35) What ought to be the relations between the Church and the State?
In practice, the relations between the Church and the State depend upon the religious composition of the population. Normally, when the population is predominantly Catholic, the State ought to be Catholic officially. It should then adhere to the Catholic religion and proclaim it the religion of the State, protect and favor it, and make its feast days public holidays. Its representatives should participate in their official capacity in liturgical celebrations. Moreover, it should assist Catholic schools and charitable institutions, and assure that the Commandments of God be expressed in civil laws, such as the observance of Sunday and the prohibition of divorce, contraception, and abortion.
l Are the normal relations between the Church and the State always applicable?
The integral application of the normal relations between the Church and the State is not always possible or prudent. It could sometimes even lead to civil war. A nation’s circumstances must be prudently taken into account. Yet, at the very least, the government should protect the freedom of the Catholic Church and enforce respect for the tenets of the natural law by forbidding divorce, abortion, and the other immoral practices that were prohibited in most States until recent decades.
l How might one sum up the normal duties of the State to the Church?
Leo XIII summarized these duties thus:
All who rule, therefore, would hold in honour the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favour religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule.1
36) In a Catholic State, must all the citizens be Catholic?
When a very great majority of a people are Catholic, Catholicism ought to be the religion of the State, but this does not mean that all the citizens must be forced to embrace the Catholic Faith. Forced conversions are, to the contrary, strictly forbidden, because the act of faith must be an act of free will and cannot be compelled.
l Ought a Catholic State to allow its subjects freedom in religious matters?
In principle, the State is only concerned with what pertains to social life. Hence it has no authority to scrutinize consciences or the private exercise of cult. But it cannot disregard the public exercise of religious activities.
l Ought a Catholic State to forbid the public exercise of false cults?
The false religions are an evil from which the Catholic State must protect its citizens. It ought therefore to prohibit or limit as much as possible their public exercise and propaganda. However, it can (and sometimes must) tolerate them if that results in safeguarding a greater good or avoiding a greater evil.
l What is tolerance?
Tolerance is the patient endurance of an evil.
l Isn't it unjust to bear an evil?
Justice is not the supreme virtue: it must be regulated by prudence and animated by charity. Tolerance is not exercised in the name of justice, but in the name of prudence and charity.
l But isn't the tolerance of an evil an imperfection?
If it is really prudent, the tolerance of evil is in itself good and praiseworthy, but it is the result and sign of imperfection in a society. Leo XIII teaches that
the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection.2
l What are the limits of this tolerance of false religions?
It is incumbent upon the prudence of the head of state to establish, according to the circumstances, more or less broad limits to the exercise of false cults. The general rule is that evil must be tolerated only in as much as the common good requires. Leo XIII declares that "the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires."3
37) Is there, then, no right to the free exercise of religion?
The true religion possesses the absolute right to develop and to be practiced freely, for no one can be impeded from serving God in the way He Himself has prescribed. It is an exigency of the natural law. The false religions, to the contrary, have no real right to be practiced precisely because they are false and erroneous. Error can never have any right; only the truth has rights. Heads of state, therefore, are not obliged in justice (based upon natural law) to practice tolerance towards the false religions, but they may do so from prudence or Christian charity.
l Is it certain that error has no rights?
Leo XIII teaches very clearly that error cannot have any rights:
"While not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, [the Church] does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good."4
Pius XII teaches that "what does not correspond to the truth and to the moral standards has, objectively, no right to exist, to be taught, or to be done."5
l Hence the toleration of false religions cannot be guaranteed by law?
The toleration of false religions may find expression in civil law. A Catholic State may, if so required, guarantee it by law, but that grant would be something completely different from a natural right.
l Can you expound the difference between natural law and civil law?
The natural law is founded directly upon the nature of man and the duties that flow from it (an act contrary to the natural law is per se morally bad or unjust). But the natural law is not entirely sufficient for the governance of society. It must be completed and particularized by civil law, decreed by the political authority for the sake of the common good of a particular society. The virtue of prudence comes into play in the establishment of the positive civil law (another society might, for particular reasons, establish contrary rules, which would not for that reason be unjust). For prudential reasons (principally for the sake of peace), the free exercise of false religions may in certain cases be guaranteed by the civil law of a Catholic country, but it can never be a natural right.
38) What does Vatican II teach about religious liberty?
The Declaration of Vatican II on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae (2), affirms:
"This Vatican Synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits."6
l What is noteworthy in this passage from Vatican II?
1) First, Vatican II not only says that no one should be forced to believe (which the Church has always taught), but also claims that no one can be restrained from practicing the religion of his choice.
2) Then, and this is paramount, Vatican II no longer speaks of tolerance alone, but actually recognizes a real natural right of the adepts of all religions not to be hindered in the practice of their religion.
3) Finally, this right not only concerns practice in private, but also public worship and propagation of the religion. Thus Vatican II promotes something the Church always condemned previously.
l Does Vatican II truly intend to speak of a genuine natural right of man (and not merely of a simple civil right)?
Unfortunately yes, Vatican II presents the right not to be impeded from acting in accordance with one's conscience in matters religious as a genuine natural right. It explains that this right is based on "the very dignity of the human person" (and not on a positive juridical determination); consequently it is only upon this basis that religious liberty must also be recognized as a civil right (DH 2).7
l Doesn't Vatican II speak of "due limits" on this "right"?
Vatican II does mention "due limits" circumscribing religious liberty, but the nature of the limits is not clearly stated in the document. In Paragraph 2, it seems to involve safeguarding public order; further on, Paragraph 7 speaks of "the objective moral order," which is better, but illusory and ultimately insufficient.
l Why is this mention of "the objective moral order" illusory?
Taken literally, the implication of limiting religious liberty to "the objective moral order" is that only the Catholic Church could enjoy unrestricted freedom of religion because she alone conserves the natural law in its entirety (Islam authorizes polygamy; the Protestants–and even the Eastern schismatics in some cases–allow divorce; etc.). But this conclusion obviously contradicts the rest of the text. For Vatican II, having set aside the obligations of strict natural law, the only restraining limit on religious freedom is public order. As long as the cult is not a cover for terrorist attacks, criminal networks, pedophilia, or some other infringement of "the rights of man," everything must be authorized.
l Why should the mention of "the objective moral order" be considered insufficient?
Even interpreted strictly, this limitation of religious liberty to the "objective moral order" is inadequate because restricted to the natural order of things, thereby omitting the consideration of the supernatural order. Such a conception of religious liberty fails to recognize the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the supernatural rights of His Church, and the supernatural end of man in the common good of the political order. It fails to consider that the false religions, by the mere fact that they keep souls from the Catholic Church, lead souls to hell. In a word, it is naturalism. To it can be applied what St. Pius X said about the separation of Church and State:
"This thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object, which is man’s eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course."8
l Does the teaching of Vatican II on religious freedom contradict the Church's perennial teaching?
The religious liberty taught by Vatican II not only contradicts the teaching of the Church, but also, and foremost, its constant practice.
l How does Vatican II contradict the constant practice of the Church?
The saints have never hesitated to break idols, destroy their temples, or legislate against pagan or heretical practices. The Church–without ever forcing anyone to believe or be baptized–has always recognized its right and duty to protect the faith of her children and to impede, whenever possible, the public exercise and propagation of false cults. To accept the teaching of Vatican II is to grant that, for two millennia, the popes, saints, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the bishops, and the Catholic kings have constantly violated the natural rights of men without anyone in the Church noticing. Such a thesis is as absurd as it is impious.
l Can you name some saints who would have violated the "right of religious freedom" as it is taught by Vatican II?
One can cite, among many others, St. Polyeuctus, St. Christina, St. Martin, St. Benedict, St. Gall, St. Peter of Verona, St. Louis, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Casimir, St. Antonine (of Florence), St. Pius V, St. Francis Xavier, St. Louis Bertrand, St. Francis de Sales, etc., not to mention all the Doctors who justified this practice (St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas,9 St. Alphonsus, etc.).
l Couldn't we say that these saints acted under the influence of the prejudices of their age and that, with the passage of time, subsequent generations have understood the spirit of the Gospel better?
Such a hypothesis is untenable for at least seven reasons:
1) It destroys the infallibility of the Church (which would have erred in a serious matter for more than two millennia).
2) It insults her maternal mildness (the Church would have conducted herself for centuries like a possessive mother or even a cruel stepmother).
3) It ruins her claim to holiness (practically denying the action of the Holy Ghost, who purifies the saints from their too human tendencies or conceptions, enlightens them on the true meaning of the Gospel, gives them strength and the holy liberty necessary to brave the prejudices of the world).
4) It discredits Christian charity (the natural bent of which should have prevented the violation of one of the fundamental "rights" of the human person for centuries).
5) It distorts history by gratuitously considering as a more or less unconscious prejudice imposed by the time in which they lived what was in fact a serious, solidly argued conviction held by many saints. (St. Augustine debated at length the Donatists, who were partisans of religious liberty, and thought about this question deeply; the same can be said of the 13th-century theologians in their encounters with some Cathars).
6) It constitutes what English philosophers call "a self-refuting system." (Why should our century have fewer prejudices than centuries past? If the prejudices linked to those centuries exercised an invincible pressure even on the Popes and Doctors of the Church, why should the non-infallible Vatican Council II have escaped any better from the [liberal] prejudices of our time than the saints of the past from the prejudices of their day?)
7) Lastly, this thesis accords the enemies of the Church (the Donatists, Cathars, Humanists, Encyclopedists, Freemasons, etc.) the extravagant privilege of having penetrated the spirit of the Gospel on this point long before the Catholic Doctors (in this regard, Voltaire would have been a better Catholic than St. Alphonsus de Liguori and the entire episcopate of the time).
l Have there never been any defenders of religious liberty in the Church?
There have always been defenders of true religious liberty in the Church (the freedom of the true religion), just as there have been of Christian tolerance, but never of religious liberty as it is preached by Vatican II. The first defenders of liberty for all religions were heretics or enemies of the Church. Its great promoters were the English philosophers of the 17th century, then the French philosophers of the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The Catholics who later thought it was opportune to demand this liberty in response to persecutions, formed what were called the "liberal Catholics," frequently condemned by the popes.
l What popes condemned the "liberal Catholics"?
Several successive waves of "liberal Catholics" were condemned by popes during the 19th and 20th centuries.
l Who condemned the first "liberal Catholic" wave?
The first wave, led by Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854) was condemned by Gregory XVI in the Encyclical Mirari Vos in 1832. Lamennais left the Church and was abandoned by his disciples.
l Who condemned the second "liberal Catholic" wave?
The second "liberal Catholic" wave, led by Msgr. Felix Dupanloup (1802–1878, Bishop of Orleans) and the Count Charles de Montalembert (1810-70), was condemned in 1864 by Pope Pius IX's Encyclical Quanta Cura and the catalogue of errors (the Syllabus) that accompanied it.
l Who condemned the third "liberal Catholic" wave?
The third "liberal Catholic" wave developed in the circles that had resisted the second wave. At the end of the pontificate of Leo XIII (especially after he called upon the French monarchists to rally to the Republic in 1892), under the pressure of the contemporary world, and unaware of it, a significant part of young French Catholics gradually adopted the ideas against which their parents had fought. The "democrat priests," then the Sillon of Marc Sangnier (1873-1950) were at the head of this movement, which was halted by St. Pius X's Letter on the Sillon, Our Apostolic Mandate (August 25, 1910).
Translated exclusively for Angelus Press by from Katholischer Katechismus zur kirchlichen Kriese by Fr. Matthias Gaudron, professor at the Herz Jesu Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The original was published in 1997 by Rex Regum Press, with a preface by the District Superior of Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger. This translation is based on the second edition published in 1999 by Rex Regum Verlag, Schloss Jaidhof, Austria. Subdivisions and slight revisions made by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé have been incorporated into the translation.
1 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, §6.
2 Libertas, §34.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., §33.
5 Ci Riesce, Discourse to the Convention of Italian Catholic Jurists, Dec. 6, 1953 [English version: Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton, "Pius XII and the Theological Treatise on the Church," The American Ecclesiastical Review on line at www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=5086].
6 Walter M. Abbott, S.J., Editor, The Documents of Vatican II (New York: The America Press, 1966), pp. 678-79.
7 The new Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms: "The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error, but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right" (§2108, emphasis added).
8 St. Pius X, Encyclical Vehementer Nos (February 11, 1906), §3.
9 Of St. Thomas, see especially II-II, Q. 11, Art. 3.