There are two cases in which a subordinate is not obliged to obey a superior; the first, when a contrary precept exists of greater authority; the second, when the superior gives commands in things in respect of which the subordinate is not placed under him.... An inferior authority is not to be disobeyed when a superior one prohibits. Now, the authority of the Church, assembled in Council, is superior to the authority of the State.... It is superior in the sense in which the reasoning faculty in man is superior to the sentient and vegetative faculties.... Since the ecclesiastical authority is superior to the civil in such wise that, in matters affecting both, the acts of the civil must be subject to those of the ecclesiastical, it is manifest that if a collision arose between the definitions of the Œcumenical Council and the laws of the State, the latter would cease, by that fact alone, to have any binding force whatever.

The same conclusion may be deduced from the words in which the divine Founder of the Church gave authority to His disciples to teach His doctrine to all nations. All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Go and teach all nations. From the fact that, in virtue of His divine generation, the Father had conferred on Him all power, celestial and terrestrial, Christ argued thus, Therefore, go ye and teach all nations my doctrine; and thus He clearly demonstrated that His Church was invested by Him with such a right of teaching that it would never be lawful for any power to offer to her opposition. Therefore, should the State require obedience to laws contrary to the definitions of the Council, it would do so without a true legal right. And if, notwithstanding, it employed force to procure obedience, it would fall into tyranny, odious to the conscience and ruinous to itself.... By no means does the authority of governments extend to commanding what the Œcumenical Council may prohibit, or to prohibiting what it may command; and if governments should arrogate to themselves the right of doing so, in vain would they presume upon being able to oblige Catholics subject to submit; and should they have recourse to force, they would plunge themselves into tyranny which would not long serve the interests of those who displayed it.

The principles are very simple and firmly fixed. While submission to legitimate authority is a duty, resistance to "tyranny" is a right. Any authority used in contravention of the decrees of the Church ceases to be legitimate, runs into tyranny, and is to be disobeyed. Hence the duty of obedience to civil rulers is taught in the term "due obedience," and only the Pope can judge when obedience ceases to be due; but it is judged already that due it never can be, in any possible case, wherein the civil law contravenes the directions of the ecclesiastical authority. How States which profess to accept the corporation which insists on these principles as a true and worthy teacher, or which look on it as anything but an erring and dangerous caste, are to escape dissolution, it is not easy to see.

It is not hard to call the hopes of victory in the impending struggle monkish dreams, nor easy to dispel the show of probability in the following argument. Hundreds of examples in the past, where persistent ecclesiastical agitation triumphed over political instability, would rise up to the memory of well read Jesuits, as making their calculations seem like those of positive philosophers, and the hopes of journalists and members of Parliament like those of enthusiasts, in the sense of men who look for ends without using means.

"What would such laws come to in case they were enacted? They would come to be laws of no validity and no effect in what touches belief: of no validity because essentially null as to binding force; of no effect because unable to prevent Catholics from a full adhesion of mind and heart to the dogmatic definitions of the Church. And as to external acts and matters of discipline, such laws would become a dead letter, or a criminal oppression. A dead letter if the governments did not feel that they had nerve to put forth the strong hand and enforce the execution of them, in which case the laws would become a ridiculous comedy. Or a criminal oppression if, feeling themselves possessed of force, they should employ it to execute laws tyrannical, as being opposed to public liberty, public religion, and public faith."

As to separating the Church from the State, the Civiltá proudly quotes the Monde of Paris:—

The Catholics have number and force on their side ... before apostatising the French government would think twice ... the government surely would not give the signal for its own fall, and for a long revolution.

The separation of Church and State is here spoken of evidently in the ordinary sense; but the charge of having already separated the State from the Church was one frequently brought against the government of France, when the language employed was that of the initiated. In that language the Draft of Decrees now under consideration described separation of the State from the Church as the denial of the right or duty of the State to coerce by the appointed penalties, except so far as may be demanded in the interests of public peace, those who violate the Catholic religion.[308]

FOOTNOTES:

[304] Unitá Cattolica, March 4, quoting Volksblatt.

[305] See exposition of Ezek. xxxvii. 21-24, Civiltá, VII. vi. 293.