Leo XIII's Immortale Dei: What is Caesar's? What is God's? Part 2

THE CHURCH IS AN INSTITUTION DIRECTLY FOUNDED BY GOD made flesh, Jesus. Her authority does not rely upon the State or civil society, and it is by God's express design "plainly meant to be unfettered," though it has been "so long assailed by a philosophy that truckles to the State." As a result of a "singular disposition of God's providence," the Church was provided with "a civil sovereignty," a potestas principatu civili, which assures her independence from civil authority so as better to accomplish her divine mission. ID, 12.

It is then the will of God that there be two authorities over baptized Christians. Authority and power is to be--from the foundation of the Church by the Lord until the end of time--split. What God has rent asunder, man ought not to join.

The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right.

ID, 13. But while the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions may have been split, those over whom the jurisdictions govern are not. Church and State are two; however, man, over whom "The condition of the commonwealth depends on the religion with which God is worshiped; and between one and the other there exists an intimate and abiding connection."
--Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 19the Church and State exercise their authority, is one. And so it follows that "one and the same thing--related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing--might belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both." What, then, is the rule set out by God for handling these areas of overlapping jurisdiction? It cannot be the intention of God to have the two powers command two different and contrary things, both of them binding, and so putting the subject to a Morton's Fork, a double bind, where "it would be a dereliction of duty to disobey either of the two." ID, 13. "There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man." ID, 14.

The rule or connection is found by reference to the nature of the civil authority and the ecclesiastical authority:

The nature and scope of that connection can be determined only . . . by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobleness of their purpose. One of the two has for its proximate and chief object the well-being of this mortal life; the other, the everlasting joys of heaven. Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority. Jesus Christ has Himself given command that what is Caesar's is to be rendered to Caesar, and that what belongs to God is to be rendered to God.

ID, 14.

Emperor Otto III and Pope Gregory V
(Unknown Artist, ca. 1450)

It is only when there is mutual co-ordination of the two authorities that one approaches perfection in government. That is to say, to have civil authority without ecclesiastical authority yields moral chaos;* to have ecclesiastical authority without civil authority yields civil chaos. In a Christian state, "divine and human things are equitably shared; the rights of citizens assured to them, and fenced round by divine, by natural, and by human law; the duties incumbent on each one being wisely marked out, and their fulfillment fittingly insured." ID, 17.

Man as pilgrim, the homo viator, has an "uncertain and toilsome journey to the everlasting city." The State must not forget that each of its subjects, from the youngest to the oldest, is, in fact, a pilgrim of the Absolute, on journey to God and eternal life. The Church and the State both, then, are to see that these citizen-pilgrims "have safe guides and helpers on their way," and the Church and State both are "are conscious that others have charge to protect their persons alike and their possessions, and to obtain or preserve for them everything essential for their present life." ID, 17.

In a sense, this separation of Church and State is broader than structures of civil government at their highest. There is a separation that trickles down to that most basic of civil and natural institutions, the institution of the family, the domestic society:

[D]omestic society acquires that firmness and solidity so needful to it from the holiness of marriage, one and indissoluble, wherein the rights and duties of husband and wife are controlled with wise justice and equity; due honour is assured to the woman; the authority of the husband is conformed to the pattern afforded by the authority of God; the power of the father is tempered by a due regard for the dignity of the mother and her offspring; and the best possible provision is made for the guardianship, welfare, and education of the children.

ID, 17. The power of the paterfamilias, like the power of the State, is not absolute: the father and husband must recognize that, in exercising his care over his wife and children, he also must render to God that which is God's. The Church has authority over the institution of marriage and family, for God is present everywhere, in study, dining room, playroom, and bedroom, even in the most intimate place and intimate time between man and wife. The bedroom is not outside the pale of the law. It is not a lawless place. When the lights are turned off, the light of the law remains. There is, in fact, government in the bedroom, government in the orgasm, even government in the womb, for the moral law reaches into the tiniest crevices of human life, ordering in all to the good.

If the State is properly configured, then positive laws will be framed with reference to the common good, not neglecting truth and justice, and, they will not be detracted from these essentials by reference to anything else. If some law is proposed that is contrary to these, whether it be to assuage desires of private interests or even the will of the majority, it will be rejected as outside the bounds of civil authority:

In political affairs, and all matters civil, the laws aim at securing the common good, and are not framed according to the delusive caprices and opinions of the mass of the people, but by truth and by justice; the ruling powers are invested with a sacredness more than human, and are withheld from deviating from the path of duty, and from overstepping the bounds of rightful authority; and the obedience is not the servitude of man to man, but submission to the will of God, exercising His sovereignty through the medium of men.

ID, 18.

(continued)

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*Later in the encyclical (No. 20), Pope Leo XIII quotes extensively from St. Augustine's De moribus ecclesiae [I.30.63; PL 32, 1336] on the Catholic Church's function. In reading this, ask yourself the question: If the Church is not doing this task, then who is?

Thou dost teach and train children with much tenderness, young men with much vigour, old men with much gentleness; as the age not of the body alone, but of the mind of each requires. Women thou dost subject to their husbands in chaste and faithful obedience, not for the gratifying of their lust, but for bringing forth children, and for having a share in the family concerns. Thou dost set husbands over their wives, not that they may play false to the weaker sex, but according to the requirements of sincere affection. Thou dost subject children to their parents in a kind of free service, and dost establish parents over their children with a benign rule. . . Thou joinest together, not in society only, but in a sort of brotherhood, citizen with citizen, nation with nation, and the whole race of men, by reminding them of their common parentage. Thou teachest kings to look to the interests of their people, and dost admonish the people to be submissive to their kings. With all care dost thou teach all to whom honour is due, and affection, and reverence, and fear, consolation, and admonition and exhortation, and discipline, and reproach, and punishment. Thou showest that all these are not equally incumbent on all, but that charity is owing to all, and wrongdoing to none.

Tu pueriliter pueros, fortiter iuvenes, quiete senes, prout cuiusque non corporis tantum, sed et animi aetas est, exerces ac doces. Tu feminas viris suis non ad explendam libidinem, sed ad propagandam prolem, et ad rei familiaris societatem, casta et fideli obedientia subiicis. Tu viros conjugibus, non ad illudendum imbecilliorem sexum, sed sinceri amoris legibus praeficis. Tu parentibus filios libera quadam servitute subiungis, parentes filiis pia dominatione praeponis . . . Tu cives civibus, tn gentes gentibus, et prorsus homines primorum parentum recordatione, non societate tantum, sed quadam etiam fraternitate coniungis. Doces reges prospicere populis, mones populos se subdere regibus. Quibus honor debeatur, quibus affectus, quibus reverentia, quibus timor, quibus consolatio, quibus admonitio, quibus cohortatio, quibus disciplina, quibus objurgatio, quibus supplicium, sedulo doces; ostendens quemadmodum et non omnibus omnia, et omnibus caritas, et nulli debeatur injuria.

Truly, the Church's moral teaching, "if duly acted up to, is the very mainstay of the commonwealth," si obtemperetur, salutem esse reipublicae. ID, 20 (quoting St. Augustine's Epistle 138 to Marcellinum, 2:15 (PL 33, 532)).

Leo XIII's Immortale Dei: What is Caesar's? What is God's? Part 1

A SO-CALLED "NEW LAW" WAS AT LARGE, and this caused Pope Leo XIII to issue his encyclical Immortale Dei on November 1, 1885. In this encyclical, Leo XIII addressed the Christian doctrine of the State and the relationship between Church and State, and he opposed himself to this "new, so-called, law" which sought to aggrandize the State at the expense of the Church. "[W]herever the Church has set her foot," the pope notes, "she has straightway changed the face of things, and has attempered the moral tone of the people with a new civilization and with virtues before unknown." To attemper --to make less harsh, severe, extreme, to refine . . . to imbue with urbanity, civility . . . ita et nova urbanite imbuit. "All nations which have yielded to her sway," Pope Leo XIII claims, "have become eminent by their gentleness, their sense of justice, and the glory of their high deeds." But he recognized efforts of a number of political philosophies which shared in a common desire to have the State to separate itself from any transcendent value, specifically God and His Church, or, what is perhaps the same thing in effect if not in intention, to make itself transcendent: to bring Caesar and Christ together by getting rid of Christ. The rupture was justified by those who were self-anointed as the Enlightened in politics, promulgators of a "new law," or at least a new conception of fundamental law where Christ and His Church were excluded from the public forum. The problem of what is Caesar's and what is Christ's is solved, sort of like Alexander solved the problem of the Gordian knot, by cutting out Christ, leaving only Caesar.

It is an old saw--the propaganda of unbelievers as deep and as meritless as the Leyenda negra* against the Spaniards--that the Church is opposed to the common good, to development of peoples, or to real advancement, to real freedom, and enlightenment. "From the very beginning Christians were harassed by slanderous accusations of this nature." ID, 2. Like Socrates, they were branded enemies of the State, corruptors of morals, even atheists relative to the civil gods manufactured by Roman hands, borrowed by them from their neighbors, or created by divinizing their emperors. Enemies of the Imperium, of the Senatus Populusque Romanum. Enemies of the Revolution. Enemies of the Know Nothing Party. Enemies of the Third Reich. Écrasez l'infâme, or something similar to it, has been said in more languages than French and in many before and after the 18th century. Even modernly, John Paul II has suggested that Christians have come to be viewed by advocates of secular democracy as "unreliable citizens."** And the false accusations, in fact calumnies againsdt Christ and his faithful, have drawn responses from St. Justin Martyr's Apologias to St. Augustine's De civitate Dei to Pope Leo XIII's Immortale Dei.

But there was something more than the old prejudice that bothered Leo XIII. There was something new in the air, or, if not in the air, in the chambers of the legislatures or the ratifiers of Constitutions: "in these latter days," Leo XIII sensed, "a novel conception of law has begun here and there to gain increase," a so-called "novum jus." This "new, so called, law" is the result, according to its propagandists, of "an age arrived at full stature," the "result of progressive liberty," SC, 2, but in reality it is nothing less than a shrugging off of the Gospel and of the natural law.

Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) and Emperor Frederick III
Representing Church and State

The Gospel teaching, which is that of the natural law, can be succinctly stated by Pope Leo XIII:

Man's natural instinct moves him to live in civil society [Insitum homini natura est, ut in civili societate vivat], for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties. Hence, it is divinely ordained that he should lead his life-be it family, or civil-with his fellow men, amongst whom alone his several wants can be adequately supplied. But, as no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author [a natura proptereaque a Deo ipso oriatur auctore]. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. "There is no power but from God." [Rom. 13:1]

ID, 3.

The Church is indifferent to the mode or form of government, as it should adapt to the needs of the people and their cultures and their legitimate wishes. But there is a limit, a proviso. Whatever government's form, it must conform to the "nature" of government; namely, the agents of government "must ever bear in mind that God is the paramount ruler of the world, and must set Him before themselves as their exemplar and law in the administration of the State." ID, 4.

There are certain qualities that government, to be true to its nature, must have according to Christian philosophy of the State:

1. It must dispense evenhanded justice [imperium iustum];
2. It must paternal and tempered rather than dominating and severe [neque herile, sed quas paternum];
3. It must exist for the well-being of its citizens, that is, the common good [gerendum vero est ad utilitatem civium . . . ad commune omnium bonum constituta sit];
4. It must not be set up for the advantage of an individual or a group [neqe ullo pacto committendum, unius ut, vel paucorum commodo serviat civilis auctoritas]; and
5. It must recognize God as the paramount ruler of the world and as exemplar and law in the administration of the State [in societate civili voluit esse principatum, quem qui gererent, ii imaginem quamdam divinae in genus humanum potestatis divinaeque providentiae referrent].
   

If these requirements are met, then "will the majesty of the law meet with the dutiful and willing homage of the people," for both should recognize their duty to God who is the dispenser of justice, both in the exercise of power for the common good and for justice and in the submission or obedience to that power. As important as it is for the ruler to recognize that power comes from God, so it is for the citizen to recognize it. ID, 5.

The State, therefore, cannot be oblivious to its duties to God and to religion:

As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its reaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will.

ID, 6. By natural law, the State has the same obligation to God as the individual.

To what religion, out of the many that may be chosen, must, by the natural law, the State be inclined?

Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate.

For the only-begotten Son of God established on earth a society which is called the Church, and to it He handed over the exalted and divine office which He had received from His Father, to be continued through the ages to come. "As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you."' "Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." [Matt. 28:20] Consequently, as Jesus Christ came into the world that men "might have life and have it more abundantly," [John 10:10] so also has the Church for its aim and end the eternal salvation of souls, and hence it is so constituted as to open wide its arms to all mankind, unhampered by any limit of either time or place. "Preach ye the Gospel to every creature." [Mark 16:15]

ID, 7-8.

The Church is a perfect society, just as civil society, one founded on divine right, and natural right enlightened by Grace:

This society [the Church] is made up of men, just as civil society is, and yet is supernatural and spiritual, on account of the end for which it was founded, and of the means by which it aims at attaining that end. Hence, it is distinguished and differs from civil society, and, what is of highest moment, it is a society chartered as of right divine, perfect in its nature and in its title, to possess in itself and by itself, through the will and loving kindness of its Founder, all needful provision for its maintenance and action. And just as the end at which the Church aims is by far the noblest of ends, so is its authority the most exalted of all authority, nor can it be looked upon as inferior to the civil power, or in any manner dependent upon it. . . . it is the Church, and not the State, that is to be man's guide to heaven. It is to the Church that God has assigned the charge of seeing to, and legislating for, all that concerns religion; of teaching all nations; of spreading the Christian faith as widely as possible; in short, of administering freely and without hindrance, in accordance with her own judgment, all matters that fall within its competence.

ID, 10, 11.

Christ has transformed the world. First, by coming. Second, by His rejection of the temptation of political power, the power of the State, of the kingdoms of this world.*** (cf. Matthew 4:10) Second, by founding His Church upon Peter. Third, by giving her His authority and jurisdiction. Fourth, by separating the functions of civil society and its organ of government, the State, and the functions of this religious society, the Church. "Render unto Caesar . . . ." "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me . . . ." "And I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom . . . ." (Mark 12:17, Matthew 28:18, Luke 22:29)

(continued)

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*"La Leyenda negra," or the "black legend," is the negative animus and bias frequently found in histories of Spain, especially, but not exclusively, in the works of English Protestant historians. The reader is referred to the work by Philip Wayne Powell entitled Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World (New York: Basic Books, 1971). In his book, Inquisition (Berkely: University of California Press, 1989), 131, Edward Peters describes the "black legend" as "[a]n image of Spain circulated through late sixteenth-century Europe, borne by means of political and religious propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards and their ruler to such an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness for the next four centuries. Spaniards . . . have termed this process and the image that resulted from it as ‘The Black Legend,’ la leyenda negra." The term was apparently first used by the Spanish historian Julián Juderías in his 1914 book La Leyenda Negra.
**"Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends." Centesimus Annus, No. 46.
***The Satanic-inspired temptation to assume political power was clearly rejected by Christ. This temptation was not, however, rejected by Muhammad who succumbed to its blandishments, and so political and religious authority were both grasped by him, and we find them both unified thereafter in traditional Islam, particularly in its notion of the caliphate. As explained by Bernard Lewis in his The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 2:

In classical Islam there was no distinction between Church and state. In Christendom the existence of two authorities goes back to the founder, who enjoined his followers to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to God the things which are God's. Throughout the history of Christendom there have been two powers: God and Caesar, represented in this world by sacerdotium and regnum, or, in modern terms, church and state. They may be associated, they may be separated; they may be in harmony, they may be in conflict; one may dominate, the other may dominate; one may interfere, the other may protest, as we are now learning again. But always there are two, the spiritual and the temporal powers, each with its own laws and jurisdictions, its own structure and hierarchy. In pre-westernized Islam, there were not two powers but one, and the question of separation, therefore, could not arise. . . . At the present time, the very notion of a secular jurisdiction and authority--of a so-to-speak unsanctified part of life that lies outside the scope of religious law and those who uphold it--is seen as an impiety, indeed as the ultimate betrayal of Islam. The righting of this wrong is the principal aim of Islamic revolutionaries and, in general, of those described as Islamic fundamentalists.

The conception of "Church" and "State" is as foreign to traditional Islam (though for different reasons) as it was foreign to Caesar of the Romans or even to the Protestants and Secularists who, through various doctrines or practices, subordinate the Church to the State [E.g., Luther's doctrine of "two kingdoms" and "one sword," and rejection of the Gelasian doctrine of "two swords." Calvin's notion of a "theocratic" state in Geneva. King Henry VIII's assumption of headship of the Church. Thomas Erastus and his Erastian doctrine that the church was under the dominion of the civil government. John Rawls's efforts to remove any references to "comprehensive doctrines" in public political discourse. ]

Natural Law Limits of State: Leo XIII's Sapientiae Christianae, Part 1

CHRISTIANS ARE CITIZENS of two perfect societies as long as they are pilgrims on earth: the Church and the State. They are no different than other men, though--in contrast to their fellows--they also seek after the City of God. They also live in the City of Man. They, like their fellow citizens who may not be of the household of faith, are πολιτικά ζῷα, politika zōa, political animals, homines politici. Under the natural law--like their fellows--they have obligations to the common good. It is these obligations of the Christian citizen that Pope Leo XIII addresses in his 1890 encyclical Sapientiae Christianae. Christians had a public role when Christianity, as the informer of civil institutions and of law, was on the wane in the 19th century. Christians have a doubly-urgent public role when the universal message of Christianity and the universal natural law which reaches across all confessional boundaries are all but gone in the 21sthcentury as informers of civil institutions and law. They have both an evangelical obligation and an obligation under the natural law to speak to universal supernatural and natural truths, and to see that the laws of the State, if they do not conform to these truths, at least do not contradict them.

We are called to re-evangelize, re-convert our civil institutions. This does not mean we will be loved any more or hated any less than the early Christians were by their Roman fellows. We will, without doubt, be thrown to the maw of lions or the maw of the press, rabid liberal commentators, ridiculing night hosts, and vituperative comedians. But the line must be drawn in the sand. It is time to refuse to live etsi Deus non daretur, as if God did not exist. It is time to live veluti si Deus daretur, as if God did exist. It is time to tell our elected public officials so. And if there are organic laws and constitutions that--as a result of the tampering of zealous secularist men and women in black robes who parade under the name of "Justice" but do nothing other than mock it--have been suppressed or construed so as to prevent it (though these expressly talk of "Nature and Nature's God" or of "establishment" and not a "wall of separation"), it is time to have that changed. It's time to "throw the bastards out" and time to throw the bastard interpretations of law out. It's time for a political defenestration. Nothing less than the survival of our way of life and charity to our fellow men demands it.

As then Cardinal Ratzinger stated the day before John Paul II's death at the convent of Saint Scholastica in Subiaco:

The attempt, carried to the extreme, to manage human affairs disdaining God completely leads us increasingly to the edge of the abyss, to man's ever greater isolation from reality. We must reverse the axiom of the Enlightenment and say: Even one who does not succeed in finding the way of accepting God, should, nevertheless, seek to live and to direct his life "veluti si Deus daretur," as if God existed.*

To put it plainly, atheists should be made to live as if God exists;** it is not Christians who should be made to live as if God does not exist so as to appease the errant atheist. The reason Christians can so insist is because structuring our life, or civil institutions, as if God existed is a demand of the natural moral law, a demand that is universal and reaches across confessional divisions. The existence of God is, by the light of natural reason, sufficiently probable, sufficient real, to justify, by reason alone, structuring society "under God." On the contrary, to form governments and to fashion laws as if God did not exist is to live an unreal life, a law contrary to reason.

Pope Leo XIII states in the beginning of his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae:

To contemplate God, and to tend to Him, is the supreme law of the life of man. For we were created in the divine image and likeness, and are impelled, by our very nature, to the enjoyment of our Creator. But not by bodily motion or effort do we make advance toward God, but through acts of the soul, that is, through knowledge and love. For, indeed, God is the first and supreme truth, and the mind alone feeds on truth. God is perfect holiness and the sovereign good, to which only the will can desire and attain, when virtue is its guide.

Deum spectare, atque ad ipsum contendere, suprema lex est vitae hominum: qui ad imaginem conditi similitudinemque divinam natura ipsa ad auctorem suum potiundum vehementer incitantur. Atqui non motu aliquo cursuque corporis tenditur ad Deum, sed iis quae sunt animi, cognitione atque affectu. Est enim Deus prima ac suprema veritas, nec nisi mens veritate alitur: est idem perfecta sanctitas summumque bonorum, quo sola voluntas aspirare et accedere, duce virtute, potest.

SC, 1. The "supreme law of the life of man," is to "contemplate God," Deum spectare . . . suprema lex est vitae hominum. And this truth relates to each individual man, but it also relates to man-in-society, the ζῷον πολιτικόν (zōon politikon), the political man, the homo politicus. "What applies to individual men applies equally to society--domestic alike and civil." Quod autem de singulis hominibus, idem de societate tum domestica tum etiam civili intelligendum. SC, 2. So if the contemplation of God is the supreme law of the life of man, then what business has man building domestic and civil structures that ignore such supreme law? What business do Christians have in helping the misguided men building institutional structures that ignore such a supreme law?

Tower of Babel by the Meister der Weltenchronik (ca. 1370)
(Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

Are we to build a Tower of Babel? No. The common good does not require us to build Tower of Babels. Rather, the common good requires us to spurn such projects. Pope Leo XIII makes this clear:

Nature did not form society in order that man should seek in it his last end, but in order that in it and through it he should find suitable aids whereby to attain to his own perfection. If, then, a political government strives after external advantages only, and the achievement of a cultured and prosperous life; if, in administering public affairs, it is wont to put God aside, and show no solicitude for the upholding of moral law, it deflects woefully from its right course and from the injunctions of nature; nor should it be accounted as a society or a community of men, but only as the deceitful imitation or appearance of a society.

Non enim ob hanc caussam genuit natura societatem ut ipsam homo sequeretur tamquam finem, sed ut in ea et per eam adjumenta ad perfectionem sui apta reperiret. Si qua igitur civitas nihil praeter commoditates externas vitaeque cultum cum elegantia et copia persequatur, si Deum in administranda republica negligere, nec leges curare morales consueverit, deterrime aberrat ab instituto suo at praescriptione naturae, neque tam est ea societas hominum et communitas putanda, quam fallax imitatio simulatioque societatis.

SC, 2. A society whose project is to form institutions of government and promulgate law that neglects God or the nature God established, and which shows no solicitude in conserving the moral law, is a society or a community of men in name only; nay, not even in name only. Rather, such a society is a "deceitful imitation or appearance of a society." It is an anti-Society, an ape of society.

When living within a State that ignores the natural moral law, the Christian is placed in a quandary in which he ought not to be. The Christian, like all men, ought to walk in conformity with the natural law which "enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up." SC, 5. (Similarly, a Catholic will have a love, both natural and supernatural, for his Church, who has been the custodian of his soul and his soul's second birth.) In addition, the Catholic will have a natural and supernatural love for God. Since the ordered natural love of one's country and the natural and supernatural love of God and His Church stem from the same principle, they--like reason and faith--ought to complement each other, not detract from each other:

Moreover, if we would judge aright, the supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle, since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other.

SC, 6. For that reason:

Wherefore, to love both countries, that of earth below and that of heaven above, yet in such mode that the love of our heavenly surpass the love of our earthly home, and that human laws be never set above the divine law, is the essential duty of Christians, and the fountainhead, so to say, from which all other duties spring.

Ambas itaque patrias unumquemque diligere, alteram naturae, alteram civitatis caelestis, ita tamen ut huius, quam illius habeatur caritas antiquior, nec unquam Dei iuribus iura humana anteponantur, maximum est christianorum officium, itemque velut fons quidam, unde alia officia nascuntur.

SC, 11.

Conflicts, if they arise, arise because the State assumes powers that are not its powers to assume or deprecates and ignores those realities which it ought not. By the very nature of things, however, devotion to God and His Church ought to precede--and inform--the love of one's country. "As to which should be preferred no one ought to balance for an instant." Uter vero sit anteponendus, dubitare nemo debet. SC, 7. Patriotism is not a virtue that rises above Faith, Hope, and Charity, but is a virtue that flourishes beneath them. The flag of patriotism should be beneath the flag of faith, just like a state flag should be placed beneath the U.S. flag in accordance with flag protocol. "It is a high crime (scelus est) indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men, an act of consummate wickedness (nefas) to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or, under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church." SC, 7.

The State must recognize the proper definition of law and act within its confines:

Law is of its very essence a mandate of right reason, proclaimed by a properly constituted authority, for the common good. But true and legitimate authority is void of sanction, unless it proceed from God, the supreme Ruler and Lord of all. The Almighty alone can commit power to a man over his fellow men;*** nor may that be accounted as right reason which is in disaccord with truth and with divine reason; nor that held to be true good which is repugnant to the supreme and unchangeable good, or that wrests aside and draws away the wills of men from the charity of God.

Non est lex, nisi iussio rectae rationis a potestate legitima in bonum commune perlata. Sed vera ac legitima potestas nulla est, nisi a Deo summo principe dominoque omnium proficiscatur, qui mandare homini in homines imperium solus ipse potest: neque est recta ratio putanda, quae cum veritate dissentiat et ratione divina: neque verum bonum, quod summo atque incommutabili bono repugnet, vel a caritate Dei torqueat hominum atque abducat voluntates.

SC, 8.

Modernly, man suffers from hubris, a hubris spawned from his scientific prowess. "From the fact that it has been vouchsafed to human reason to snatch from nature, through the investigations of science, many of her treasured secrets and to apply them befittingly to the divers requirements of life, men have become possessed with so arrogant a sense of their own powers." SC, 12. This arrogance has led men to think that such scientific, empirical principles can be applied to social life; therefore, through their materialism and empiricism, they elbow God out from the public square. "Led away by this delusion, they make over to human nature the dominion of which they think God has been despoiled." Wed to the world of nature alone, to the the physical here-and-now, and refusing to entertain the thought that there may be a supernatural world, a metaphysical world of above-here-and-beyond now, the structure their entire political and social philosophies as if nature was all there was, and as if the author of nature did not exist:

[T]hey maintain, we must seek the principle and rule of all truth; from nature, they aver, alone spring, and to it should be referred, all the duties that religious feeling prompts. Hence, they deny all revelation from on high, and all fealty due to the Christian teaching of morals as well as all obedience to the Church, and they go so far as to deny her power of making laws and exercising every other kind of right, even disallowing the Church any place among the civil institutions of the commonweal.

SC, 12.

With such underlying philosophical principles, these men "lay hands on the rudder of the State, in order that the legislation may the more easily be adapted to these principles, and the morals of the people influenced in accordance with them." SC, 12.

Disorder thus injected into the system through the hands of unscrupulous, grasping men that are heedless of God and the supernatural verities, what is the Christian to do?

(continued)

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*For a text of Cardinal Ratzinger's speech, see Cardinal Ratzinger On Europe's Crisis of Culture at http://www.catholiceducation.org/.
**This, of course, does not mean the atheist must be forcibly converted, something altogether impossible anyway. We are talking about public and civil structures, external fora, not matters relating to the internal forum of conscience.
***In the English translation of the encyclical there is a footnote, not contained in the Latin text, which states: "Note the extreme importance of this principle; it justifies the doctrine according to which the only conceivable foundation of political authority must be divine in origin."

Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: On the Limits of the State

CAESAR IS NOT DIVINE, nor is his modern analogue, the Leviathan State, Hobbes's "mortal God." That is why the State is the servant, and not the master, of the natural law, which is just one part of the "universe of truths--of science, of wisdom and of poetry--towards which intelligence tends by itself." Maritain, 75. "The power of the State of of social interest cannot impose itself upon this universe." Maritain, 75. Its power is meant only to "oppose, within the social body, the propagation of errors which might threaten the fundamental ethics of common life and the principles on which it is founded." Maritain, 75. The State has absolutely no competence in the matter of truth, speculative or moral. The diktats of its soulless, heartless, unintelligent, bureaucratic apparatchiki do not extend to the splendor of truth or to matters of the heart.

The secret of the heart and the free act as such, the universe of moral laws, the right of conscience to hearken unto God, and to make its way to Him--all these things, in the natural as in the supernatural order, cannot be tampered with by the State nor fall into its clutches.

Maritain, 76.

Get your hands out of the truth, State! Get your hands out of my heart!

Maritain, like any advocate of the natural law, is not by any means an anarchist. "Doubtless," he states, "law binds in conscience." Maritain, 75. But--and this is a big "but" which the Leviathan state with delusions of grandeur and pretensions toward divinity loathes to hear--but "this is because it is law only if just and promulgated by legitimate authority, not because the majority or the State can become the standard of conscience." Maritain, 76.

State! Government! Legislators! You are morality's servant!

At the service of morality, the State thus "has a moral and not merely material function." A hands-off, liberal State that recognizes no moral master is as loathsome as a State that pretends to be morality's master. The law itself has a pedagogical, "educational function and tends to develop moral virtues." The State may punish if, I follow a blind conscience "and commit an act in itself criminal or unlawful." Maritain, 76. The State, however, has no authority "to make me reform the judgment of my conscience." That is outside of its competence. It cannot plead ignorance.

The State knows this well. And that is why, whenever it goes beyond its natural limits, in the name of some totalitarian pretension, and inters into the sanctuary of conscience, it strives to violate this sanctuary by monstrous means of psychological poisoning, organized lies and terror.

Maritain, 76.

Moreover, the State cannot thrust itself into matters of "personal destiny." Every person has the right to make his own decision regarding these things. Accordingly, the State has no competence, no right to interfere in the "question of choosing one's work, of marrying the man or woman of one's choice or of pursuing a religious vocation."*

The State has the right to defend itself, and therefore, in cases of "extreme peril and for the safety of the community," the state can requisition its citizens' services and demand even that the citizens risk their lives in a just war. It can also "deprive criminals of certain of their rights (or rather sanction the fact that they themselves forfeited them)." But these self-protective rights are easily transgressed, and the State "becomes iniquitous and tyrannical if it claims to base the functioning of civil life on forced labour, or if it tries to violate the rights of the family order to become master of men's souls." Maritain, 77.

The institution of the family is under God, but the institution of the family is above the State.

For just as man is constituted a person, made for God and for a life superior to time, before being constituted a part of the political community, so too man is constituted a part of family society before being constituted a part of political society. The end for which the family exists is to produce and bring up human persons and prepare them to fulfill their total destiny.

Maritain, 77. This does not mean that the State has no role in family life, but its role is decidedly subservient, corroborative.

And if the State too has an educative function, if education is not outside its sphere, this function is to help the family fulfill its mission, and to complement this mission, not to efface in the child his vocation as a human person and replace it by that of a living tool and material for the State.

Maritain, 77.

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*It goes without saying that the State can interfere and prohibit same-sex marriages, since these moral enormities run afoul of natural moral law and, regardless of what the positive law or anyone's misguided conscience says, are nothing less than criminal associations from a moral point of view. Nothing the positive law can do can wash these unions of their foulness. A sodomite is a sodomite is a sodomite. The law cannot "out out" the "damn spot" by denominating these relationships as civil unions or marriage or anything else. It cannot prevent them from crying to heaven with a vengeance (cf. Gen. 18:20; 19:13), however concerted the effort may be to muffle their cries and cover their shame with the heavy robes of positive law. Putting a velvet dress on a corpse doesn't keep it from rotting and smelling rotten.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 20: The Christian Concept of the State

LEAVING THE ERRORS of the pantheistic, social contract, liberal, and organic theories of State behind him, Mercier then provides a Christian conception of the State, one predicated basically upon a classical notion of natural law, corrected, as it were, by the revelation of Christ. There are several operative truths that the Christian conception of State seeks to maintain, truths about the nature of the individual and the nature of civil society.

"The individual," Mercier begins, "is by nature a personal and social being." [335(114)] The fact that man is a personal being, that is a person, has great importance. It is the dignity of his end which gives dignity to his personhood.

[Man] has been created for an end which excels every other end, since it is identical with God Himself, inasmuch as He is the object of knowledge and love of mankind. Such an end implies the perfection and the happiness of the rational creature: his perfection, because the knowledge of God is the highest to which we can attain, and the love which this inspires is the most noble of all; his happiness, because the possession of this object appears as the goal of the deepest aspirations of the human soul.

[335(114)] Manifestly, the Christian notion of man, which it shares with classic natural law theory (e.g., Aristotle and Stoics) is world's apart from the selfish, Hobbesian view of man, the individualistic Rousseauian view, the materialistic view of Spencer, or the oddly minimalistic and State-dominated view of Hegel. Of course, Christianity adds a further dignity to man, and assures mankind of a supernatural destiny that is not contrary to his natural destiny, but which, in comparison, makes the natural destiny virtually blanch with inferiority.

[T]he idea of the personality of man is logically bound up with one of the essential dogmas of the Christian religion, namely, the dogma of his supernatural destiny. Being children of the same Father who is in heaven, redeemed by the same Saviour, called to the same celestial inheritance, men are all brethren and possessors of the same essential rights. In this we have the true idea of human personality.

[335(114)]

Though each man is a personal being, and so, to that degree, each man has equal dignity in relation to another man, it is also true that man is a social being. This is the teaching of the Doctors of the Church along with the best of the pagans, Plato and Aristotle, for example. The social nature of man is particularly manifest in the institution of the Church, which incorporates each man into the Body of Christ.

[B]y its visible organization, by its precepts of justice and of charity, by its dogmas of the divine Fatherhood, original justice, redemption and communion of saints, the Christian religion proclaims the solidarity and, consequently, the sociability of all mankind.

[335(114)] Christianity therefore promotes individual personality, without ignoring the communal aspects of human life. It does not fall into an impersonal collectivity, but neither does it promote an artificial and lonely individuality.

Christ Dividing Church and State

Both civil society and the State are therefore great goods. However, they are goods ordered and subordinate to the natural and supernatural destiny of man. As such, they are not absolute.

Civil society or the State is not a superior being, some transcendental reality having an ends of its own. it is constituted by the personal members who unit to form it; but yet it is not exclusively the product of their individual wills. Its foundation is indeed nature.

[335-36(115)] Since it finds its foundation in nature, it follows that its rights and its duties find ultimate support or foundation in nature, that is the moral law, itself. Civil society and the State, since they are natural in origin, must also advance, not retard or diminish, human nature's flourishing in a moral sense above all. Nature, however, does not inform us what form the civil society or the Sate must take. That determination appears to be left upon the will of men who have bound themselves in a society. What nature does supply is the instinct and the need in man for some sort of social organization, and that social organization, to be effective, presupposes "another, more august than nature." [336(116)]

The State, then, because demanded by nature, organized by man, willed by God, is at one and the same time an institution natural, human, and divine.

[336(115)] How so divine? "Society exists by the will of God, and therefore obedience of subjects to its authority is by the will of God . . . ." [336(116)] Man is give the power to determine, based upon circumstances, the form by which the State is to administer its authority over civil "As, then, the natural law is the foundation of the rights possessed by the individual and family, it follows that these rights must be respected by the public power."
--Cardinal Mercier
society. "Any form of government is lawful so long as it is properly adapted to fulfill the mission of the State." [336(116)] So the form of the government of the State is to be distinguished from the authority of the government of the State. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God." (Rom. 13:1) Since authority stems ultimately from God, it follows that the State has no authority to act against nature, against the moral law, against the interests of civil society or, more particularly, against the interests of man. "Civil society exists for the sake of the individuals composing it." [336(17)]

To provide the general conditions for our happiness and for our perfect development, conditions which we cannot establish and maintain by isolate effort, is the end of civil society, namely, the common weal. Hence the role of the public authority in the society is none other than to direct it towards its end. . . . [T]he first function of authority is to secure that our rights are respected. But it has a further duty to discharge as part of its mission: the common weal consists not only in the absence of injustice, but it also presupposes a state of affairs such as will favour the full exercise of the individual's rights and further the proper development of his faculties. . . . This is what is mean when the State is described as having 'civilization' as its mission.

[336-37(117)]

The State is in no way absolute. It must recognize and is subordinate to the rights of individual, of the family, and of religious society. Ultimately, it is subject to the natural law. Indeed:

The will of the State is supreme and its commands obligatory only in so far as they are in conformity with the natural law, which is the expression of the divine Will . . . As, then, the natural law is the foundation of the rights possessed by the individual and family, it follows that these rights must be respected by the public power . . . . From this may be judged the 'civilizing mission' of the State.

[337(118)] Since a man's self-development is his own work, and not anybody else's work, it follows that the State must allow for private initiative. It must not suppress private action; rather, it ought to encourage it, foster it, nurse it in every possible way. With its strong understanding of human personality and human dignity, the Christian notion of the state opposes the collectivist's ideal. Similarly, the State must recognize the pre-existing natural rights of the marriage state and the family, both natural institutions over which the State has no power other than in their civil effects. "Founded on this [natural]basis, the family enjoys a juridical existence that is independent of the civil law." [337(118)]

Since the advent of Christianity, a third restriction has been placed on government. Before the coming of Christ, religious authority was intermixed with civil authority. The founder of Christianity clearly intended to form a society separate from the State, namely, the Church. By establishing the Church, Christ clearly intended to free the individual conscience from the yoke of secular power. The conscience is not however free in the sense of anarchy. It was not loosed to be outside the pale of law, and so it is "under another power, but this is a spiritual one, whose influence is essentially not one of constraint but of persuasion." [338(118)]

By proclaiming the incompetence of the State in the governance of the soul and the essentially voluntary character of the act of faith, Christianity has laid the foundations of true liberty of conscience. . . . The separation of this twofold jurisdiction and the voluntary nature of the act of faith come from the Founder of the Christian religion.

[338(118)]

Cardinal Mercier

But all this Christian political philosophy has been rejected, spurned. It is not part of the public square. The separation of Church and State, which has evolved into secular dogma, a convenient one for the State that since the Protestant reformation has progressively been elbowing out the Church, has kept any semblance of natural law or Christian political philosophy at bay. At best, it is found in books, in catechisms, in Papal encyclicals, or in blogs, but in no other place on earth. Apparently, we prefer liberalism, and we are paying the moral and the social costs associated with that bad choice and that pact with that liberal of all liberals, that libertine known as the Devil.*

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*Cf. Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, No. 14: "But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, I will not serve; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals."

Girolamo Zanchi on Human Law, Part 1

Girolamo Zanchi

ZANCHI CONTINUES HIS TREATMENT on the law in general by proceeding from his analysis of the natural law to human laws. Zanchi defines "human laws" as those both "conceived" and "promulgated" through and by humans and human ingenuity. So human laws include those where man is the source of the law, as well as those where man is but the conduit by which such law is made or enforced. Thus, the source of human law may be divine law, natural law, or law "conceived from . . . [men's] own heads." (337).

Zanchi divides human laws into those that are "right and just," and those that are "tyrannical." (337). For laws to be "right and just," they must be conceived by proper authority, and must derived either from divine law or the natural law. Additionally, these laws must exist for "the good and well-being of the State or the church." Zanchi groups good and right customs with "right and just laws" because customs have the force of law.

Laws may be tyrannical as a result of various defects. They may be enacted by someone without authority to legislate. Though promulgated by someone in authority, laws may still be tyrannical. This is the result if, for example, laws are not passed by properly constituted authority for the common good, but for self or private interests. "These laws," Zanchi insists invoking Aristotle, "are unworthy of the word law." (337) Sinful traditions and customs are equally tyrannical, and Zanchi groups these along with tyrannical laws.

Human laws are useful, indeed, necessary, and reliance on the natural law alone is not either practical or even possible. Laws that govern men within a polity, what Zanchi calls "political laws" are a necessity. These are intended to keep the populace from evil and promote the good, promote the common good, and protect the state. (338, Thesis 1). The need for human laws to supplement natural law arises for two reasons. First, because the natural law relates to "general principles," and not all people are able to make proper conclusions from the general principles. "Therefore," Zanchi concludes, "there is a need that wise and thoughtful people be stirred by God even within the nations themselves, who clearly explain their laws from natural law for the well-being and protection of their State." (338)

The second reason is built upon the reality that men, at least in the fallen state, need to be prompted to do good and avoid evil. Thus, if love of virtue or hatred of vice is not sufficient to motivate all men, the "fear of punishment" will motivate the remainder. Since the natural law has no "external punishments" (but only "teaches, inclines, and accuses" men in the internal forum), and since the natural law "has not been so effectively written on the hearts" of men (so as to render it sufficiently "effective to protect people from evil or to push them to do good"), Zanchi concludes that human laws are both expedient and needful. This is true even in Christian states, for though Zanchi suggests that the natural law's effectiveness is "retained . . . only in the born-again elect," that is true "only in part." (338) Zanchi finds scriptural warrant for these views, in Paul's letter to the Romans: "The authority . . . bears the sword . . . to execute wrath on the wrong-doer" (Rom. 13:4) and in Paul's first letter to his disciple Timothy: "The law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, et cetera" (1 Tim. 1:9). The Pauline teaching finds expression in Isidore who is cited by Gratian in his Decretum (4.1): "Laws, however, have been made so that human audacity might be restrained by the fear of them and so that there might be a safe innocence among human beings and that among the wicked themselves, their audacity and facility for doing harm might be curbed by a powerful punishment." (Factae sunt autem leges, ut earum metu humana coherceatur audacia, tutaque sit inter improbos inocentia, etin ipsis improbis formidato supplicio refrenetur nocendi facultas.)

Zanchi concludes: "Thus, the practice of political laws is necessary for keeping people from evil, or else human society could not be saved." (338) Laws are meant to prevent us from becoming beasts, as Aristotle observes in his Politics. Men who flee from law and justice, under the notion of corruptio optimi pessima, are "the worst of all beasts." (339) All political laws, therefore, that have been ordained to promote virtue, discourage vice, and punish the evil doer "agree with the Holy Scripture, the prophets, Christ, and the apostles in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2[13-17]." (339)

In the next post, we will review Zanchi's continuing analysis of the relationship between the natural law and political laws, including whether human laws that contradict the natural law are in fact laws at all, the bindingness of political laws upon us, the difference between the natural law and political laws, and the construction or interpretation of human laws.

Gratian's Decretum

Universal Ethic-The Natural Law and the State 2-Measure of the Political Order

4.2. The Natural Law, Measure of the Political Order

86. Society organized in view of the common good of its members responds to the requirements of the social nature of the person. The natural law appears then like the normative horizon towards which the political order is called to move. It is defined as the ensemble of values that appear as humanizing for a society. When placed in the social and political ambit, values cannot be those of a private, ideological, or confessional nature, but refer back to all citizens. These express not a vague concensus between citizens, but are founded upon the requirements of the citizens' common humanity. So that society correctly meets its proper mission of service to persons, it should promote the realization of their natural inclinations. The person is therefore prior to society, and society is humanizing only if answers to the expectations written in the person insofar as he is a social being.

87. Such natural ordering of society to the service of the person is distinguished, according to the social doctrine of the Church, by four values that are derived from the natural inclinations of the human being, and that design the contours of the common good that society should promote; namely, freedom, truth, justice, and solidarity.(81) These four values correspond to the requirements of an ethical order that conforms to the natural law. If any of these is found to be lacking, the State tends toward anarchy or the reign of the stronger. Freedom is the first condition of the political order that is humanly acceptable. Without the freedom of following one’s conscience, of expressing one’s opinions, and of following one’s projects there is not a human State, since the search for the private good always should articulate itself to the promotion of the common good of the State. Without the search for and the respect of truth, there is no society, but the dictatorship of the strongest. The truth, which is not anyone's property, allows human beings to converge towards a common objective. If the truth does not prevail of itself, the most clever will impose “his own” truth. Without justice, there is not society, but the reign of violence. Justice is the most high good that the State is able to promote. It supposes that one always strain toward what is just, and that right (diritto) is applied with attention to particular cases, because equity (l’equità) is the greatest expression of justice. Finally, it is necessary that society regulate itself in the way of solidarity, assuring mutual help and responsibility for the fortunes of others, and arranging things so that the goods which society disposes may answer to the needs of all.

(81) Cf ibid., n. 37; Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, nn. 192-203.