We assume in the outset that there really exist in human society two distinct orders, the spiritual and the temporal, each with its own distinctive functions, laws, and sphere of action. In Christian society, the representative of the spiritual order is the church, and the representative of the temporal is the state. In the rudest stages of society the elements of the two orders exist, but are not clearly apprehended as distinct orders, nor as having each its distinct and proper representative. It is only in Christian society, or society enlightened by the Gospel, that the two orders are duly distinguished, and each in its own representative is placed in its normal relation with the other.
The type, indeed the reason, of this distinction of two orders in society is in the double nature of man, or the fact that man exists only as soul and body, and needs to be cared for in each. The church, representing the spiritual, has charge of the souls of men, and looks after their minds, ideas, intelligence, motives, consciences, and consequently has the supervision of education, morals, literature, science, and art. The state, representing the temporal, has charge of men's bodies, and looks after the material wants and interests of individuals and society. We take this illustration from the fathers and mediæval doctors. It is perfect. The analogy of church and state in the moral order, with the soul and body in the physical order, commends itself to the common sense of every one, and carries in itself the evidence of its justness, especially when it is seen to correspond strictly in the moral order, to the distinction of soul and body in the physical order. We shall take, then, the relation of soul and body as the type throughout of the ideal relation of church and state.
Man lives not as body alone, nor as soul alone, but as the union of the two, in reciprocal commerce. Soul and body are distinct, but not separate. Each has its own distinctive properties and functions, and neither can replace the other; but their separation is death, the death of the body only, not of the soul indeed, for that is immortal. The body is material, and, separated from the soul, is dust and ashes, mere slime of the earth, from which it was formed. It is the same in the moral order with society, which is not state alone, nor church alone, but the union of the two in reciprocal commerce. The two are distinct, each has its distinctive nature, laws, and functions, and neither can perform the functions of the other, or take the other's place. But though distinct, they cannot in the normal state of society be separated. The separation of the state from the church is in the moral order what the separation of the body from the soul is in the physical order. It is death, the death of the state, not indeed of the church; for she, like the soul, nay, like God himself, is immortal. The separation of the state from the church destroys its moral life, and leaves society to become a mass of moral rottenness and corruption. Hence, the holy father includes the proposition to separate church and state, in his syllabus of condemned propositions.
The soul is defined by the church as the forma corporis, the informing or vital principle of the body. The church in the moral order is forma civitatis, the informing, the vital principle of the state or civil society, which has no moral life of its own, since all moral life, by its very term, proceeds from the spiritual order. There is in the physical order no existence, but from God through the medium of his creative act; so is there no moral life in society, but from the spiritual order which is founded by God as supreme law-giver, and represented by the church, the guardian and judge alike of the natural law and the revealed law.
The soul is the nobler and superior part of man, and it belongs to it, not to make away with the body, or to assume its functions, but to exercise the magisterium over it, to direct and govern it according to the law of God; not to the body to assume the mastery over the soul, and to bring the law of the mind into captivity to law in the members. So is the church, as representing the spiritual order, and charged with the care of souls, the nobler and superior part of society, and to her belongs the magisterium of entire human society; and it is for her in the moral order to direct and control civil society, by judicially declaring, and applying to its action, the law of God, of which she is, as we have just said, the guardian and judge, and to which it is bound by the Supreme Law-Giver to subordinate its entire official conduct.
We note here that this view condemns alike the absorption of the state in the church, and the absorption of the church in the state, and requires each to remain distinct from the other, each with its own organization, organs, faculties, and sphere of action. It favors, therefore, neither what is called theocracy, or clerocracy, rather, to which Calvinistic Protestantism is strongly inclined, nor the supremacy of the state, to which the age tends, and which was assumed in all the states of Gentile antiquity, whence came the persecution of Christians by the pagan emperors. We note farther, that the church does not make the law; she only promulgates, declares, and applies it, and is herself as much bound by it as is the state itself. The law itself is prescribed for the government of all men and nations, by God himself as supreme law-giver, or the end or final cause of creation, and binds equally states and individuals, churchmen and statesmen, sovereigns and subjects.
Such, as we have learned it, is the Catholic doctrine of the relation of church and state, and such is the relation that in the divine order really exists between the two orders, and which the church has always and everywhere labored with all her zeal and energy to introduce and maintain in society. It is her ideal of catholic or truly Christian society, but which has never yet been perfectly realized, though an approach to its realization, the author thinks, was made under the Christian Roman emperors. The chronic condition of the two orders in society, instead of union and coöperation, or reciprocal commerce, has been that of mutual distrust or undisguised hostility. During the first three centuries, the relation between them was that of open antagonism, and the blood of Christians made the greater part of the world then known hallowed ground, and the Christians, as Lactantius remarks, conquered the world, not by slaughtering, but by being slaughtered. The pagan sovereign of Rome claimed, and was held to unite both powers in himself, and was at once imperator, pontifix maximus, and divus, or god. The state, even after the conversion of the empire and of the barbarians that overturned it and seated themselves on its ruins, never fully disclaimed the spiritual faculties conceded it by Græco-Roman or Italo-Greek civilization.
All through the middle ages, Kenelm Digby's ages of faith, when it is pretended the church had every thing her own way, and the haughty power of her supreme pontiffs and their tyranny over such meek and lamb-like temporal princes as Henry IV., Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick II. of Germany, Philip Augustus of France, Henry II. and John Lackland of England, have been the theme of many a school-boy declamation against her, and adduced by grave statesmen as an excuse for depriving Catholics of their liberty, confiscating their goods, and cutting their throats—all through those ages, we say, she enjoyed not a moment's peace, hardly a truce, and was obliged to sustain an unceasing struggle with the civil authority against its encroachments on the spiritual order, and for her own independence and freedom of action as the church of God. In this struggle, the struggle of mind against matter, of moral power against physical force, the church was far from being, at least to human eyes, always victorious, and she experienced more than one disastrous defeat. In the sixteenth century, Cæsar carried away from her the north of Europe, as he had long since carried away the whole east, and forced her, in the nations that professed to recognize her as representing the spiritual order, to make him such large concessions as left her little more than the shadow of independence; and the people and their rulers are now almost everywhere conspiring to take away even that shadow, and to render her completely subject to the state, or representative of the temporal order.
There is no opinion more firmly fixed in the minds of the people of to-day, at least according to the journals, than that the union of church and state is execrable and ought not to be suffered to exist. The words cannot be pronounced without sending a thrill of horror through society, and calling forth the most vigorous and indignant protest from every self-appointed defender of modern civilization, progress, liberty, equality, and fraternity. What is called the "Liberal party," sometimes "the movement party," but what we call "the revolution," has everywhere for its primum mobile, its impulse and its motive, the dissolution of what remains of the union of church and state, the total separation of the state from the church and its assertion as the supreme and only legitimate authority in society, to which all orders and classes of men, and all matters, whether temporal or spiritual, must be subjected. The great words of the party, as pronounced by its apostles and chiefs, are "people-king," "people-priest," "people-God." There is no denying the fact. Science, or what passes for science, denies the double nature of man, the distinction between soul and body, and makes the soul the product of material organization, or a mere function of the body; and the more popular philosophy suppresses the spiritual order in society, and therefore rejects its pretended representative; and the progress of intelligence suppresses God, and leaves for society only political atheism pure and simple, as is evident from the savage war-whoop set up throughout the civilized world against the syllabus of condemned propositions published by our holy father, December, 1864. This syllabus touched the deep wound of modern society, probed it to the quick, and hence the writhings and contortions, the groans and screechings it occasioned. May God grant that it touched to heal, exposed the wound only to apply the remedy.
But the remedy—what is it, where shall we seek it, and how shall it be applied? The question is delicate as well as grave, let it be answered as it may. The principles of the church are inflexible and unalterable, and must be preserved inviolate; and even the susceptibilities of both statesmen and churchmen, in regard to changes in old customs and usages, even when not unchangeable in their nature, are to be gently treated. The church is not less bound by the law of God than is the state; for she does not, as we have said, make the law, she only administers it. Undoubtedly, she has in a secondary sense legislative authority or power to enact canons or rules and regulations for preserving, carrying out, and applying the law, as the court adopts its own rules and regulations, or as does the executive authority, even in a government like ours, for executing the law enacted by the legislative power. These may no doubt be changed from time to time by the church as she judges necessary, proper, or expedient in order the better to meet the changing circumstances in relation to which she is obliged to act. But even in these respects, changes must be made in strict conformity to law; and although they may be so made and leave the law intact, and affect only the modes or forms of its administration, they are not without a certain danger. The faithful may mistake them for changes or innovations in the law itself, and enemies may represent them as such, and sophistically adduce them against the church as disproving her immutability and infallibility.