VI

RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE

PREVIOUS chapters have touched incidentally on the doctrine of the canon law concerning the relations of Church and State. But the importance of the subject and the industry with which propagandists of Rome ply the public with misrepresentations touching it require fuller and more specific statement of the law of the Pontifical throne on that vital question.

On very few subjects has the papal autocracy handed down clearer or more emphatic declarations of the law. Both the imperial constitutions of the Popes and the commentaries of eminent modern canonists declare that the civil authority is inferior to the ecclesiastical and completely subject to its supervision and control.
There is, however, an element of deception studiously injected into the papal legislation that should be exposed and removed before stating the law as given by the highest Roman Catholic authorities. The deception consists in calling all law enacted by the Pontifical throne "divine law," as though it were handed down by Deity as the decalogue was given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

That deceptive attitude, in which the Papacy purloins the whole question, arises easily from the more fundamental and equally gratuitous assumption that the Pope is the sole earthly representative and mouthpiece of God. Pope Leo XIII stated this latter blasphemous assumption in these laconic words:

"We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty."—Great Encyclical Letters, page 304.

It must therefore be kept in mind that when Popes or minor prelates or canonists of Rome mention the "divine law," either in legislative acts or in comments thereon, they mean the law as declared by the Pope assuming to speak with divine authority. Of course, those who question his authority so to speak are uniformly denounced as bigots and heretics. With the foregoing brief preliminary explanation in view, attention will now be directed to a clear declaration by the same Pope defining the assumed power of the Church to set aside laws enacted by the State. On that subject he has uttered these words:

"But if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the Supreme Pontiff' the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime—Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, page 185."

Emphasis in the foregoing is inserted. But that legislative declaration by the ablest of modern popes makes it a crime to resist the "supreme Pontiff," who assumes "the authority of Jesus Christ." That deceptive but rank and pernicious treason pervades the canon law from end to end. Its binding force on every prelate, priest and member of the Church of Rome is absolute. Though unconscious of the withering fact, two hundred millions of well-meaning but deluded Roman Catholic laymen are held in the iron grip of that fatal doctrine of canon law.

The deadliest internal menace to the American nation is the teaching of that revolting treason to children and youth in the alien schools and colleges of Rome. That it is so taught appears unmistakably from a Manual of Christian Doctrine published in 1902. (See Chapter VII of the present work.)

The same doctrine is reiterated again and again on many pages of the Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII and in the ex-cathedra declarations of law by virtually every autocrat in the long line of Roman pontiffs. But the assumption that ecclesiastical courts administer law paramount to that of civil government is set forth in extenso by Sebastian B. Smith in his great work in three volumes on Elements of Ecclesiastical Law, published in 1887 with the Imprimatur of three Roman archbishops, including the late Cardinal McCloskey, of New York.

It is therein asserted that the tribunals of Rome enjoy identically the same prerogatives in relation to civil authority that superior courts uniformly have in their dealings with inferior courts, by virtue whereof they can prohibit the lower courts from exceeding the limits of their authorized jurisdiction. Dr. Smith states the canon law to that effect with such clearness as to justify quoting him here at some length:
"In whatsoever things, whether essentially or by accident, the spiritual end—that is, the end of the Church is necessarily involved, in those things, though they be temporal, the Church may of right exert its power, and the civil state ought to yield. In this proposition is contained the full explanation of the indirect spiritual power of the Church over the State. The proposition is proved: 1. FROM REASON.—Either the Church has an indirect power over the State, or the State has an indirect power over the Church. There is no alternative. For, as experience teaches, conflicts may arise between Church and State.

"Now, in any question as to the competence of the two powers, either there must be some judge to decide what does and what does not fall within their respective spheres, or they are delivered over to perpetual doubt and to perpetual conflict. But who can define what is or is not within the jurisdiction of the Church in faith and morals, except a judge who knows what the sphere of faith and morals contains and how far it extends?
"It is clear that the civil power cannot define how far the circumference of faith and morals extends. To do this it must know the whole deposit of explicit and implicit faith. Therefore the Church alone can fix the limits of its jurisdiction; and if the Church can fix the limits of its own jurisdiction, it can fix the limits of all other jurisdiction—at least, so as to warn it off its own domain.
"Hence the Church is supreme in matters of religion and conscience she knows the limits of her own jurisdiction, and, therefore, also the limits of the competence of the civil power. Again, if it be said that the State is altogether independent of the Church, it would follow that the State would also be independent of the law of God in things temporal, for the divine law must be promulgated by the Church. It is unmeaning to say that princes have no superior but the law of God; for a law is no superior without an authority to judge and apply it."

Dr. Smith then offers proof of his proposition FROM AUTHORITY. To that end; he cites the famous bull Unam Sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII, which he declares to be unmistakably authoritative and therefore infallible, and he quotes particularly; the final clause in that document in these words:

"And this we declare, affirm, define, and pronounce, that it is necessary for the salvation of every human creature that he should be subject to the Roman Pontiff. "

Dr. Smith then continues in part in these words:

"From what has been said we infer: 1. The authority of princes and the allegiance of subjects in the civil state of nature ARE of DIVINE ORDINANCE; and, therefore, so long as princes and their laws are in conformity with the law of God the Church has no jurisdiction against them nor over them. 2. If princes and their laws deviate from the law of God, THE CHURCH HAS AUTHORITY FROM GOD TO JUDGE OF THAT DEVIATION AND TO OBLIGE TO ITS CORRECTION."— VOL. I, pages 253 et seq."

Emphasis is again inserted. Observe that the Pope alone assumes power to judge whether or not the State has deviated from the law of God and therefore exceeded its jurisdiction. Whenever he judges that such deviation has taken place, he arrogates to himself power to compel the State to correct its alleged deviation. Even a tyro in the law will recognize that papal assumption as precisely identical with the authority of a superior court, by its writ of prohibition, to restrain an inferior court within jurisdictional limits which the superior tribunal adjudges the law to prescribe for the tribunal of inferior rank.

So does the canon law place the papal government in authority to sit in judgment on every civil power and restrain all such powers within jurisdictional limits to which the Papacy adjudges them confined by the superior law which it assumes to administer. To no other autocrat since time began have such prerogatives of despotism been arrogated.