1936, p. 68.

2. De Legibus ac de Deo Legislatore, lib. II, cap. 19, par. 9. Italics inserted.

3. I do not mean obviously, that the Middle Ages were not conscious of what we might call international law. St. Thomas is full of meaty reflections on peace and war; the notion of "Jus Gentium" was inherited from Roman times. But in the passage quoted, Suarez seems to be thinking about law as between equal and independent states—a concept unknown to the Middle Ages. And "Jus Gentium" seems to mean "a body of rights belonging to all peoples, whatever the accidents of their birth, which should be respected, in their mutual relations." Cf. Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, London, 1935, p. 259.

4. Cf. British Social Politics, New York, 1913.

5. "This Pre-War Generation," Harper's Magazine, October 1940.

6. Italics inserted.—One may doubt whether this is a very good analysis even on Mr. Michelson's own premisses [sic]. After all, Mr. Willkie ran an excellent race; most commentators considered him the strongest possible candidate, and he attracted five million new votes to the ticket, while President Roosevelt lost half a million from his 1936 total.

7. Religion and the Modern State, London, 1938, p. 121.

8. Ibid., pp. 121-22. Italics inserted.

9. Everyone must know about such movements as the J. O. C., Action Populaire, etc. But Catholic thinkers in Europe were also greatly concerned about international problems. See, for example, the Semaine Sociale de France of 1926, the subject of which was "La Vie Internationale" (Compte Rendu: La Chronique Sociale, Lyon, 1926); also, the excellent "Code de Morale Internationale," published by the Union Internationale d'Etudes Sociales of Malines, Paris, 1937, which was compiled by Father Albert Muller, S. J., of the faculty of the Institut St-Ignace of Antwerp, and later translated by the Catholic Social Guild, Oxford, 1938.

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Source: Gerard F. Yates, S.J., "Jesuit Education and Democracy," Jesuit Educational Quarterly 3, no. 3 (December 1940): 152–158.

Repost: American Catholicity (1891)

[396] Under a name often many errors are concealed. It is not true that a name is of little consequence; for while the name may be perfectly good, and, properly understood, may embrace no error, still, improperly understood, it may encourage grave errors or lead to consequences which are seriously injurious to the best interests of mankind. We Americans are naturally proud of our country and its institutions. We are proud of its material success, and we who are Catholics have the most devoted love for our fatherland. We yield to no one in patriotism and love of country. We are thankful every day for the privileges which we enjoy in the freedom which our institutions give us in many respects. We are also thankful to God that our government does not in many things attempt to interfere with the freedom of worship or the best interests of our divine religion. Catholics are ever ready, and are among the first, to give their talents, and even their lives, in the service of their country. There is, perhaps, a boastful spirit which is contagious among us, leading many to exaggerate when comparing our own nation with the other nations of the earth. This spirit, when not carried to an undue excess, so as to violate truth or equity, is pardonable and even praiseworthy. We do not easily see defects in those we love or in institutions to which we are attached.

Nevertheless, our love for the country must not in any way blind us to errors which are serious; which, although they be widely circulated and have many adherents, are contrary to the law of God, and, therefore, to the best interests of society. Our first duty is to God and our divine religion. Our faith comes to us from God. It cannot be changed by any condition of man or by any kind of social progress. In discharging our duty faithfully towards God, in maintaining, as we are bound to do, the truths which He has revealed, and the integrity of faith, we subserve in the best possible manner the interests of our country, the preservation of true liberty and the perpetuity of our free institutions.

God is true, if every man be a liar. No one can doubt, who believes in the existence of God, that our first obligations are to Him, and no one can doubt that obedience to His law is the source, and the only source, of all true happiness.

"A nation and a kingdom that will not serve Him shall be destroyed."

[397] To revert to our first remark in regard to the use of a name, we have heard in some quarters the term American Catholicity covering a multitude of errors, and falsely representing that one true religion which we are bound to defend and profess. It has been said that in this country there is a peculiar kind of Catholicity which is in advance of the old nations of the world, which has taken to itself the wings of progress, which is more consonant with the spirit of the age, less hostile to those who differ from us in faith or morals, which puts upon itself a mantle of expediency, and loses the stern attributes of our unflinching creed. We have heard it said, as a mark of the peculiarities of American Catholicity, that we do not pretend to judge between error and falsehood as far as others are concerned; that we embrace them all, no matter what they believe or profess, as really one with us in the profession of a conservative Christianity. It is also said that our differences are not so great as has been supposed; that we are willing to meet all our fellow-citizens on an open platform of a wide Christian belief; that we are willing to yield to the majority, or even to the State, the education of our children, provided we are allowed the liberty of teaching them privately the principles of our faith. It is also maintained that the rights of the Sovereign Pontiff, especially in his temporal principality, may in this country be waived, and that those Catholics are more truly American in their sympathies who look upon the temporal power of the Supreme Pontiff as a thing of the past; who are willing to let it die, and feel no obligation to do anything in their power to restore it.

According to the prevailing doctrine in the world, "Might makes right. The Holy Father, as a matter of fact, has lost his temporal principality. Such is the providence of God, and we are not bound either to maintain its necessity or to do anything actively for its restoration. We will simply let it go as a thing that once was, and which is now dead."

Another feature of American Catholicity, as we have seen it in some quarters, is to maintain "that our form of government is the best possible, and most suited to our religion; that in respect of government we are far beyond the nations of the old world."

Undoubtedly, our own form of government is the best for us and most suited to our people. Nevertheless, it belongs to the Americanism of which we are speaking, to seek to propagate it elsewhere; to deny the rights of those who rule by the providence of God; to justify rebellion without proper cause; to forget that he who rules, rules by the ordinance of God; that God is the supreme king among the nations of the earth, and that "he who resisteth the ordinance resisteth the power of God." In other words, it is sometimes held as a principle of true Americanism that "power [398] comes from the people and ascends to the ruler; that the people make their own government and their own ruler, and therefore, without any cause except their own will, they have a right to change them or to destroy them." Now, we humbly submit that such Americanism is not the true spirit of our institutions, that it is not Catholicity in any sense of the word, and cannot usurp for a single moment, justly, the title which we have placed at the head of this article.

For the illustration of all that we have said we shall proceed to prove that the errors which we have indicated, which are sometimes classed under the term of American Catholicity, are contrary to our faith, and therefore cannot be held by Catholics.

In the first place, the doctrine that "all religions are good, and may conduce to the salvation of men, while the Catholic religion is only better and more complete," is liberalism, condemned by the Holy See.

Reason teaches us that there is one God, and as God is the Author, and the only Author, of His divine religion, creeds which contradict each other cannot all be true. While we are bound in charity to judge no man—not to enter into the supreme tribunal where each one stands alone before God, and will be judged for all his deeds and all his intelligent acts—we are bound to judge his errors, and also to condemn them, and this for the love of God and for true charity toward our neighbor. The proposition that every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, by the light of his own reason, he shall have considered to be the true one, is condemned by the Catholic Church. As far as Protestantism is concerned in all its various and contradictory forms, it cannot be a species of the true Christian religion. We quote from the syllabus of Pius IX.

"Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which by the light of reason he shall consider true."[1]

"Protestantism is nothing else than a different form of the same Christian religion in which equally as in the Catholic Church one can please God."[2]

"Man in the observance of any religion can find the way of eternal salvation and also attain it."[3]

These propositions have been condemned by the supreme authority of the Church, and the doctrine contained in them cannot [399] be held by any one who calls himself a Catholic. A man is not free to follow any religion which his reason may teach him to be true. Men cannot obtain eternal salvation and find out the way of life by virtue of any false religion. If they do find salvation through invincible ignorance, or through any truths which may be taught them, mixed with many errors, they find their salvation by graces which come to them, entirely independent of the system which they follow. Their system of religion, if followed, would lead them astray. Protestantism, which, as we all know, embraces all kinds of contradictory errors, cannot be held to be a form of the true religion in which equally, as in the Catholic Church, one can please God. We are not denying here, that there are those out of the visible fold of the Church who will be saved by virtue of invincible ignorance or their obedience to the law of God, as far as they know it. But it is a very grave error, condemned by the Church, to hold that those outside of the pale of the Church are in a safe way, and still more so, that in some respects, they are better off than Catholics. We do not believe that this is true Americanism. We know it is not Catholicity. Americans love consistency. They are generally in earnest, and feel the power of sincerity. We shall never lead our erring brethren to a knowledge of the truth by making light of the differences which exist between them and ourselves, or by mitigating the doctrine that out of the Church there is no salvation. Almighty God, having instituted a way of salvation, has instituted no other.

Another grave error, which sometimes takes to itself the shield of the name of Catholicity, is what may be called the doctrine of intellectual or social progress. we make progress in many things; in material affairs; in the discoveries of science; in the application of these discoveries to the needs of mankind. But we can make no progress whatever in the faith which God has revealed to us and which comes to us perfect from His hands. We may study it and understand it better, and learn better to apply it to our daily life, and to the life of nations; but we cannot make any progress in the matter of the divine revelation. The doctrine, that we have greater light in our age; that we better understand the truths of our revelation than the ages before us; that we have theologically taken upon ourselves the wings of human progress, is not simply an empty boast, it is a serious error. By it we are led to look down upon the masters of theology, the great teachers of the Church, the doctors of the spiritual life; to think that in our age we have made such advance that we can get loose from the restraints which the great doctors of the Church, following the instincts of the faith, have placed upon the human reason. This doctrine of progress, applied to matters of faith, has been distinctly condemned by the [400] Holy See, and therefore cannot be considered to be the teaching of any kind of Catholicity.

We quote again the propositions condemned by Pius IX. in the Syllabus:

"The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman Congregation impede the true progress of science."[4]

"The methods and the principles by which the scholastic doctors of former ages cultivated theology do not at all agree with the necessities of our time and the progress of the sciences."[5]

The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman Congregations must be observed by every Catholic, an they do not impede any true human progress. Disobedience to them is the reverse of human progress. It is returning into the darkness, instead of going forward into the light. We can never sufficiently value the ancient doctors of the Church, and especially the schoolmen, whose teachings are adapted to all times, and especially to this rationalistic age which, following the doctrines of human pride rather than those of reason, would lead to independence in matters revealed, and therefore to liberalism and latitudinarianism.

There is always in every age a species of socialism or communism which threatens the best interests of society. It is the denial of the Catholic faith and its teachings which allows men to be blinded by such errors.

The holy Church, anxious in all things to preserve the best welfare of society, and to mitigate as far as in her power the sufferings of the poor, has often declared that socialism, while contrary to the law of God, is the enemy of the very poor whom it seeks to benefit. The following is the language of Pius IX. in his allocution to the consistory of April 20, 1849: "Evil men foment agitation among the people in order that all the principles of justice, of virtue, of honesty, of religion, may be utterly destroyed, and that the horrid and grievous system of socialism—or even of communism, as they call it—may everywhere be propagated and reign to the greatest evil and even the destruction of all human society."

We cannot, therefore, in any way countenance the principles which destroy the rights of property and which overturn the foundations of civilized society. Such errors, in any form, are too grave to be trifled with, and they are not the fruit of what may be properly so-called Americanism, while they are distinctly contrary to the Catholic faith. The Roman Pontiff cannot reconcile himself [401] nor compromise with progress, with liberalism, with socialism or with what may be called recent civilization. The doctrine that our republican form of government—good in itself, fitted to our state of society, and, in reality, having its source in the application of the principles of or religion—is the best form of government for all the nations of the earth, or the only correct form of government, cannot be held by any Catholics, whether they be Americans or of another nationality. We yield to no one in devotion to our own country; nevertheless, we cannot hold that the best form of government is that in which the Church is entirely separated from the State and the State from the Church. Such a proposition is condemned by the Holy See in the Syllabus of Pius IX., Proposition 55 declares:

"The Church should be separated from the State and the State from the Church."[6]

Undoubtedly, that form of government which does not interfere with the Church in any way is better tan the form which persecutes the Church, which deprives it of its rightful liberty, which imprisons its priests and its ministers; but this does not make it the very best form of government. The governing authorities in any nation are as much bound to obey the Catholic religion as any individual. And nations, as such, are as much under the obedience of God as are individuals. The best form of government is that where all believe in the true religion, or where the government supports the Church in the discharge of its high office, in leading men to their salvation. This, although perhaps at the present time existing nowhere, is, nevertheless the best form, and although we do not ask a government like our own to interfere in any ecclesiastical matters—while, on the contrary, we deny its right to interfere in matters purely religious—nevertheless we cannot hold, as Catholics, that a Christian or a Catholic State should not work in harmony with the Church of God, to which are committed the highest interests of man. We cannot call our own form of government religious in any sense. There is a bare recognition of God and also an implicit recognition of many precepts of the natural law; still, we cannot call it a Christian government in the true sense of the word.

And it leads to a grave error to say that the State should always be separated from the Church and the Church from the State, as if they were different bodies, each one moving in its different sphere, and the spiritual having no authority, even indirectly, over the temporal.

The State has already, not only here but in the old world, interfered [402] with the observance of the law of God, and has sanctioned that which, according to the divine law, is positively wrong. For example, the State has sanctioned divorce, thereby destroying the sacred character of Christian matrimony and allowing parties properly married to be separated, so as to annul the bond of matrimony. The Christian law teaches us, on the word of our Lord Himself, that the tie of matrimony, properly contracted, can only b severed by death. When the State undertakes in any way to favor the liberty of human passion and sin, to separate that which God has bound together, to assume the authority it has no power to assume, the very act is invalid before God. For God, at least, is the Supreme Ruler of the universe. The evils which follow, and which will follow to a much greater extent, in the disregard of Christian marriage are too great to escape the notice of any fair-minded and intelligent person. The sacredness of the family depends upon the sacredness of Christian marriage, and the perpetuity of the State depends on Christian families, of which, to a great extent, the State is composed. It is not always wise to attack the evils of society openly, although sometimes it is our duty; but it is a sin to compromise with them or to allow them to pass as if they were indifferent matters.

Another most grave error which concerns the very foundation of Christianity is that which, unfortunately, is widespread, the error that religion and education can be separated without vital injury to the Commonwealth. It is a prevalent doctrine now in our country that the State has the right to take to itself the whole question of education, to disregard the rights of parents and guardians to whom, by God's providence, children are committed. And inasmuch as the State is made up of those who hold widely diverse and contradictory beliefs, it is said to be the American system that no religion whatever must be taught in the popular schools. These popular schools, which are free to every one—in which, consistently, no principles of Christian ethics can be taught—have been called "the palladium [italics original] of our civil liberties."

To a Catholic mind, to one who believes in Christianity, and to one who has studied at all the lessons of history, it is evident that education without religion is the source of infidelity, and therefore is destructive of human liberty, properly so-called. Catholics cannot approve of any system of education which is separated from religion or from the strict teaching of the principles of their faith. We are not by any means willing to hold that Americanism is infidelity, so therefore we do not understand why any of our fellow-citizens favor the separation entirely of religion from common education.

Protestants, who are bigoted in their notions, may find that [403] such a system of education leads Catholic children to forget or deny their religion, and in this sense they may approve of such a system of popular education; but we deny that it is Americanism, or that it is in any sense a feature of our peculiar form of government. The Holy See has distinctly condemned the separation of education from religion, and no Catholic can for a moment defend or permit it.

We quote from the Syllabus, propositions 47 and 48:

"The best constitution of civil society demands that popular schools which are open to all children of whatever class, ad public institutions which are destined to more severe studies and to the education of youth, should be free from all the authority of the Church, from its moderating and governing power, and subjected wholly to the civil and political authority according to the pleasure of the rulers and the general opinions of the age."[7]

"The plan of instructing youth which is separated entirely from the Church and which primarily regards only the ends of earthly social life and the knowledge of natural things may be approved by Catholics."[8]

The teaching of our own Councils and of our own Prelates in union with the Holy See, has distinctly defined the Catholic doctrine on this subject. We are obliged, therefore, in conscience, to establish our own schools, inasmuch as we have no right to as permission to teach our doctrines in the popular schools. The right to have our own schools is permitted to us by our government; nevertheless, scarcely a year passes without some proposition in some legislature, or in the Congress of the United States, tending to abridge our rights and to deprive us of the full liberty of Christian worship which we have under the Constitution. And in all the States, so far as we know, every man is taxed for the support of the popular schools, although in conscience he can make no use of them. If this be the highest form of civil liberty, we have not the power to see it.

In almost every country of Europe, denominational schools are not only permitted, but are even maintained at the expense of the State, and the denominational system, while it satisfies the conscience of every one, is much less expensive to the State, and produces [404] harmony and peace according to the testimony of Protestants as well as Catholics. On this subject there can be surely no difference of opinion among American Catholics. No one worthy of the name of Catholic can so far compromise himself as to look with favor upon popular schools in which no principles of morals or religion can be taught.

A most important question in our day, which deeply concerns the interests of our religion, is that of the temporal principality of the Supreme Pontiff. All Catholics are bound o believe that he is the supreme pastor, teacher and infallible doctor of the universal Church; that in matters spiritual and moral there is no appeal from his decision. His temporal principality is not an open question. It cannot be looked upon as a thing of the past. Catholics, and especially American Catholics, who are free at least to think and say what they will, can never agree to look upon it as a question which has passed out of our day. They can never consent to hold that the temporal power of the popes has been taken from them by justice, or that the principality of the Supreme Pontiff has not conduced to religion and is not necessary to the free exercise of his high office. Much less can it be held that it is an open question in regard to which Catholics may differ, or that the abrogation of this principality is sanctioned by the observance of ages, or would conduce to the liberty and happiness of the Church. We have heard of some Catholics saying, that "the Pope is much better off without his temporal power; that at all events it is no question of ours, and that we are not called upon to say or to do anything in regard to it." Such views are not Catholicity, and we do not think that they are American Catholicity. Indeed we are certain that the majority of American Catholics believe in the necessity of the temporal principality of the Pope, and will always be found in the front ranks for the maintenance of his rights, both civil and spiritual. We quote the false opinions condemned in the Syllabus in regard to this matter, propositions 76 and 80.

"The abrogation of the civil power which the Apostolic See possesses would greatly conduce to the happiness and liberty of the Church."[9]

"The Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself with progress, with liberalism and with modern civilization."[10]

The Supreme Pontiff, who in this, as in all other matters, is our teacher and guide, has never consented to the unjust usurpation of his temporal rights, nor has he ceased to warn the faithful by  [405] his protests against the injustice which, although tolerated for a short time, can never be accepted by the Catholic Church nor regarded as just. The present Pontiff, Leo XIII., has more than once spoken to the Christian world on this subject, and in a letter of the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of bishops and regulars, July 18, 1889, warned all patriarchs, archbishops and bishops, and other superiors of the Catholic people, that the injury done to the Holy See should be kept before their minds. They are directed to warn their flocks of the obligation by which they are bound to avoid the snares of secret societies and other enemies of the Holy See, to defend the faith, and by every legitimate means to maintain the rights of the Roman Pontiff, understanding that with his liberty is closely bound the liberty of all states and all peoples. In this connection we quote the words of a pastoral of the Most Rev. Archbishop of New York, addressed to the clergy and faithful of his diocese on October 2, 1889.

"Now it is the common teaching of theologians that when the Vicar of Christ and the Episcopate throughout the world unite in teaching a doctrine which regards the universal government of the Church, then they have that special assistance promised them by Jesus Christ, and their doctrine is to be received by the faithful as undoubtedly true and certain. Again and again, in Encyclicals and Allocutions, the Sovereign Pontiff has declared the temporal independence of the Holy See to be necessary for the good and free government of the Church, and this same truth is proclaimed by the whole Catholic Episcopate. As good children of the Church it is our duty to incline our ears to the teaching of Christ's Vicar, and to give it the homage of our minds and our hearts."

While, therefore, no one is allowed to attack the rights of the Holy See, or to defend the usurpation of his temporal power, every good Catholic is bound by every legitimate means to labor for its restoration. Many times during the history of the Church have the Supreme Pontiffs been placed in a worse position than that which now imprisons our Holy Father. Popular opinion has with many great weight, but we contend that such an opinion, if popular among those outside the bosom of the Catholic Church, can never be popular with sincere Catholics. They cannot even be silent in regard to the matter when time and opportunity permit them to speak plainly, and all their influence, whatever it is, must always be cast on the side of truth and right and justice.

From our knowledge of the American people we are inclined to believe that those grave errors to which we have alluded, which cannot be favored by any true Catholic, are not consistent with [406] the honesty, the sincerity and earnestness which distinguish our race.

True American Catholicity is honest, sincere and earnest. We have always been distinguished for our devotion to the Holy See. We believe the Supreme Pontiff to be the Vicar of our Lord, to represent Him to us and to speak with His voice to us in all questions of faith and morals. Therefore we are united, those of us who are sincere Catholics, in loyalty to Him, in devotion to his interests and in defence [sic] of all his rights. The rights of the Holy See are really the rights of the Church, and they are our rights. In every land devout Catholics are the best citizens, those most loyal to the government under which they live; and naturally so, because the principles which sustain the true Catholic are essentially principles of justice and equity, which are the only firm foundation of any commonwealth. When the rights of the Holy See are violated and disregarded, where shall we look for any foundation on which may rest a well-ordered civil society? "By Me," says the Holy Ghost, "kings reign and princes decree justice." Might does not make right, nor does the lapse of time make the evil a good. The points upon which we have touched so briefly seem to us of the very highest importance. They concern the true progress of our religion in this country, and therefore the perpetuity of our institutions. We maintain in their integrity the only principles upon which Christian society can rest. There is no enemy which we have to fear so much as liberalism in politics, and especially in religion. Liberalism in religion is a contradiction, inasmuch as religion depends upon a revealed faith which must be maintained in its entirety as it comes to us from God. With the divine law it is true that he who sins in one point implicitly breaks the whole law, since all precepts of the law are equally binding, and the disposition to break one precept leads directly to the transgression of all God's commandments. The same principle applies to our creed. The whole creed rests on the veracity of God, and infidelity in one point involves, implicitly at least, disbelief in the whole creed. The great danger to which our country is exposed is infidelity, which is advancing every day, denying, point by point, the precepts of the Christian religion, and even boldly advancing to the denial of the existence and government of God. Nothing can stay the tide of infidelity in our land except our divine faith. We Catholics are the best friends of our free institutions, since we are the only conservatives who maintain the principles of justice and equity on which alone they can securely rest. It is our duty always to protest against every kind of infidelity. Right is always right, and wrong is always wrong, under whatever specious appearance it may be seen. The foes of the [407] Catholic Church are really the foes of true liberty and of real progress. Knowing full well that the Catholic Church alone is able to stand against the arts of the adversary of man, they attack our religion consciously or unconsciously, knowing that thereby they advance in the surest way the denial of God, of His revelation and of His reign upon earth. Various are these attacks—sometimes under the appearance of progress in things material, sometimes under the false claims of freedom, and sometimes with an open and avowed purpose of destroying the only creed which stands on immovable foundations, because it is divine.

Well-meaning men, who would disavow atheism or infidelity, who call themselves Christians in some sense, are often the dupes of the one great enemy of religion and society. The adversary of man, who is wiser than those whom he deceives, bids them in various ways to attempt to deprive Catholics of their rights before the State, in public meetings, in the legislatures of different States, and even in the United States Congress, to propose laws which, while they deprive us of our equal liberties, strike deadly blows at the order of society. They treat us as if we were a foreign colony in the land, where, to say the least, we are their equals in the land which is our earthly home, and for which we have given our talents and our lives. Nothing could be so suicidal to our faith or to true progress as to compromise with such enemies in any point of faith or morals. The moment we compromise, the moment we yield in any particular where our divine religion and its teachings are concerned, we give up the whole ground to the enemies of society.

We sacrifice the trust reposed in our hands, and under the plea of liberty, we reatly [sic] turn traitor to God and to our country. Not for our merits did God give us the priceless treasure of Christian faith. He hsa reposed it in our hands that we may maintain it, and well discharge our duty to the good of man and to His glory. We can make no admission to what is falsely called progress. We cannot admit that there is any difference between the creed of the Catholic Church of this day and its creed in former ages. We must maintain that the laws which were binding upon the ages preceding us, which have been properly called the Ages of Faith, are binding upon us; and while the admission of any compromise in the teaching of our religion would really be the sacrifice of our whole creed, we shall gain nothing from our Protestant fellow-citizens in return for such a sacrifice. They who are sincere, respect only those whom they believe to be sincere. They will lose their regard for us, and we shall lose our influence among our fellow-men. The restrictions which Almighty God has imposed on His one way of salvation cannot be removed by man, and if in our intercourse with our fellow-citizens we allow them to think [408] that we do not fully believe that the Catholic Church is necessary for the salvation of men and of nations, they will never be drawn to embrace it, nor to make the sacrifices which are necessary for its profession. We speak feelingly on this subject, but we speak from knowledge and experience. While we are bound, according to the true spirit of our religion, to be courteous and kind and gentle in all the relations of life, while we do not approve of any unnecessarily offensive word or action, we shall best subserve the interests of those who differ from us, and surely best discharge our duty to God, by maintaining, without compromise, the precepts of our religion. There is no more dangerous disposition, if it should ever become popular, than the belief that there is an American Catholicity which is in advance of past times, which differs materially from the faith once delivered to the Church and always preserved by her, which boasts of a freedom from restrictions which bind the ages of the past. Let us, then, in our humble sphere, wherever God has placed us, be true to the faith which He has revealed to us. The perpetuity of our government depends entirely, according to our mind, on the perpetuity and the progress of the Catholic religion. If our religion fails in this country, true Americanism will fall with it; and we believe that those are the only true American Catholics who, while they maintain the rights and the liberties which our constitution guarantees to us, are obedient to the divine voice which speaks to man through the Catholic Church.

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Footnotes:

1. "Liberum cuique homini est eam amplecti ac profiteri religionem, quam rationis lumine quis ductus veram putaverit.

2. "Protestantismus non aliud est quam diversa verae eiusdem christianae religionis forma, in qua acque ac in Ecclesia Catholica Deo placere datum est.

3. "Homines in cuiusvis religionis cultu viam aeternae salutis reperire aeternamque salutem assequi possunt."

4. Apostolicae Sedis, Romanarumque Congregationum decreta liberum scientiae progressum impediunt.

5. Methodus et principia, quibus antiqui doctores scholastici theologiam excoluerunt, temporum nostrorum necessitatibus scientiarumque progressui minime congruunt.

6. "Ecclesia a Statu, Statusque ab Ecclesia sejungendus est."

7. "Postulat optima civilis societatis ratio, ut populares scholae, quae patent omnibus cuiusque e populo classis pueris, ac publica universim instituta, quae litteris severioribusque disciplinis tradendis et educationi juventutis curandae sunt destinata, eximantur ab omni Ecclesiae auctoritate, moderatrice vi et ingerentia, plenoque civilis ac politiciae auctoritatis arbitrio subiiciantur ad imperantium placita et ad communium aetatis opinionum amussim."

8. Catholicis viris probari potest ea juventutis instituendae ratio, quae sit a Catholica fide et ab Ecclesiae potestate sejuncta quaeque rerum dumtaxat naturalium scientiam ac terrenae socialis vitae fines tantummodo vel saltem primario spectet."

9. "Abrogatio civilis imperii quo Apostolica Sedes potitur, ad Ecclesiae libertatem felicitatemque vel maxime conduceret."

10. Romanus Pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo et cum recenti civilitate sese reconciliare et componere."

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Source: Right Rev. Thomas S. Preston, D.D., V.G., "American Catholicity," The American Catholic Quarterly Review 16 (January–October 1891): 396–408.

Repost: Church and State (1891)

[20] I.

Society as we now find it, and as far back as history reveals it to us, lives and moves, and has hitherto lived and moved, under the influence of the two-fold principle of Church and State. It is not simply the State, nor is it simply the Church, but it is made up of a union of both Church and State.[1] Association for the pursuit of temporal happiness gives rise to the State; association in a community of spiritual goods for the pursuit of eternal happiness gives rise to the Church.[2] Just as a man is not all body nor all soul, but the intimate union of body and soul, even so is society composed of the intimate and inseparable union of a temporal organization and a spiritual informing principle. For what the soul is to the body, religion is to the State. "No State," says Walter, "can subsist without religion, which fills and interpenetrates every sphere of life with the sense of the obligation of duty. Religion, which respects and maintains every right of high and low, of strong and weak, is the conservative element of society. . . . . By the strength of character which she forms, she preservers the youth of nations, and when they fall away and decay, keeps them from the withering up of mind and heart. Religion is the groundwork of family life, and of the purity and piety nurtured therein. . . . . She brings rich and poor nearer together, urging upon the rich sympathy and active help to the poor, and instilling into the poor gratitude and consolation. Thus she softens every condition of life, and teaches man that he can be elevated and ennobled by submission. Religion, then, is the true bond which holds the State together, makes it strong, and saves it from degeneracy."[3] Now, religion without a Church is a mere abstraction. "The Church is the external manifestation, the realization and the expression of the Christian religion in an independent organism."[4] The early Fathers recognized this intimate union of Church and State. St. Isidor of Pelusium, wrote from his hermitage in Egypt: "The government of the world rests on kinghood [sic] and on priesthood; although the two differ widely—for one is as the body, the other as the soul—they are nevertheless destined to one end, the [21] well-being of their subjects."[1] And St. John Chrysostom boldly carries out the metaphor of soul and body to its limits: "The Church," he says, "is above the State, in the same way the soul is above the body."[2]

II.

Going back to pagan days we find that philosophers never dreamed of separating religion from the State. Plato strives to impress the citizens of his ideal republic with the necessity of keeping the Divine law if they would preserve the State: "God, as the old tradition declares, holding in His hand the beginning, middle and end of all that is, moves, according to His nature, in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the punisher of those who fall short of the Divine law. To that law he who would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order. . . . . Wherefore, seeing human things are thus ordered, . . . . every man ought to make up his mind that he will be one of the followers of God. Henceforth all citizens must be profoundly convinced that the gods are lords and rulers of all that exists, that all events depend upon their word and will, and that mankind is largely indebted to them."[3] Aristotle, with less unction, though not with less conviction, pronounces worship to be the first of the six leading administrations without which the State cannot subsist, assigns the first rank to the priesthood, would have special edifices dedicated to worship, and the fourth part of the soil and land devoted to purposes of religion.[4]

The relations of Church and State vary with times and occasions. In the gentile world the Church was absorbed by the State. It was the tool and instrument of the State. The number and nature of the household gods were regulated by the State. The ceremonies connected with the worship of them were enjoined by the State. The titular deities of the State were carefully served; they were to be placated in times of calamity, appealed to for aid in times of war; their ire was to be appeased in the hour of defeat, or they were to receive public thanksgiving in the hour of victory. Every ceremony was legislated for by the State. The ruler was also the Pontifex Maximus. He united in himself the plenitude of civil and priestly power. In all else was the State equally paramount. The family was absorbed in the State. The individual lived for the State, continued to breathe by favor of the State, and died when the State so decreed. The State was the source whence all things drew the breath of life, and the seat of all wisdom and authority.

[22] Such was the condition of things when Christianity first dawned upon the world's horizon, and revealed another order of things. It revealed to man a kingdom other than the kingdoms of this world, to which he had a flawless title. It taught him the value of his immortal soul, redeemed by the blood of Christ. It taught him how to pray and how to overcome his passions. How much there was in this teaching we will let Döllinger explain: "When," he says, "the attention of a thinking heathen was directed to the new religion spreading in the Roman Empire, the first thing to strike him as extraordinary would be, that a religion of prayer was superseding the religion of ceremonies and invocations of gods; that it encouraged all, even the humblest and most uneducated to pray, or, in other words, to meditate and exercise the mind in self-scrutiny and contemplation of God. . . . . This region of Christian metaphysics was open even to the mind of one who had no intellectual culture before conversion. In this school of prayer he learned what philosophy had declared to be as necessary as it was difficult, and only attainable by few—to know himself as God knew him. And from that self-knowledge prayer carried him on to self-mastery. If the heathen called upon his gods to gratify his passions, for the Christian tranquility of soul, moderation, and purifying of the affections were at once the preparation and the fruit of prayer. And thus, prayer became a motive-power of moral renewal and inward civilization, to which nothing else could be compared for efficacy."[1] Justin Martyr called attention to this benign influence of Christianity in his day: "We Christians contribute most to the tranquillity [sic] of the State, since we teach that God governs all; that the evil-doer, the avaricious, the assassin, as well as the virtuous man are known to Him; that each one who passes out of this life will receive an eternal reward or an eternal punishment according to his deserts. Now, if all believed these truths, assuredly none would continue a moment longer in sin, but all would restrain themselves, and strive to do right, in order finally to obtain the promised reward and to escape punishment. For those who do evil know that they can escape from your laws; but if they had learnt, and were fully convinced, that nothing, not an action, nor even a thought can remain hidden from God, they would, at least from fear of punishment, strive to do right."[2] In this manner did Christianity become a new civilizing element. Now, society is perfect in proportion as the individuals composing society are perfect. But the perfection of the individual consists in submission to the Divine law. "When we [23] revere and honor God," says the Angelical Doctor, "our mind is subject to Him, and in this our perfection consists. For everything is perfected by its subjection to that which is above it, as the body when it is vivified by the soul."[1]

III.

Let us now endeavor to make clear to ourselves the meaning both of Church and of State. We will begin with the Church. The Church is an organism. It is a visible embodiment of Divine influences addressing itself with authority to the souls of men in the name of God and for an eternal and supernatural end. It is the visible custodian of the natural law and the revealed or positive law. It has not created or invented or discovered these laws. They are eternal. The Church could not change them if it would. But every church, be it true or false, speaks to man in the name of Divine authority, and every true member of that Church recognizes the Divine sanction. A church without such sanction and such authority is meaningless. A church on a human basis, promulgating a purely human doctrine, looking no higher than human reason, bears upon it the impress of its own fallible, short-lived nature. It is branded with the seal of imposition. Not the combined genius of a Comte, a Littré and a Frederick Harrison can make the church of positivism other than a religious by-play. Gautama and Mohammed established their doctrines and built up their churches only in the name of God and as His ministers. Had they presented themselves upon a purely human basis they would have passed away unheeded. But they were in earnest; they believed themselves sent of God; therefore, they were accepted for what they represented themselves to be, and accordingly they succeeded. The Protestant synod of Alain, in 1620, excommunicated by virtue of the Divine authority which it conceived to be vested in it: "We, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, whom God hath furnished with spiritual arms . . . to whom the eternal Son of God hath given the power to bind and to loose upon earth, declare that what we shall bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven."[2] The Puritan fathers would not and dare not make laws opposed to the teachings of their church. They recognized its supremacy. Believing that they alone were right and the favored ones of God's providence, they stood out against the whole world and persecuted and outlawed all who presumed to hold religious opinions different from the tenets which they believed to be God's [24] own teaching. They stood upon an elevated but a very narrow spiritual plane of religious opinion.

Of course, not everybody speaking as the mouthpiece of the Divine is inspired. Brigham Young made thousands believe that he had a divinely-inspired mission; few believe in the Divinity of that mission to-day. But we are not here concerned with determining the notes by which true inspiration is to be distinguished from pure illusion and imposition. We are simply calling attention to the fact that every church has meaning only by reason of its Divine origin and the Divine authority in whose name it teaches. We will define the Christian Church as it appears to us in its oldest and most authentic form.

Christ organized the Church. The Apostles were the first bishops. From the beginning was a hierarchy established. Peter was made head of the Church and was recognized as such by his colleagues; priests and deacons, and the other clerical orders were established. The Church as thus organized is endowed with a three-fold power; namely, the power to administer the sacraments, the power of jurisdiction and the power of teaching. Of the seven sacraments recognized by the Church as the seven channels instituted by Christ, by which His grace is conveyed to the soul and man is raised up into the sphere of the supernatural, five can be administered by none other than a bishop or priest. Therefore it has been with the most scrupulous care that succession in the orders of bishops and priests has been preserved in the Church from the days of the Apostles. And so the faithful of every period in this visible organism, the Church, have had these seven sacraments and a duly ordained and properly authorized priesthood to administer them.

The Church has a power of jurisdiction, that is to say, she has the right to exercise authority over Christians in those things which belong to religion. This power flows directly from the authority of the Divine Founder. It alone makes licit the sacramental power of the clergy. Indeed, no pastoral act may be performed within the Church without participation in ecclesiastical authority. That authority may be delegated or it may belong to the office for which one has been ordained. But the main point to hold in view is this: That no jot or tittle of ecclesiastical jurisdiction is derived from the laity within the Church or from the State or from any source other than the Divine authority on which the Church is founded. Therefore, wherever there is lay or State interference in the matter of the sacraments, or of doctrine or of religious jurisdiction, there is an element foreign to the Divine institution established by Christ. A Church, for instance, that would be organized and legislated for by Congress could [25] scarcely command the respect and submission of men. It might, indeed, be a very wise human institution, but no one would dare call its Congressional enactments the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Equally human and equally fallible would be a Church created by act of Parliament.

The jurisdiction of the Church is, then, the jurisdiction of a visible independent organism, and is judicial, legislative and executive. She has the right to make laws within her own spiritual sphere of action, and to execute those laws. She has the right to impose upon her members the obligation of accepting without reserve her declarations concerning faith and morals under ecclesiastical penalties. As the custodian of the natural law and of the revealed law, she is entitled to interpret and administer them in religious matters. She has, moreover, the power to make and to enforce laws of her own. These laws, be it remembered, contain within themselves so much of a purely human element that they may be changed, or dispensed with, or abrogated. Thus it is that in certain countries certain holidays of obligation have been abrogated. Thus it is that the Church daily grants dispensation regarding marriage within certain degrees of kindred. In like manner does she dispense persons from vows o commute their vows under certain circumstances and with sufficient reason. All this she could not do with regard to the Divine law, whether it be natural or positive. She could not, for instance, permit or tolerate an act of injustice as between man and man, nor could she allow her highest dignitaries, any more than her humblest layman, to injure their neighbor's reputation by any act, overt or covert, direct or indirect; nor in such supposition could she dispense them from making such reparation as is within their power. She cannot change the eternal principle of right and wrong.[1] All these are primary truths.

IV.

Next, consider the teaching power of the Church. Her Divine Founder gave her the mission to go forth and teach all nations in His name. He that heareth you heareth me. This mission extends to all subjects bearing upon religion. It includes both the natural and the positive law of God, as well as the revealed truths and mysteries of faith. The teaching power resides in its plenitude in the Roman pontiff as it did in his predecessor, the Apostle Peter. He is unerring in defining maters pertaining to faith and [26] morals. His infallibility does not extend beyond this domain. In all matters of political action or of private opinion the Pope is as liable to err as any layman equally instructed. An ecumenical council is also unerring when defining matters of faith and morals; but it is only the papal approval that renders the council ecumenical and stamps its decrees with the seal of authority. The teaching power is communicated to bishops and priests, but not in its plenitude. They may err in their teachings, even as they may be culpable in their conduct. Their words have authority only in proportion to the accuracy with which they transmit the doctrines of the Church. Personally, the weight of their utterance depends on the learning and the soundness of judgment they bring to bear upon their subject-matter.

And here, we would dwell upon a grave misconception entertained of our mental attitude as Catholics by those not of the body. We give the misconception as stated by an American writer who would not voluntarily do us an injustice. Speaking of the Church in America this writer says: "There is almost as much dissent, agnosticism, free thought—call it what you will—among educated Catholics as among other people in America. This is at once the source of peculiar strength and of unique weakness to the Catholic Church."[1] We do not see how this can be a source of anything real, since it is a condition of things that does not exist outside of the writer's mind. We Catholics—the ignorant layman no less than the learned theologian—all profess the same creed and hold by the same truths of faith, upon the same ground of belief, namely, upon the veracity of God revealing them to us through the Holy Roman Catholic Church. This and nothing more. The learned theologian may attempt to account for the faith that is in him; he may seek to reconcile it with his reason; he may answer objections raised against certain articles of his faith; but he cannot pare away or minimize that faith; he cannot drop a single jot or tittle of that faith without ceasing to be Catholic. He accepts it all—neither more nor less—with the same sincerity with which his unlettered brother accepts it. The mental attitude of Catholics toward their faith is simply one of absolute certitude. In matters of opinion, or of credence, or of speculation, or of mere probability, we exercise our own judgments like the rest of men on those same matters, and come to our own conclusions according to personal bias and the tone of our intellectual training. Even in matters of faith our explanations of the various articles of our creed may vary and some may even be erroneous. There are men, for instance, who find the presence of design in the material [27] world a strong argument for the existence of God; others refuse to be convinced by that argument, but find their strongest demonstration in a recognition of the moral sense. But it is clearly an abuse of terms to call our honest divergence of opinion concerning all matters upon which we are free to diverge, free thinking or agnosticism in the accepted meaning of these words. You cannot conceive a Catholic agnostic. As well might you think a positive negation. One term is as meaningless as the other. You might conceive a minister of the Church, whether priest or bishop, continuing to exercise the functions of his ministry long after he has ceased to believe in their efficacy, but sooner or later he shirks the discipline of his position, and the world takes at his worth the man who sails under false colors or who dares not assume the responsibility of his convictions. Now, it would be a vile slander upon the Catholic priesthood in America—and the writer from whom we have quoted would be the last to put it upon them intentionally—to say that any number of them were praying to a God in whose existence they did not believe, or administering sacraments in whose efficacy they had no faith.

Our Catholic writers are of all shades of opinion upon the issues of the day, and they may be so without incurring ecclesiastical censure. Take, for instance, the burning questions of modern science and modern thought. Some there are who think that as children of the age it is their duty to face the problems of the age and effect their solution as best they may. Others, again, are alarmed at the hostile attitude of certain leaders of modern thought towards the Church, and, identifying the person with the cause, condemn the whole without a fair hearing. They seek refuge in extreme rigidity of doctrine. In their opinion the Decalogue is incomplete, the sermon on the mount too mild, and Rome too lenient. The non-Catholic world is only too prone to identify this class of writers with the Church. Their extreme views bring odium upon religion. They seem incapable of learning from the blunders of the past. They speak and write as though the Inquisition had never made Galileo say that the earth did not move round the sun, or the Sorbonne had not dictated to Buffon what he should write concerning this world's formation. Every educated Catholic knows that neither the Inquisition nor the Sorbonne is the Church, and though both were formidable bodies, they had no claim to infallibility. Why should these over-hasty writers attempt to force a repetition of such blunders? They are misleading, and are not to be considered in any respect representative. You will find other Catholic writers holding views as broad as theirs are narrow. The children of the Church have great liberty of action and opinion. It is the liberty of children in a well-regulated [28] household. They know the limit beyond which they must not pass.

The doctrinal life of the Church consists in this, that she at all times and under all circumstances preserves unity of doctrine in the midst of multiplicity of opinion. The doctrine she teaches to-day she has always and everywhere and to all men taught from the beginning. This is the secret of her strength and her endurance as a teaching body. Permit me to quote for you an impartial witness to the fact. Speaking of the characteristic of absolute infallibility Mr. Mallock says: "Any supernatural religion that renounces its claim to this, it is clear can profess to be a semi-revelation only. It is a hybrid thing, partly natural and partly supernatural, and it thus practically has all the qualities of a religion that is wholly natural. In so far as it professes to be revealed, it of course professes to be infallible; but if the revealed part be in the first place hard to distinguish, and in the second place hard to understand—if it may mean many things, and many of those things contradictory—it might just as well have been never made at all. To make it in any sense an infallible revelation, or in other words, a revelation at all, to us, we need a power to interpret the testament that shall have equal authority with that testament itself. Simple as this truth seems, mankind have been a long time learning it. Indeed, it is only in the present day that its practical meaning has come generally to be recognized. But now, at this moment, upon all sides of us, history is teaching it to us by an example so clearly that we can no longer mistake it. That example is Protestant Christianity, and the condition to which, after three centuries, it is now visibly bringing itself. It is at last beginning to exhibit to us the true results of the denial of infallibility to a religion that professes to be supernatural. We are at last beginning to see in it neither the purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor the corrupter of a pure revelation, but the practical denier of all revelation whatsoever. It is fast evaporating into a mere natural theism, and is thus showing us what, as a governing power, natural theism is. Let us look at England, Europe and America and consider the condition of the entire Protestant world. Religion, it is true, we shall find in it; but it is religion from which not only the supernatural element is disappearing, but in which the natural element is fast becoming nebulous. It is, indeed, growing, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says it is, into a religion of dreams. All its doctrines are growing vague as dreams, and like dreams their outlines are forever changing. . . . . There is hardly any conceivable aberration of moral license that has not in some quarter or other embodied itself into a rule of life and claimed to be the proper outcome of Protestant [29] Christianity."[1] So far Mr. Mallock. His remarks make it clear to us that a church regarding itself as Divine in its origin and inspiration and at the same time not unerring as a guide would be a self contradiction.

But there are limitations to the teaching mission of the Church. The fulfilment [sic] of Christ's promise to be with His Church and to guide and direct her in her mission extends only to those things for which she has been commissioned. She has no mission to teach purely secular science. She may utilize the sciences she finds her children possessed of, and speak to them in the language of that science, but she never descends to take issue upon every new scientific theory. Should science trespass upon her domain and assert anything opposed to her fixed and immutable principles she cautions her children against such teachings. Individual members of the Church may dispute over certain issues, but the Church bides her own time with the patient tranquility of one who has outlived many disputes and seen many brilliant and aggressive theories dashed to spray at her feet. And when science shall have winnowed the chaff from the grain and human reason shall have become possessed of an additional fact or an additional law of nature, the Church shall be found precisely where she stood before the discovery. She is not the one who has been obliged to shift her lines. It is in this attitude of the Church that we have the clue to her whole bearing towards science in the course of its development and its variations.

Here it may be asked: Since the teaching mission of the Church is thus circumscribed, why does she make such persistent efforts to control education in all its roots and branches? To this we would say: The Church cannot recognize any system of training for the child from which religion is excluded. With her religion is an essential factor in education. Among Christian peoples the child has always combined Christian doctrine and Christian practices with purely secular teaching in the school-room. The child of Christian parents is entitled to this Christian education. To impose upon him any system of education calculated to weaken his hold upon the Christian heritage into which he was born, were an act of gross injustice. Our Catholic clergy, as the pastors of souls, answerable to God for those confided to their care, are in duty bound to see that the children of their parish are instructed in the doctrines and practices of that Church which they believe to be the pillar and the ground of Truth. This can be properly and efficiently done only by means of a system of education especially provided for the purpose. Given a clergy believing in the Divine [30] origin of their religion, believing that religion to be so great a boon that they would gladly die for it, believing that unless the child is at an early age taught religious doctrine and religious practices he runs the risk of growing up wholly indifferent to the priceless value of his Christian heritage, and you cannot conceive that clergy holding any other attitude towards a purely secular education for their Catholic children than one of hostility. It were a betrayal of their trust, an abandonment of the birthright of those confided to them, to acquiesce in a school system from which Catholic doctrine, Catholic prayer, and Catholic practices of devotion had been banished. Therefore it is that the Church binds the consciences of pastors and of people to keep their Catholic children aloof from such schools, and to establish parochial schools whenever and wherever it is possible.

Her mission to teach gives the Church the right to safeguard the child against any influence that would be injurious to faith and morals. Hers is the right to see that the books made use of, the men and women imparting instruction, and the character of the instruction given, be such as aid in the work of spiritualizing and elevating the child, and making his soul worthy of its heavenly abode. Hers is the duty to forbid to her children the use of books in which there is doctrine contrary to that which she teaches, in which is to be found any system or principle of mental philosophy that she has condemned, or in which history is compiled with a view to misrepresenting Catholicity or undermining Catholic influences. Children, or even young men and young women, are not in position to take in both sides of religious, philosophical or historical questions; they lack maturity of judgment and the information essential to determine truth from error. It were folly to leave their weak, half-trained, ill-informed minds to grapple alone with issues that exercise the most ripened scholars to comparatively little purpose. And so it happens that while the Church has no mission as regards the imparting of purely secular education, it belongs to her function to exercise due vigilance over every branch of science and letters that would be likely, directly or indirectly, to affect religious belief.

V.

We now come to the State. The State is also a social organism. It grows out of the very nature of society. The family, and not the individual, is the unit of the State. "The human family," says Cardinal Manning, "contains the first principles and laws of authority, obedience, and order. These three conditions of society are of Divine origin; and they are the constructive laws of all civil [31] or political society."[1] Therefore, the State is of Divine origin. It is organized for the protection of society and the common weal. It has rights and duties and responsibilities. Its rights are embodied in the natural law, and come not from society, nor from its own intrinsic nature, but from God who is the source and sanction of all authority, obedience and order. The State is organized directly for the happiness and well-being of man in this life. It protects his person and property; it guarantees him liberty of action in the fulfilment of his duties; it frames such laws as promote his welfare and the welfare of the nation. The form of government established in the State is determined by the people. There is no Divine ordinance as to what that form may be. Nor has the Church a preference. If our theologians speak of the king and the kingly form of government, it is because that is the form with which when writing they were most familiar. But the present Pope, Leo XIII., has clearly defined the position of the Church as regards form of government: "While being the guardian of her rights," he says, "and most careful against encroachment, the Church has no care what form of government exists in a State, or by what custom the civil order of Christian nations is directed; of the various kinds of government there is none of which she disapproves, so long as religion and moral discipline live untouched."[2] But while the form is determined by external circumstances, the authority and the sanction come from God. No man, for instance, has the power of life and death over another; and yet in the interests of society, the State condemns the criminal to be hanged. Whence derives it this dread power? Not from society, for the command Thou shall not kill is as applicable to a body of individuals as to a single person. Not in the State itself, for the State is only the society composing it, and society cannot give what it does not possess. The power and the sanction of that power come to the State from God alone. And since the State is of God as well as the Church, complete harmony should exist in all their relations. But the history of modern civilization is the history of unintermitting struggle between Church and State. Whence arises this struggle? The sphere of action of each is distinct. "Both Church and State have each an individual domain; wherefore in fulfilling their separate duties neither is subject to the other within the limits fixed by their boundary lines."[3] So speaks the reigning pontiff. To understand the struggle we must go back to the origin of Christianity. Christianity found itself face to face with Pagan Rome. Its Divine Founder counselled His disciples to [32] render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's and to God the things that were God's. And St. Paul threw the whole face of his energetic soul into insistance [sic] on obedience to the State. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers; for there is no power but from God; and those that are are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God and they that resist purchase to themselves damnation. . . . Render therefore to all men their dues. Tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor."[1] But there were clearly defined limitations beyond which the Christian could not submit. He could not worship the false gods of the pagan world. He could not share in the national rites and ceremonies that cloaked the most disgusting orgies and crimes. The Christian had learned the holy nature of the living God, the heinousness of sin and the necessity of keeping his soul spotless before the all-penetrating Presence. He had learned that many pagan practices, sanctioned by religion, were sinful, and he preferred death to sin. This gave rise to a bitter struggle between the State and the early Christian Church. There was no compromise. Under all circumstances God is to be obeyed rather than men. And so the Roman empire reeked with the blood of martyrs. It was a death-struggle. On the one side was the all-powerful, all-absorbing empire of the world, and on the other were a few scattered Christians, weak in numbers, weak in rank and position, weak in every respect but in the moral courage to live up to their convictions. But moral courage, animated by a burning idea, is an irresistible force. The vast material resources of the Roman Empire could not withstand its progress. Rome under Constantine proclaimed herself Christian. Her very law became regenerated.

St. Augustine had said—and his words bore with them great weight throughout the Middle Ages—that true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ.[2] In the light of Christian truth and in the practice of Christian justice, always tempered by Christian mercy, the absolute law of pagan Rome came to be regarded as supreme injustice. Public opinion was gradually educated up to a higher conception of right and equity. Men became impressed with the sanctity of human life. From the beginning the Church had set her face against abortion and infanticide. In the course of time the State imbibed the same horror for these crimes and enacted laws against them. Gladiatorial games, in which lives were cast away to pander to a depraved taste, were abolished. A sense of universal brotherhood [33] grew apace. The dignity of labor became recognized. Charity extended a helping hand in many directions to the relief of want and the assuaging of misery and suffering. Immediately after the days of Constantine it is no longer the emperor who is remembered in men's last will and testament; it is the Church as the dispenser of charities. Here is already a great revolution of ideas. But the greatest of all revolutions in Roman jurisprudence is the recognition of the woman's rights in the marriage law as standing upon an equal footing with those of the man. This change renders the Justinian Code an immortal landmark in the history of human progress. The world has ceased to be Roman; the Galilean has conquered.

In like manner did the Church educate the barbarian up to the same sense of the sanctity of human life, the same respect for others' rights and others' goods, and the same idea of a universal brotherhood. In legislating for sin she was legislating for crime. The early Christian kings frequently made the Penitentials the basis of their criminal code. Her bishops and clergy in their councils enacted laws as beneficial to the State as they were helpful to souls. And so almost imperceptibly did modern jurisprudence receive a Christian tone till in its whole substance and meaning it has become solely and peculiarly Christian.[1] Well might Lecky write of the influence of the Church: "She exercised for many centuries an almost absolute empire over the thoughts and actions of mankind and created a civilization which was permeated in every part with ecclesiastical influence."[2] Let us not close our eyes to the nature of that influence. It was an influence achieved only after a long and patient struggle. The Church begins by teaching the barbarian his letters. By means of literature and ritual and ceremonial and plain chant she speaks to his imagination, and he understands and appreciates her language and his nature grows refined beneath the refining influence. By means of prayer and the grace of the sacraments she moulds [sic] his character and forms his soul to virtue. Her mission was one of civilization. It was the effort of mind to predominate over matter, the taming of lawless natures, the lifting up into a higher plane of thought, exertion and aspiration, a humanity that had otherwise been content to live within the most circumscribed sphere of earthly existence. An Ambrose stays the footsteps of Theodosius at the Church-door because his hands were stained with wanton bloodshed. This sublime act embodies the spirit and the mission of the Church towards the State. "The resistance," [34] says Bryce, "and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known before; the abasement of Theodosius the emperor before Ambrose the bishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority."[1] And so we find the Church at all times and under all circumstances, without respect of persons, regulating conduct and preserving purity of faith and morals.

VI.

In the midst of this civilizing process there loom up two powers, each the embodiment of a distinct idea, each claiming supremacy. In the struggle between these two powers we have the clue to all mediaeval and modern history. One is the Papacy; the other is the Holy Roman Empire. From the days of Constantine, according as the people became Christian, bishops exercised more and more influence in temporal affairs. They performed the functions of magistrates and judges, and so even-handed were they in administering the law the very pagans brought suit before them in preference to the civil courts. They were the counsellors [sic] and ministers of rulers. It was the bishops of France who made of France a nation. Her kings in consequence recognized their jurisdiction. Charles the Bald (A.D. 859) said that "by them he had been crowned, and to their paternal corrections and chastisements he was willing to submit."[2] What bishops were in their respective dioceses, the Pope came to be regarded by all Christendom. How else keep international relations upon a footing of equity? A weaker nation was helpless to right the wrongs inflicted by one more powerful. Countries far apart would find difficulty in coming to a mutual understanding. But, under the authority and through the mediation of the Supreme Head of Christendom, whom all looked upon as the father of the whole Christian family, the representative of justice and the avenger of evil-doing, wrongs might be righted and reconciliations effected under difficulties which might otherwise lead to disastrous results. And so the Pope became, by virtue of public law and by the consent of the Christian people—not by Divine right—the arbiter between sovereigns and the peacemaker among nations. His power as then recognized scarcely knew a limit. He could for sufficient reason depose kings, absolve people from allegiance to their rulers, place whole nations under interdict, quell wars, decide upon the justice of a cause, and more than once have we seen rulers place their kingdoms in fiefdom at his feet, as their only protection against a too-powerful enemy. Thus in 1214, we find Innocent III. forbidding [35] any bishop or cleric, without a special mandate from the Holy See, to censure King John of England, as he had become a vassal of the Pope.[1]

Side by side with the Papacy, stood the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor was the champion of the Church, pledged to her defence [sic] against all secular enemies. According to Frederick I., "Divine Providence had especially appointed the Roman Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church."[2] The Empire was the creation of the Pope; it was not hereditary. The first Emperor was Charlemagne, crowned such at the Christmas of the year 800, by Leo III. It was Leo's own work, done for the peace and protection of the Church. The office was, like that of the Papacy itself, non-hereditary. "Each of these lofty offices," says Freeman, "is open to every baptized man; each alike is purely elective; each may be the reward of merit in any rank of life or in any corner of Christendom. While smaller offices were closely confined by local or aristocratic restrictions, the Throne of Augustus and the Chair of Peter were, in theory at least, open to the ambition of every man of orthodox belief. Even in the darkest times of aristocratic exclusiveness, no one dared to lay own as a principle that the Roman Emperor, any more than the Roman Bishop, need be of princely or Roman ancestry. Freedom of birth—Roman citizenship, in short, to clothe mediaeval ideas in classical words—was all that was needed."[3] And so the Holy Roman Empire, now a shadow, now a power, continued to exist by the grace of the Holy See, sometimes to aid, more frequently to hinder, the Church in the exercise of her functions and prerogatives. With the hereditary title came an hereditary tendency of reversion to the absolutism of the Caesars. Ecclesiastical privileges at first granted the emperors by the Popes, their successors in the Holy Roman Empire sought to convert into rights beyond the jurisdiction of the Papacy. The quarrel may read to us like a story of petty spites and personal squabbles; but its meaning is deeper. The very existence of the Church was involved. When bishoprics were put up for sale to the highest bidder, or were kept vacant for years that their revenues might flow into the royal or imperial coffers, it becomes evident that religion, and spiritual life, and morality must suffer, and the whole mission of the Church be frustrated. Upon more than one Pope must we accept the verdict of Neander concerning the indomitable Hildebrand: "Gregory VII. was animated by something higher than by self-seeking and selfish ambition; it was an idea which swayed him and to which he sacrificed [36] all other interests. It was the idea of the independence of the Church, and of a tribunal to exercise judgment over all other human relations; the idea of a religious and ethical sovereignty over the world to be exercised by the Papacy."[1] Those were stormy times, and it took a strong hand to curb the headlong career of the powerful when they would ride roughshod over the most sacred rights. When Philip Augustus, of France, violated the sanctity and indissolubility of the marriage-bond, it was the Popes who brought him to a sense of his duty, and compelled him to undo the great wrong he had done his injured wife, the beautiful and virtuous Ingeburge. Instances might be multiplied, in which the Popes shall be found struggling against might and prestige in the cause of the honor and dignity of womanhood. "Go through the long annals of Church history," says Cardinal Newman, "century after century, and say, was there ever a time when her bishops, and notably the Bishop of Rome, were slow to give their testimony in behalf of the moral and revealed law and to suffer for their obedience to it, or forgot that they had a message to deliver to the world? Not the task merely of administering spiritual consolation, or of making the sick-bed easy, or of training up good members of society, and of 'serving tables' (though all this was included in their range of duty); but specially and directly to deliver a message to the world, a definite message to high and low, from the world's Maker, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear. The history, surely, of the Church, in all past times, ancient as well as mediaeval, is the very embodiment of that tradition of Apostolical independence and freedom of speech, which in the eyes of man is her great offence now."[2]

Great is the debt the nations owe the Church for having preserved throughout the ages this independence of action and of speech. Despotism and tyranny would have had little respect for any or every element that enters into our modern civilization, if there were no authority to call a halt and say in tones that were unmistakeable [sic] and that commanded respect: "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" This was the temporal mission of the Papacy. How staunchly and how efficiently she fulfilled her mission has been recognized by all competent historians. Few there are who are not willing to subscribe to the verdict of Ancillon: "In the Middle Ages, when there was no social order, the Papacy, and perhaps the Papacy alone, saved Europe from a state of absolute barbarism. It created relations amongst nations far removed from each other, was a common centre [sic] for all, a point of union for States otherwise isolated. [37] It was a supreme court of justice raised in the midst of universal anarchy. Its judgments were from time to time received with the respect they merited. It fenced in and restrained the despotism of emperors. It compensated for the want of a due balance of power and lessened the injurious effects of feudal governments."[1] Let us add that the Papacy was more than a merely compensating principle. Based upon the supremacy of the spiritual over the material, recognized and acted upon by Christian nations possessing the same faith, it was a most secure, a most economic and a most impartial tribunal of arbitration. Has modern political science been able to furnish a better substitute?

When kings ceased to look to the Papacy for recognition and sanction, and no longer feared interdict or excommunication, they sought shelter in the Divine right of royalty to do all things. They refused to hold themselves amenable to any tribunal. "It is notorious," says the late Henry Summer Maine, "that as soon as the decay of the Feudal System had thrown the mediaeval constitutions out of working order, and when the Reformation had discredited the authority of the Pope, the doctrine of the Divine right of kings rose immediately into an importance which had never before attended it."[2] We all know how that doctrine brought a Charles I. to the block. Where else is despotism likely to lead? The kings of France complained of Papal interference; they found theologians to exaggerate the Papal pretensions; they sighed for the freedom of the Caliph. Well, they reduced that interference to a minimum; they endeavored to make every bishop a pope in his own diocese; they placed their tools in the diocesan seats. The theory of a national Church became popular; Gallicanism reigned; Rome received but scant respect, and what was the result? The people, exasperated against the oppressions of a century, rose in defence of rights and liberties which they were denied, and in the reeking horrors of the Revolution, became intoxicated with the blood of king and priest. Were there no Gallican Church identified with a long record of tyrannies and oppressions—had Rome been uniformly free to select its own bishops—its clergy would have been wholly identified with the people; their power and influence would have guided the storm, and instead of the guillotine and the orgies with which every student of history is familiar, a peaceful adjustment of the difficulties between king and people might have been made. This is all the more evident when we remember that the principle of the Revolution is the great underlying idea of modern times. All modern thought, all great political movements, all great social reforms are based upon the [38] sublime principle of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity rightly understood. Now, this principle has in it nothing to alarm. All the nations of the earth are marching towards its realization. In some, the awakening is earlier than in others. This was the underlying idea of the old Republic of Florence, "which would have no king because its king was Jesus Christ;"[1] it was the underlying idea that led to the Constitution of 1688, in England; it nerved the cantons of Switzerland to struggle against Austrian domination till they were free as the chamois ranging their beloved Alps; it gave birth to our own republic. Its spirit is in the air and will not down. Statesmen and governments may slight or ignore or even resist it; but such a course is one of folly. They who will not recognize it and give it direction and prepare men for its coming, will be borne down by its fierce impetus.

Again, since the treaty of Westphalia, Europe has been adjusted by what is known as balance of power. According to this principle, no one nation will be allowed to assume control beyond a certain limit. She may absorb a certain number of districts or provinces belonging to a weaker power, but, in order to preserve an equilibrium, she must not destroy that power. Or, a weaker power is a source of trouble to more powerful nations in her neighborhood. As a solution to the difficulty, why may they not—even as happened to Poland—carve the weaker nation up and distribute a share to each, still preserving, the equilibrium? These are events that could not have occurred under the arbitration of the Popes. A merely mechanical principle, with no other basis than expedience, no other motive than policy, such as is this principle of balance of power, must needs be immoral in its very nature and lead to acts of gross injustice. It is bearing its fruits to-day in Europe. Look at the attitude of all the great powers on the Continent! Each is in arms, grimly awaiting war. The strong and the young are idly consuming the products of the soil, and the nations are becoming impoverished. All human ingenuity and all triumphs of physical science are concentrated upon the discovery of the most rapid and most effectual methods of destroying human life. This state of affairs is radically wrong. Who would not rejoice to see every nation of Europe disarm, go back to the arts of peace, and leave the arbitration of all international difficulties to the Pope?

The Holy Roman Empire has passed into shadow-land. The doctrine of the absolute right of kings to perpetrate all acts in God's name, and under the Divine sanction, is no more. Even where crowned heads still exist in Europe, not they, but their peoples—Russia being excepted—rule. The world's future is altogether in the hands of the people. The relations of Church [39] and State in the new order of things may easily prove far more satisfactory than in the old order. In our own American Republic these relations are almost ideal. We know that purely ideal relations between Church and State obtain only where religion is one in society. Then might the secular power be subject to the spiritual power, as the body is subject to the soul; then might the State co-operate [sic] with the Church, aiding her when necessary in her work of establishing the kingdom of God in souls, knowing that all else, bearing upon temporal happiness, will surely follow. Here, where the forms of Christian belief are many, this order of things is impossible. But the order of things, guaranteed us by our Constitution and our laws, is admirable.

The noble patriots who framed our Constitution and laid so firmly the foundations of our republic, built upon the rights and liberties inherent in man. Now these rights and liberties with their accompanying duties and responsibilities, as between man and ma, are not of the State. They are above and beyond the State. They are the vital principle that gives being to the State. They are the natural law, which is a participation in the eternal law of God. The State is simply the mouth-piece to proclaim this law, and the instrument to enforce it. The principles of right and wrong existed before they were made to enter into statutory decrees, just as the Decalogue was engraved on the hearts of men before Moses inscribed it on tablets of stone. Those principles are eternal, and it is our pride and our glory and the secret of our prosperity as a people that the great charter of our liberties is based upon them. In consequence the State admits the right of every many to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. Every man has his rights of conscience not as privileges conceded by the State, but as rights existing among his other natural rights, recognized and acknowledged by the State as held under a higher law than its own. Church and State do not here exist upon a system of mutual concessions or privileges. There is here no absorption of one into the other. They are distinct, but they are not separated. On the contrary, their union is most intimate and most harmonious. "There is nothing," says Brownson, "which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII. and other great popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France, Aragon and England, and the Italian republics that is not recognized here by our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old antagonism between Church and State does not exist. There is here a certain antagonism, no doubt, between the Church and the sects, but none between the Church and the State or civil society. Here the Church has, so far as civil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has ever struggled for. Here [40] she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to meet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the spiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The placet of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor accepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and conducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or hindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or concession of the State, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right of conscience, independently of the State."[1]

Where society is split up into a diversity of creeds, there is supreme wisdom in the attitude of the State towards all, granting freedom of conscience so long as conscience dictates nothing contrary to the principles of natural right, or calculated to outrage the moral sense of society. We ask no closer relations of Church and State. So far as our religion is concerned, our sole cry is: "Hands off!" The State is incompetent to pronounce upon religious matters; it has no mission to determine the validity of a religious creed. To discriminate in favor of any one to the exclusion of all the others, were an act of injustice to every citizen not holding the favored creed. It were un-American because it were unconstitutional. It is a primary duty of the State to aid and protect its citizens in the fulfilment of their respective duties, to secure to them their inalienable rights, to see that justice is done between man and man; above all it is a duty of the State to safe-guard the weak minorities in their rights and immunities against the more powerful majorities.

In every man and woman there is an inseparable union of Church and State. Each holds certain religious tenets; many belong to some visible form of Christianity; but in proportion as all live up to their religious convictions, in that proportion are they good citizens, faithful in the performance of their civic duties—honest and honorable and just in all relations of life. Christian virtue in Christian society has never dimmed the civic virtues. Tell us, would the New England Puritans—the revered ancestors of many whom we now address—have left so lasting an impression upon this republic if they had been less intensely religious? The fierceness and asperity and intolerance that entered into their religious convictions and dictated the Colonial Blue Laws, also shaped the rigid honesty and integrity of character that would die rather than deviate a hair's breadth from the path of rectitude. When that noble son of Connecticut, Nathan Hale, was about to be hanged as a spy, his sole regret was that he had not other lives to give [41] for his country. Think you he was any the less sturdy a patriot because he had been strictly and religiously brought up in the stern tenets of his Puritan father? Can you imagine Charles Carroll of Carrollton, throwing his broad acres and his spotless name into the country's cause, any the less a patriot because he had been carefully trained by the Jesuits? Did he find any difficulty in reconciling his allegiance to Rome with his allegiance to the new-born republic? Was his cousin John Carroll, the first Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, less a patriot, when he accompanied the commission who sought the alliance of Canada in the cause of independence, than John Jay, when by his fanatical address to the people of Great Britain, he rendered that alliance an impossibility?[1] This is a subject over which men have needlessly waxed wroth. Let us raise ourselves above prejudices and look facts full in the face, and we will find, each in his own person, complete reconciliation between Church and State. Is not every full and perfect life an harmonious blending of these two orders of duties?" In this fact is the solution to the whole problem of Church and State. The name of God may not be in our Constitution, but His hand is discernible in every line of it. With far-seeing wisdom was that first amendment inserted: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Footnotes:

Page 20:
1. Brownson's Works, vol. xiii., p. 265.
2. Cardinal Mazzella, De Religione et Ecclesia, p. 449.
3. Naturrecht und Politik, p. 237, Bonn, 1871.
4. Schema concerning the Church prepared by the Fathers of the Vatican Council, apud Hergenröther, Church and State, vol. 1., p. 52.

Page 21:
1. Isid. Pelus., 1., iii, ep. 249.
2. Hom. 15, in 2 Cor., n. 5; Migne xi., 509.
3. De Legg, iv., p. 288.
4. Politics, viii., 8–12.

Page 22:
1. The First Age of the Church, vol. ii., pp. 216, 217.
2. Apol. I., pro Christ xii.

Page 23:
1. Summa Theologiae, II., ii., qu. xxxi., art. 7.
2. Actes eccles. et civiles de tous les Synodes nationaux de l'Eglise reformée de France, ii, 181, 182.

Page 25:
1. "But all theologians and laymen know that the Pope can do nothing against the Divine law; that he cannot dispense from the observance of the Fourth Commandment; that all Papal laws, even if they must be regarded as irreformable, still do not cease to be human."—Cardinal Hergenroether, Anti-Janus, p. 42.

Page 26:
1. The Westminster Review, June, 1888.

Page 29:
1. Is Life Worth Living? pp. 274, 275.

Page 31:
1. The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, p. 46. Am. ed.
2. Encyclical, January 10, 1890. [Sapientiae Christianae, n. 28]
3. Ibid. [n. 30]

Page 32:
1. Romans xiii., 1–7.
2. De Civ. Dei., ii., 4.

Page 33:
1. See Bluntschli, Allgemeines Statsrecht, p. 6.
2. History of European Morals, ii. p., 15.

Page 34:
1. Holy Roman Empire, 3d ed., p. 120.
2. Hefele, iv., p. 197.

Page 35:
1. Migne, ccxvii., p. 226. Supplem. ep. 185.
2. Letter to the Prelates of Germany.
3. Historical Essays, vi., p. 136.

Page 36:
1. Church History, ii., p. 375. Third edition.
2. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 24.

Page 37:
1. Tableau des Revolutions du Système Politique de l'Europe, ti., introd. p. 133.
2. Ancient Law, p. 334.

Page 38:
1. Cardinal Capecelatro: Life of St. Philip Neri, vol. i., p. 34.

Page 40:
1. Works, vol. xiii., p. 142.

Page 41:
1. See a valuable article by John Gilmary Shea, in the U. S. Catholic Historical Magazine, vol. iii., No. x., "Why Canada is not a Part of the United States."

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Source: Brother Azarias, "Church and State," The American Catholic Quarterly Review 16 (January–October 1891): 20–41.