And it is on this account that the State should not interfere with that other destiny. As its nature and aim are different from her own, as the two have nothing in common, to interfere must produce confusion and usurpation.
That which the state now proclaims was taught to it by the Church, the Catholic Church. During centuries when the state wished to interfere in matters of opinion and salvation, did not the Church distinctly reject such pretensions. And how did she do so? By the distinction of temporal and spiritual, of terrestrial and eternal life, that is, by the incompetence of the state to deal with the relations of the soul with God.
And the Catholic Church was right in sustaining this principle, the forgetfulness of which has cost her much. How did she lose a portion of her empire? How came Henry VIII. amongst others to separate from her? By proclaiming the temporal power competent to matters of faith and salvation. Let Catholicism go back to the sixteenth century, to the history of the reformation. It is by the confusion of the two powers, by this religious competence of the state, that she has suffered the rudest shocks. The Catholic Church has no more dangerous enemies than lay theologians, whether princes or doctors.
They are the more dangerous foes because religious motives are not those which alone may animate them, and lay usurpations in matters of faith have often served as a veil to the most worldly interests. Had the religious incompetence of the state always been acknowledged, the church would not so often have seen her property as well as her power in danger or lost.
She has henceforth nothing similar to fear. Usurpation is on both sides forbidden. Her kingdom belongs to herself alone; she possesses it completely and securely.
On this side, the great side of Christian religion in this world, peace is easy and may be sincere between Catholicism and the new social state.
Let us see where the real difficulty exists.
The government of the Catholic Church is a power invested in her own domain, and in matters of faith and salvation, with the character of infallibility.
I put aside, great as they are, all secondary questions, such as the knowledge of the conditions and limits in which infallibility exists, to whom it belongs, to the Holy Seat or to Councils, or to the Holy Seat and Councils united. I look to the one principle which is found in every combination and form of Catholic belief.
The principle itself is founded on the perpetuity of divine revelation, faithfully preserved in the church by means of tradition, and renewed when needful by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which ceases not to descend on the successor of St. Peter who was placed at the head of the church by Jesus Christ himself.