It may be safely asserted that, except in the United
States, the church is either held by the civil power in
subjection, or treated as an enemy. The relation is not that of
union and harmony, but that of antagonism, to the grave detriment
of both religion and civilization.
It is impossible, even if it were desirable, to restore the
mixture of civil and ecclesiastical governments which obtained in
the Middle Ages; and a total separation of church and state, even
as corporations, would, in the present state of men's minds in
Europe, be construed, if approved by the church, into a sanction
by her of political atheism, or the right of the civil power to
govern according to its own will and pleasure in utter disregard
of the law of God, the moral order, or the immutable distinctions
between right and wrong. It could only favor the absolutism of
the state, and put the temporal in the place of the spiritual.
Hence, the Holy Father includes the proposition of the entire
separation of church and state in the Syllabus of Errors
condemned in his Encyclical, dated at Rome, December 8, 1864.
Neither the state nor the people, elsewhere than in the United
States, can understand practically such separation in any other
sense than the complete emancipation of our entire secular life
from the law of God, or the Divine order, which is the real
order.
Pages:
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377