In reading the following abstract it is to be remembered that we aim not at giving a complete but a summary view of the effect of the Syllabus on the relations of Church and State, and that we do not necessarily disapprove of each separate claim specified. Of course neither the disabilities of the State nor the powers of the Church here indicated are embodied in the existing institutions of any country. They are only the disabilities on the one part, and the powers on the other, which would be embodied in the institutions of every country did the tribunal of the Pope acquire the supremacy which it claims. We need hardly remind careful readers that denying a proposition does not necessarily mean asserting its contrary. But it does at least imply asserting its contradictory. Schrader indeed says that it is the contradictory of the condemned proposition that is to be maintained. But his own counter-propositions do not adhere to that rule. What they assert is sometimes the contrary of the condemned proposition. To explain these technical terms—One asserts that all Englishmen are shopkeepers. You deny it. That denial does not pledge you to assert that no Englishman is a shopkeeper; which proposition is the contrary of the other. But it does pledge you at least to assert that some Englishmen are not shopkeepers; which proposition is the contradictory. Two contraries may be both false; of two contradictories one must be false and the other true.
SUMMARY OF POINTS ASSUMED IN THE SYLLABUS AS TO THE DISABILITIES OF THE STATE, AND THE RIGHTS AND POWERS OF THE CHURCH
Disabilities of the State
(N.B.—The numbers attached to the respective propositions indicate the Articles of the Syllabus in which they are contained.)
The State has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true. (15.)
It has not the right to define the rights of the Church, nor to define the limits within which she is to exercise those rights. (19.)
It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power shall require the permission of the civil power in order to the exercise of its authority. (20.)
It has not the right to treat as an excess of power, or as usurping the rights of princes, anything that the Roman Pontiffs or Œcumenical Councils have done. (23.)
It has not the right to deny to the Church the use of force, or to deny to her the possession of either a direct or an indirect temporal power. (24.)
It has not the right to revoke any temporal power found in the possession of bishops as if it had been granted to them by the State. (25.)
It has not the right to exclude the Pontiff or clergy from all dominion over temporal affairs. (27.)
It has not the right to prevent bishops from publishing the Letters Apostolic of the Pope, without its sanction. (28.)
It has not the right of treating the immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons as if it were a privilege arising out of civil law. (30.)
It has not the right, without consent of the Pope, of abolishing ecclesiastical courts for temporal causes, whether civil or criminal, to which the clergy are parties. (31.)
It has not the right of abolishing the personal immunity of the clergy and students for the priesthood from military service.[50] (32.)
It has not the right to adopt the conclusions of a National Church Council, unless confirmed by the Pope. (36.)
It has not the right of establishing a National Church separate from the Pope. (37.)
It has not the right of asserting itself to be the fountain of all rights; or of asserting a jurisdiction not limited by any other jurisdiction, say that of the Pope. (39.) N.B.—The absence of any distinction between legal rights, of which the State alone is the fountain, and natural rights, of which the laws that create legal rights are but the recognition, is characteristic and pervasive.
It has not the right even of an indirect or negative power over "religious affairs." (41.)
It has not the right of exequatur, nor yet that of allowing an appeal from an ecclesiastical court to a civil one. (41.)
It has not the right of asserting the supremacy of its own laws when they come into conflict with ecclesiastical law. (42.)
It has not the right of rescinding or annulling concordats or grants of immunity agreed upon by the Pope, without his consent. (43.)
It has not the right to interfere in "matters pertaining to" religion, morals, or spiritual government. (44.)
It has not the right to judge any instruction which may be issued by pastors of the Church for the guidance of consciences. (44.)
It has not the right to the entire direction of public schools. (45.)
It has not the right of requiring that the plan of studies in clerical seminaries shall be submitted to it. (46.)
It has not the right to present bishops, or to depose them, or to found sees. (50, 51.)
It has not the right to interfere with the taking of monastic vows by its subjects of either sex, or to fix any limit to the age at which it may be done. (52.)
It has not the right to assist subjects who wish to abandon monasteries or convents. (53.)
It has not the right to abolish monasteries or convents. (53.)
It has not the right of determining questions of jurisdiction as between itself and the ecclesiastical authority. (54.)
It has not the right to separate itself from the Church. (55.)
It has not the right to provide for the study of philosophy, or moral science, or civil law eluding the ecclesiastical authority (57). N.B.—Moral science includes politics and economy.
It has not the right to proclaim or to observe the principle of non-intervention. (62.)
It has not the right to declare the marriage contract separable from the sacrament of marriage. (66.)
It has not the right to sanction divorce in any case. (67.)
It has not the right to prevent the Church from setting up impediments which invalidate marriage. It has no right to set up such impediments itself. It has no right to abolish such impediments already existing. (67.)
It has not the right to uphold any marriage solemnized otherwise than according to the form prescribed by the Council of Trent, even if solemnized according to a form sanctioned by the civil law. (71.)
It has not the right to recognize any marriage between Christians as valid, unless the Sacrament is included. (73.)
It has not the right to declare that matrimonial causes, or those arising out of betrothals, belong by their nature to the civil jurisdiction. (74.)
Rights and Powers of the Church
N.B.—In many cases, the propositions under this head show the powers of the Church directly corresponding to the disabilities of the State expressed under the previous head.
She has the right to interfere with the study of philosophy, and it is not her duty to tolerate errors in it, or to leave it to correct itself. (11.)
She has the right to require the State not to leave every man free to profess his own religion. (15.)
She has the right to be perfectly free. She has the right to define her own rights, and to define the limits within which they are to be exercised. (19.)
She has the right to exercise her power without the permission or consent of the State. (20.)
She has the right to bind Catholic teachers and authors, even in matters additional to those which may have been decreed as articles of belief binding on all. (22.)
She has the right of requiring it to be believed by all that no Pope ever exceeded the bounds of his power; also that no Œcumenical Council ever did so, and further, that neither the one nor the other ever usurped the rights of princes. (23.)
She has the right to employ force. (24.)
She has the right to maintain that whatever temporal power is found in the hands of a bishop, is not beyond what is inherent in his office, and has not come from the State, and therefore is not liable to be resumed by it. (25.)
She has the right to claim dominion in temporal things for the clergy and the Pope. (27.)
She has the right to make bishops promulge the Pope's decrees without consent of their rulers. (28.)
She has the right to require it to be believed of all, that the immunity of the Church, and of ecclesiastical persons, did not arise out of civil law. (30.)
She has the right to require that temporal causes, whether civil or criminal, to which clergymen are parties, should be tried by ecclesiastical tribunals. (31.)
She has the right to alter the conclusions of a National Church Council, and to reject the claim of the Government of the country to have the matter decided in the terms adopted by such National Council. (36.)
She has the right to prevent the foundation of any National Church, not subject to the authority of the Roman Pontiff. (37.)
She has the right to reject any claim on the part of the State to either a direct and positive or an indirect and negative power in religious affairs, and more especially when the State is ruled by an unbelieving prince. (41.)
She has the right to reject the claim of the State to exercise a power of exequatur, or to allow appeals from ecclesiastical to civil tribunals. (41.)
She has the right to exclude the civil power from all interference in "matters which appertain to" religion, morals, and spiritual government. Hence she has the right of excluding it from pronouncing any judgment on instructions which may be issued by any pastor of the Church for the guidance of conscience. (44.)
She has the right to deprive the civil authority of the entire government of public schools. (45.)
She has the right to refuse to show the plan of study in clerical seminaries to civil authorities. (46.)
She has the right to fix the age for taking monastic vows both for men and women, irrespective of the civil authority. (52.)
She has the right to uphold the laws of religious orders against the civil authority; the right to deprive the latter of power to aid any who, after having taken vows, should seek to escape from monasteries or nunneries; and the right to prevent it from taking the houses, churches, or funds of religious orders under secular management. (53.)
She has the right of holding kings and princes in subjection to her jurisdiction, and of denying that their authority is superior to her own in determining questions of jurisdiction. (54.)
She has the right of perpetuating the union of Church and State. (55.)
She has the right of subjecting the study of philosophy, moral science, and civil law, to ecclesiastical authority. (56.)
She has the right of enjoining a policy of intervention. (62.)
She has the right to require the sacrament of marriage as essential to every contract of marriage. (62.)
She has the right to deprive the civil authority of power to sanction divorce in any case. (67.)
She has the right to enact impediments which invalidate marriage, the right to prevent the State from doing so, also the right to prevent it from annulling such impediments when existing. (68.)
She has the right to require all to receive the Canons of Trent as of dogmatical authority, namely, those Canons which anathematize such as deny her the power of setting up impediments which invalidate marriage. (70.)
She has the right of treating all marriages which are not solemnized according to the form of the Council of Trent as invalid, even those solemnized according to a form prescribed by the civil law. (71.)
She has the right of annulling all marriages among Christians solemnized only by civil contract. (73.)
She has the right of judging all matrimonial causes, and those arising out of betrothals, in ecclesiastical courts. (74.)
She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all others. (77.)
She has the right to prevent the State from granting the public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating into it. (78.)
She has the power of requiring the State not to permit free expression of opinion. (79.)
The importance of questions affecting marriage and betrothal is threefold. (1) Immense revenues accrue to the Court and bureaucracy of Rome from the system of dispensations for marrying within the degrees forbidden in any one of the three separate scales of consanguinity, affinity, or spiritual affinity, i.e., affinity contracted by sponsorship at baptism or confirmation. (2) The grant, every five years, of a Quinquennial Faculty to the bishop to issue such dispensations as affect those distant degrees within which dispensations do not pay a tax, or to the poor who cannot pay, holds the bishop in perpetual dependence on the Curia. (3) The whole system of impediments and dispensations subserves the end of extending the control of the priesthood over domestic life through the reluctance felt in families at the time of a marriage, as at that of a death, to cause scandal by a difference with "the clergy."
Phillips says (ii. 639) that in modern times the union of Church and State is frequently compared to wedlock—not an inapt figure, but one calling for care lest it be taken in a wrong sense. "That would be the case if in this union the female partner was taken for the Church, and the male partner for the State. If we employ this simile, we must think of the relative positions as just reversed." This seems reasonable. The legal position of a married woman, a feme covert, would appear not ill to correspond with that of a State bound to the husband, who calls himself a mother.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] Kurze Geschichte, p. 10. It will be seen that here, as in the Civiltá, the meaning of civilization is concrete, the civil system.