Laborem Exercens: A Distributist Response

by Anthony Cooney

Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum was a courageous and radical document precisely because it confronted the conventional wisdom of the nineteenth century – the growing intellectual fact of collectivism and the dominant fact of liberal capitalism. Rerum Novarum made explicit for the first time the alternative of Christendom’s ideal – the free and lawful man living from his own property. This is the core doctrine of Rerum Novarum. “The Church has her negative standards, to fall below which is to fall into sin…but she also has her positive standards, which are very different…therefore, hours of employment, the living wage and housing…have no necessary relations to a discussion of the type of society which the church wants. For nothing is more certain than whatever such a society resembles, it will not resemble tolerability and transition which have been emphasized almost exclusively by commentators and publicists. The very terms of Rerum Novarum make it clear that the Pope envisaged something very much like the ultimate meaning. The encyclical teems with such indications. Thus: ‘A yoke little better than slavery itself…’ Therefore he cannot be alluding chiefly to low wages, but to the essential yoke of capitalism.” [Harold Robbins – ‘The Sun of Justice’ in The Cross and the Plough published by the Catholic Land League].

Forty years after Rerum Novarum Pope Pius XI issued a second social encyclical. Quadragesimo Anno reaffirmed in trenchant terms the Church’s doctrine of private property and repudiated the claims that they were ‘impractical’. The encyclical then discussed developments since Rerum Novarum. In doing so repeating the condemnation of socialism which, following its own internal logic where it led, had regurgitated Marx-Leninism, and of capitalism from which the Managerial Revolution was emerging: “This domination is most powerfully exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, also govern credit and determine its allotment…so that no one can breathe against their will, [para. 106]…a no less noxious and detestable internationalism…in financial affairs, [para 109]”. Quadragesimo Anno also dealt briefly with and warned against the new phenomenon of fascism.

Such is the authority of Rerum Novarum that popes since its publication have felt obliged to follow its pattern of enunciating doctrine and proposing ‘points of tolerability and transition.’ Quadragesimo Anno, although a necessary response to twentieth century developments, also gave rise to the idea that there was a necessity periodically to ‘update’ Rerum Novarum. Such updating can only result in a dilution of the core teaching of Rerum Novarum by an appeasement of current conventional wisdom. This then is the background of Laborem Exercens and it is necessary to understand the background to understand its hybrid character; part thesis enunciating a doctrine, part directive, stating the tolerable minimum conditions of social life. A genuine criticism must being with the fact that it disappoints in its treatment of its titular theme – human work. It disappoints because of an incredible confusion of two concepts, work and employment. If it were not evident that the encyclical is the result of long consideration it might be supposed that this confusion arises from hasty and ill-considered thought. The only explanation for it is that the failure to distinguish between these two things is an appeasement of the conventional wisdom of ‘full employment.’

Now it is true that a more profound and philosophical examination of the mystery of human creativity than was possible at the time of Rerum Novarum is vitally necessary today when the science of cybernetics has outdated the economic concept of ‘employment.’ Here indeed, was a field where it was opportune to update Rerum Novarum and it is tragic that so important a document as Laborem Exercens has fudged the issue. The encyclical starts from the great mystery of human creativity as participation in the Divine activity of creation, which being outside the limitations of time and space, is both complete and continuing: “My Father worketh until now, and I work.” This participation of Man in the activity of creation is ordained by the Divine command “Subdue the earth.’ Since wasps, bees, ants and spiders manifestly ‘work’ the Divine decree must refer to Work of a different order, to the creative work by which Man’s purpose, the focus of his becoming, is incarnated, first in a body, and then in the artifacts and processes by which he extends his purpose through matter and time in the ordering, (subduing) of his environment. This is a sublime concept, loftier than Rerum Novarum’s insistence upon dignity of work. However, the Pope also appeals to the words “By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread” to justify the arguments that subsistence work is imposed upon man by Divine decree. This indeed may be the case, but it is not a case which is evident from the texts appealed to. The command to “subdue the earth” is given before the Fall and is part of a blessing. The words “By the sweat of thy brow…” are spoken after the Fall and is part of a curse. Now it so happens that Pope Pius XII has illumined our understanding of this curse. In commending the work in the field of painless childbirth of Grantly Dick Ried, Pope Pius XII made clear that the words “in sorrow and in pain…” were not a malediction but a prophesy – God was saying that this would be the result of sin. But the words “in sorrow and in pain…” are part of the same utterance as “By the sweat of thy brow…” and therefore these words must also be prophetic and not maledictory – it is the fruits of sin, human avarice and greed which impose greater than necessary subsistence work upon man. As the encyclical closely relates subsistence work (“by the sweat of thy brow”) with the Fall, it is valid to draw a comparison between the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin as a flaw in human nature and the Calvinist doctrine of Original Sin as the total depravity of Man. In the same way a Catholic doctrine of work must distinguish between the sufficient penalty – “the sweat of thy brow” – imposed by nature upon fallen man in return for subsistence, and the Protestant “work ethic” which is a contributory source of capitalism. This the encyclical does not appear to do.

The confusion of these two sorts of work, work as spiritual expression, whether in the building of a house, the cultivation of a garden or the making of a song, and work for subsistence, is the source of the appeasement of the conventional wisdom of ‘full employment.’ However, we must at this point remember what was remarked about Rerum Novarum that it states negative as well as positive standards. Laborem Exercens does, in fact, make the point that ‘employment’ is the conventional means by which men exercise work and restore subsistence: it is concerned therefore to deal with the tolerable and immediate conditions thus created. Unfortunately, as with Rerum Novarum, it is this aspect which has already been seized upon by ecelesial publicists, both clerical and lay. An outstanding example of this is the press misrepresentation of the encyclical as citing ‘Christ the Worker.’ The phrase ‘the workers’ has gathered accredtions of Marxist meaning which make it mean something utterly different to ‘working men.’ Yet it is precisely the latter phrase which the encyclical uses in teaching a ‘spirituality of work’ – “Therefore this was also the gospel of work because He who proclaimed it was Himself a man of work, a craftsman like Joseph of Nazareth.” Christ worked, yes, but as a master-craftsman, a proprietor. If Christ is to be taken as a social model, He is the model of Rerum Novarum’s ideal – the skilled craftsman, master of his own work through ownership of small property.

Considered from a materialist point of view – and the concept of ‘employment’ is purely and entirely materialist – there is nothing dignified about such industrial work. Only the ‘spirituality of work’ called for in the encyclical, can in fact dignify subsistence work, but it is the work which is dignified by the person, not the toil which dignifies. ‘Employment’ in contrast is a social convention, not a Divine decree. If we were to use short words we would not be deceived for a moment: when we speak of employment we in fact mean wage service. Employment is simply a constraint to toil: to do that which we would not do if we had a choice. In a cybernetic economy it has almost nothing to do with Man as ‘the subject of work,’ it is simply a political device for distributing purchasing power.

Pope John Paul II emphasizes that Laborem Exercens is not intended to touch upon all the aspects of social doctrine covered in Rerum Novarum, but to highlight the doctrine of work as “A key, possibly the essential key, to the whole social question.” This response has, therefore, concentrated only upon what the encyclical teaches about the nature of work and upon the unfortunate confusion of work with ‘employment.’ Because of the limitations of space, what may be thought as of as the encyclical’s treatment of exigencies - migrant workers, socialization, etc. – has been left aside, though not because there is not an abundance of comparative material to be set against them. Part of the problem in responding to the encyclical is meaning derived from Phenomenology, a new school of philosophy to those whose acquaintance is with Scholasticism. This is especially contrast to the false notions of Marxism and Economism of man as the “object of work.” A matter of particular regret is that the Pope leaves out altogether any consideration of the nature and origin of money; yet surely the monetary system is the key to the “exigencies” the Pope deals with exist solely in monetary unreality. When, however, the exigencies have been distinguished and the phenomenological terms translated, what indeed emerges is a re-affirmation with development, of the Catholic doctrine familiar to any distributist, which might be summarised as follows:

1. The making of things is not solely an economic activity, but a human activity; that there exists an organic relationship between the maker and the object, and the organization of production must be based upon this fact.

2. That men are socialised by their family and national community into their human identity, and the nation therefore constitutes the natural unit of mankind.

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Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (May 31, 1857 – February 10, 1939), reigned as Pope from February 6, 1922 and sovereign of Vatican City from 1929 until February 10, 1939. He issued the encyclical Quas Primas establishing the feast of Christ the King, and took as his papal motto "Christ's peace in Christ's kingdom." This indicates the central idea of his pontificate: that the Catholic religion must permeate all areas of human living: the home, the city, politics, economics, art etc. Rather than allowing religious belief to be reduced to a merely private matter, or withdrawing the Church from involvement in the outer world, Pius XI thought Catholics must work to create a truly Catholic society: Christ must be king over every aspect of life.

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Achille Ratti was born in Desio, Province of Milan in 1857, the son of the prosperous owner of a silk factory. He was ordained as a priest in 1879 and embarked on academic career within the Church. He obtained three doctorates (in philosophy, canon law and theology) at the Gregorian University in Rome, and then from 1882 to 1888 was a professor at the seminary in Padua. His great scholarly speciality was as an expert paleographer, a student of ancient and medieval Church manuscripts. This led him leave seminary teaching to work full time at the Ambrosian Library (the Biblioteca Ambrosiana) in Milan, where he remained from 1888 to 1911. During this time, he edited and published a scholarly edition of the Ambrosian Missal (the rite of Mass used in Milan), and researched and wrote much on the life and works of St. Charles Borromeo, as well as writing many other books and articles on his manuscript studies. He became chief of the Library in 1907, and undertook an impressively thorough programme of restoration and re-classification of the Ambrosian's collection. The scholar was also an avid mountaineer in his spare time, reaching the summits of Monte Rosa, the Matterhorn, and Mont Blanc. In 1911, at Pope Pius X's invitation, he moved to the Vatican to become Vice-Prefect of the Vatican Library, and in 1914 was promoted to Prefect.

Ratti's career took a sharp turn in 1918. His years of study had left him with a gift for langauges, inspiring Pope Benedict XV to ask him to leave the Library and take on a vital diplomatic post: apostolic visitor, (that is, papal representative), in Poland, a state newly restored to existence, but at that time still under effective German and Austro-Hungarian control. The Central Powers' defeat, however, saw Poland become fully independent, though it was immediately threatened by the Soviets. Ratti performed his diplomatic work in this difficult environment well, was given a higher rank as papal nuncio, and was consecrated as a titular archbishop in October 1919. He showed personal courage, refusing to flee from Warsaw when the Red Army was approaching it in August 1920.

In June 1921 Ratti was recalled to Italy to become Archbishop of Milan. Benedict XV made him a Cardinal at the same time. His had been a fast rise in the world of practical Church affairs after his long years of scholarship. But even greater was to come very soon indeed. In January 1922 Benedict XV died. At the ensuing conclave, Ratti was elected Pope on February 6th as a compromise candidate in the fourteenth ballot, taking the name Pius XI. His first act was to revive the traditional public blessing given from the balcony 'urbi et orbi', 'to the city and to the world'. His immediate predecessors had refused to do so ever since the loss of Rome from papal hands to the Italian state in 1870. It was an indicator of what was to come - a Pope and a Church determined to influence powerfully the broader world rather than to withdraw from it.

PUBLIC TEACHING: "Christ's Peace in Christ's Kingdom"

Pius's first encyclical as as pope was directly related to his aim of Christianising all aspects of increasingly secular societies. Ubi arcano, promulgated in December 1922, inaugurated the "Catholic Action" movement. The idea was to involve lay men and women in an organisation, under the close supervision of the bishops, actively involved in spreading Catholic values and political ideas throughout society. Pius also gave his approval to specialised movements like the Jocists, associations of young Catholic industrial workers who aimed to Christianise the workforce, and provide a Catholic alternative to Communist and socialist trade unions. Similar goals were in evidence in his encyclical Divini illus magistri (1929), making clear the need for Christian over secular education, and Casti Connubii (1930), praising Christian marriage and family life as the basis for any good society, and condemning contraception.

In contrast to some of his predecessors in the nineteenth century, who had favoured monarchy and dismissed democracy, Pius XI took a pragamatic approach toward the different forms of government. In his encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (1933), in which he addressed the situation of the Church in Republican Spain, he proclaimed, that the Church is not "bound to one form of government more than to another, provided the Divine rights of God and of Christian consciences are safe", and specifically referred to "various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic". [1]

Pius also argued for a reconstruction of economic and political life on the basis of religious values. His most well-remembered encyclical today is probably on this subject: Quadragesimo Anno (1931). As indicated by its title, it was written to mark 'forty years' since Leo XIII's great social/economic encyclical Rerum novarum, and restated that encyclical's distaste for both socialism and unrestrained capitalism. Pius instead envisioned a truly Christian economy based on co-operation and charity. He reaffirmed the natural right to private property, but emphasised it must be used with Christian charity. He also endorsed workers' rights to organise, though preferably in purely Catholic organisations under the direction of the local bishop. In place of either pure capitalist individualism or socialist statism he endorsed subsidiarity: small-scale, voluntary organisations (the local Church, trade union or club), local communities, and of course the family were the fundamental units of society, and were best equipped to help the needy. In a truly Christian society, employer and employee should both put aside selfishness and do their Christian duty to each other: the worker should work hard for his employer, and the employer should pay a fair wage on which a man could decently support a family.

Pius was the first Pope to utilise the power of modern communications technology in evangelising the wider world. He established Vatican Radio in 1931, and was the first Pope to broadcast on radio.

INTERNAL CHURCH AFFAIRS AND ECUMENISM

In his management of the Church's internal affairs Pius mostly continued the policies of his predecessor. Like Benedict XV, he put a great emphasis on spreading Catholicism in Africa and Asia and on the training of native clergy in these "mission territories". He ordered every religious order to devote some of its personnel and resources to missionary work.

Pius XI also continued Benedict XV's moderate-conservative approach on the issue of how to deal with the threat of modernism in Catholic theology. Pius was thoroughly orthodox theologically and had no sympathy with modernist ideas that relativised fundamental Catholic dogmas. He condemned modernism in his writings and addresses. At the same time, as a scholar himself he was aware of the danger of accusations of 'modernism' being used to tar unjustly academic work which was in fact compatible with orthodoxy and not truly modernist, and quietly discouraged such an approach. Pius was interested in supporting serious scientific study within the Church, establishing the Pontifical Academy for the Sciences in 1936.

Pius strongly encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart in his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor(1928). He canonised some important saints: Bernadette Soubirous, Therese of Lisieux, John Vianney, and John Bosco. He also named several new Doctors of the Church: John of the Cross, Albert the Great, Peter Canisius and Robert Bellarmine.

Pius XI was the first Pope to directly address the Christian ecumenical movement. Like Benedict XV he was interested in achieving reunion with the Eastern Orthodox. (Failing that, he determined to give special attention the Eastern Catholic churches). He also allowed the dialogue between Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics which had been planned during Benedict XV's pontificate to take place at Malines. However, these enterprises were firmly aimed at actually reuniting with the Roman Catholic Church other Christians who basically agreed with Catholic doctrine, bringing them back under Papal authority. To the broad pan-Protestant ecumenical movement his attitude was very different. He condemned in his 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos the idea that Christian unity could be attained by establishing a broad federation of many bodies holding varying doctrines (the widespread view among Protestant ecumenists); rather, the Catholic Church was the one true Church, all her teachings were objectively true, and Christian unity could only be by achieved by Protestants rejoining the Catholic Church and accepting all the Catholic doctrines they had rejected. Catholics were ordered not to attend ecumenical conferences with Protestants.

DIPLOMACY

Pius' reign was one of busy diplomatic activity for the Vatican. The Church made advances on several fronts in the 1920s, improving relations with France and, most spectacularly, settling the Roman question with Italy and gaining recognition of an independent Vatican state. However the Church also faced the great difficulty of how to deal with new totalitarian governments, Communist, socialist, fascist and Nazi.

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

France's republican government had long been strongly anti-clerical. The Law of Separation of Church and State in 1905 had expelled most religious orders from France, declared all Church buildings to be government property, and had led to the shutting down of most Church schools. Since that time Benedict XV had sought a rapprochement, but it was not achieved until the reign of Pius XI. In Maximam Gravissimamque (1924) many areas of dispute were tacitly settled and a bearable coexistence made possible. In 1926 Pius condemned Action Francaise, the reactionary monarchist movement which had until this time operated with the support of a great many French Catholics. Pius judged that it was folly for the French Church to continue to tie its fortunes to the unlikely dream of a monarchist restoration, and found the movement's tendency to defend the Catholic religion in merely utilitarian and nationalistic terms, as a vital contributing factor to the greatness and stability of France, unorthodox. Although the condemnation caused great heartache for many French Catholics, most obeyed and Action Francaise never really recovered.

RELATIONS WITH ITALY AND THE LATERAN TREATIES

Pius aimed to end the long breach between the papacy and the Italian government and to gain recognition once more of the sovereign independence of the Holy See. Most of the Papal States had been seized by the forces of King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont in 1860 at the foundation of the modern unified Italian state, and the rest, including Rome, in 1870. Previous popes had refused to accept this and had withdrawn to become 'prisoners of the Vatican'. The Italian government had responded by becoming extremely anti-clerical. Now Pius thought a compromise would be the best solution. To bolster his own new regime, Mussolini was also eager for an agreement. After years of negotiation, in 1929, the pope supervised the signing of the Lateran Treaties with the Italian government. According to the terms of the first treaty, Vatican City was given sovereignty as an enclave of the city of Rome in return for the Vatican relinquishing its claim to the former territories of the Papal States. Pope Pius thus became a head of state (albeit the smallest state in the world), the first pope who could be termed as such since the Papal States fell after the unification of Italy in the 19th century. A second treaty, the concordat with Italy, recognised Roman Catholicism as the official state religion of Italy, gave the Church power over marriage law in Italy (ensuring the illegality of divorce), and restored Catholic religious teaching in all schools. In return, the clergy would not interfere in politics. A third treaty provided financial compensation to the Vatican for the loss of the Papal States. During the reign of Pope Pius XI this money was used for investments in the stock markets and real estate. To manage these investments, the Pope appointed the lay-person Bernadino Nogara, who through shrewd investing in stocks, gold, and futures markets, significantly increased the Catholic Church's financial holdings. However contrary to myth it did not create enormous Vatican wealth. The compensation was relatively modest, and most of the money from investments simply paid for the upkeep of the expensive-to-maintain stock of historic buildings in the Vatican which previously had been maintained through funds raised from the Papal States up until 1870.

The signing of the Lateran Treaties was the high point of the Vatican's relationship with Mussolini's government. It deteriorated drastically in the following years as Mussolini's totalitarian ambitions began to impinge more and more on the autonomy of the Church. For example, the church's youth groups were dissolved in 1931 to allow Mussolini's fascist youth groups complete dominance. As a consequence Pius issued the encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno in 1931, in which he criticised the idea of a totalitarian state. Relations with Mussolini continued to worsen throughout the remainder of Pius' pontificate.

RELATIONS WITH GERMANY AND THE CONCORDAT OF 1933

Pius was eager to negotiate concordats with any country that was willing to do so, thinking that written treaties were the best way to protect the Church's rights against governments increasingly inclined to interfere in such matters. Twelve concordats were signed in all in Pius' reign with various types of governments, including some German state governments and with Austria. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 and asked for a concordat, Pius was therefore inclined to assume his sincerity and accept. Negotiations were conducted on his behalf by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. The Reichskonkordat was signed by Pacelli and by the German government in June 1933, and included guarantees of liberty for the Church, independence for Catholic organisations and youth groups, and religious teaching in schools.

Hitler, however, never intended to honour the agreement. He had merely wanted to neutralise potential Church opposition in the vital early months and years of his government to make his establishment of a dictatorship easier. As the years went by, Hitler's totalitarian ambitions, much greater even than Mussolini's, were made clear. The Church was a rival for people's total devotion and therefore would be slowly squeezed out of existence. Clause after clause of the concordat was broken - Catholic youth groups were abolished and all youth were forced into the Hitler Youth; religious education in schools was cut back and finally abolished; show trials of priests were held to discredit the clergy; vandalism of churches by Hitler Youth members was tacitly encouraged; seminaries were interfered with and closed.

Pius XI responded by issuing in 1937 the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge condemning the Nazi ideology of racism and totalitarianism and Nazi violations of the concordat. Copies had to be smuggled into Germany so they could be read from the pulpit.

As the extreme nature of Nazi racial anti-semitism became obvious, and as Mussolini in the late 1930s began imitating Hitler's anti-Jewish race laws in Italy, Pius made his position clear, both in Mit Brennender Sorge and in a public address in the Vatican to Belgian pilgrims in 1938:

"Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites."

These comments were subsequently published worldwide.

THE SOVIET UNION AND COMMUNISM

Pius watched with horror the unceasing Communist persecution of Christianity in the Soviet Union, which was beyond that seen anywhere else. He made clear the Church's total philosophical opposition to Communism as inherently atheistic and totalitarian. Nevertheless, he made repeated attempts to get the Soviet Government to soften its attitude. (Stalin's contemptuous reply was "The Pope - how many divisions has he got?", and the persecution continued unabated). In 1937 he issued his encyclical Divini Redemptoris which was a scathing condemnation of Communism and the Soviet regime as "intrinsically perverse."

MEXICO AND SPAIN

The socialist government of Mexico in the 1930s embarked on severe anti-clerical measures. In the state of Tabasco the Church was in effect outlawed altogether. Pius condemned the Mexican government in his 1933 encyclical Acerba Anima. By the end of his reign the situation had improved somewhat.

The republican government which had come to power in Spain in 1931 was also strongly anti-clerical, secularising education, expelling the Jesuits from the country, and allowing mobs to burn down churches without any attempt to stop them. This encouraged Catholics to support the military coup against the Republican government in 1936 led by General Francisco Franco. The Republicans responded by murdering many thousands of priests and nuns, and as time passed the Republican government became dominated more and more by Communists. It was therefore unsurprising that Pius gave fairly unequivocal support to Franco and the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. Pius distinguished Franco from the totalitarian, anti-religious fascists like Hitler and Mussolini (whom he by this stage basically opposed), seeing him as an old-fashioned authoritarian Catholic conservative. In any case, Pius concluded a Nationalist victory was necessary if the Church was to survive in Spain at all.

Pope Pius XI was buried in the crypt at st. Peter's Basilica, in the main chapel, close to the tomb of St. Peter.

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The Pope Speaks on Rural Life

Speech delivered by His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, to the delegates at the Convention of the National Confederation of Farm Owner-Operators.

Rome November 15, 1946

National Catholic Rural Life Conference

A WELCOME

We always experience particular pleasure in welcoming representatives of occupations that make up the economic and social life of a people. We have added satisfaction on this occasion in greeting you, beloved sons, delegates of a vast National Confederation, comprised of a large number of owner-operator farmers. The lands that you cultivate are the "sweet fields," "dulcia arva," so dear to the gentle Vergil (Eclogue, 1, 3). They are the lands of Italy, whose perennial and life-giving healthfulness, whose fertile fields, sunny hills, and shadowy woods, whose generous vines and olive trees, whose sleek flocks were exalted by Pliny (Nat. Hist. 1. III, 5, n. 41). "O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas!" (Verg., Georg. II, 458-459). "O more than happy husbandmen," exclaimed the great poet of the country, "did they but know their blessings!" Hence We could not let this occasion pass without speaking some word of encouragement and exhortation, especially since we are all well aware how much the moral recovery of our whole people depends on a class of farmers socially sound and religiously firm.1

CONTACT WITH NATURE

More than anyone else. you live in continual contact with nature. It is actual contact, since your lives are lived in places still remote from the excesses of an artificial civilization. Under the sun of the Heavenly Father your lives are dedicated to bringing forth from the depths of the earth the abundant riches which His hand has hidden there for you. Your contact with Mother Earth has also a deep social significance, because your families are not merely consumer-communities but also and especially producer-communities.2

ROOTED IN THE FAMILY

Your lives are rooted in the family -- universally, deeply, and completely; consequently, they conform very closely to nature. In this fact lies your economic strength and your ability to withstand adversity in critical times. Your being so strongly rooted in the family constitutes the importance of your contribution to the correct development of the private and public order of society. You are called upon for this reason to perform an indispensable function as source and defense of a stainless moral and religious life. For the land is a kind of nursery which supplies men, sound in soul and body, for all occupations, for the Church, and for the State.3

RURAL CULTURE

So much the more, then, must great care be taken to preserve for the nation the essential elements of what might be called genuine rural culture. We must preserve the qualities of industriousness, simple and honest living, respect for authority, especially for parental authority, love of country, and loyalty to traditions which have proved a source of good throughout the centuries. We must preserve readiness to aid one another within the family circle and amongst families, from home to home. All of these qualities we must have animated with a true religious spirit, for without such a spirit these very virtues tend to degenerate into unbridled greed for profit. May the fear of God and faith in God, a faith which finds daily expression in prayers recited together by the whole family, sustain and guide the life of the workers of the fields. Let the Church remain the heart of the village, the shrine of the people. Sunday after Sunday, may it gather the faithful, true to the sacred traditions of their ancestors. There may they lift their minds above material things to the praise and service of God and to supplication for the strength to think and live in a truly Christian manner during the coming week.4

BALANCED REWARDS

Farming has essentially a family character and is, therefore, very important to the social and economic prosperity of the whole people. In consequence, the tiller of the soil has a special right to a proper reward from his labor. During the last century and even at the present time there have been discouraging examples of attempts to sacrifice farming to other ends. If one is looking for the highest and most rapidly increasing national economy or for the cheapest possible provisioning of the nation with farm products, there will be, in either case, a temptation to sacrifice the farming enterprise.5

DUTIES TO SOIL AND NEIGHBOR

It devolves upon you, therefore, to demonstrate that on account of its family character farming does not exclude the advantages of other kinds of business, and, furthermore, that it avoids their evils. Be adaptable, attentive, and active stewards of your native soil, which is to be used but never exploited. Let it be seen that you are thinking, thrifty men, open to progress, men who courageously employ your own and others' capital to help and supplement your labor, provided that such expenditure does not endanger the future of your families. Show that you are honest in your sales, that you are not greedily shrewd at the expense of the public, and that you are well-disposed buyers in your country's markets.

We know well how often it is possible to fall short of this ideal. Notwithstanding uprightness of intention and dignity of conduct upon which many farmers may pride themselves, it is none the less true that the present day demands great firmness of principle and strength of will. You must prefer to earn a living in the sweat of your brow rather than succumb to the diabolical temptation of easy gain, which would take advantage of the dire need of a neighbor.6

EDUCATION FOR RURAL LIFE

Another exhibition of selfishness frequently manifests itself through the fault of parents who put their children to work too early in life to the neglect of their spiritual formation, their education, their scholastic instruction, and their special occupational training. There is no more mistaken idea than the notion that the man who tills the soil does not need a serious and adequate education to enable him to perform the varied duties of the season in timely fashion.7

SIN, THE LAND, AND LABOR

Sin did, in truth, render labor in the fields burdensome, but it was not sin that introduced such labor into the world. Before there was any sin, "God gave man the earth for his cultivation as the most beautiful and honorable occupation in the natural order." In the wake of the original sin of our first parents, all the actual sins of humanity have caused the curse to weigh upon the earth with increasing heaviness. The soil has suffered successive scourges of every kind-floods, earthquakes, pestilence, devastating wars, and land mines. In some places it has become sterile, barren, and unwholesome, and has refused to yield to man its hidden treasures. The earth is a huge wounded creature; she is ill. Bending over her, not as a slave over the clod, but as the physician over a prostrate sufferer, the tiller lovingly showers on her his care. But love, for all that it is so necessary, is not enough. To know nature, to know, so to speak, the temperament of one's own piece of land, sometimes so different from that of the very next plot; to be able to discover the germs that spoil it, the rodents that would burrow beneath it, the worms that would eat its fruits, the weeds that would infest its crops; to determine what elements it lacks and to choose the successive plantings that will enrich it even while it rests -- these and so many other things require wide and varied knowledge and information.8

LAND REFORMS

Besides all this, and quite apart from the rehabilitation made necessary by the war, in many places the land demands that careful and well-planned preliminary measures be taken before any reform can be accomplished in the matter of land ownership and farm contracts. Without such measures, improvised reform, as history and experience teach us, would develop into sheer demagoguery. Therefore, far from being beneficial, it would be both useless and dangerous, particularly today when humanity must still fear for its daily bread. Quite often in times past, the incoherent, deceptive vaunting of unprincipled orators has made rural populations the unwitting victims of exploitation and slaves to a domination from which they would have instinctively shrunk.9

CITY OR COUNTRY

Because the farmer's life is so close to nature and based so substantially upon the family, certain prevalent types of injustice show up the more flagrantly in relation to that life. Such injustice finds its most evident expression in the conflict between city and country. What is the reason for this conflict, which, unfortunately, is especially characteristic of our own time?

Modern cities, with their constant growth and great concentration of inhabitants, are the typical product of the control wielded over economic life and the very life of man by the interests of large capital. As Our glorious Predecessor, Pius XI, has so effectively shown in his Encyclical, "Quadragesimo Anno," it happens too often that human needs do not, in accordance with their natural and objective importance, rule economic life and the use of capital. On the contrary, capital and its desire for gain determine what the needs of man should be and to what extent they are to be satisfied. Therefore, it is not human labor in the service of the common welfare that attracts capital to it and presses it into its service. Rather, capital tosses labor and man himself here and there like a ball in a game. If the inhabitant of the city suffers from this unnatural state of affairs, so much the more is it contrary to the very essence of the farmer's life. Notwithstanding all his difficulties, the tiller of the soil still represents the natural order of things willed by God. The farmer knows that man, by his labor, is to control material things; that material things are not to control man.10

THE FLIGHT TO THE CITY

This, then, is the deep-seated cause of the modern conflict between city and country; each viewpoint produces altogether different men. The difference of viewpoints becomes all the more pronounced the more capital, having abdicated its noble mission to promote the good of all groups in society, penetrates the farmer's world or otherwise involves it in its evils. It glitters its gold and a life of pleasure before the dazzled eyes of the farm-worker to lure him from his land to the city where he may squander his hard-won savings. The city usually holds nothing for him but disillusionment; often he loses his health, his strength, his happiness, his honor, and his very soul there.

LAND MONOPOLY

After the land has been so abandoned, capital hastens to make it its own; the land then becomes no longer the object of love but of cold exploitation. Generous nurse of the city as well as of the country; it is made to produce only for speculation -- while the people suffer hunger; while the farmer, burdening himself with debts, slowly approaches ruin; while the national economy becomes exhausted from paying high prices for the provisions it is forced to import from abroad. This perversion of private rural property is seriously harmful. The new ownership has no love or concern for the plot that so many generations had lovingly tilled, and is heartless towards the families who till it and dwell upon it now. Private ownership, even though it sometimes leads to exploitation, is not, however, the cause of this perversion. Even in those instances where the State completely arrogates capital and the means of production to itself, industrial interests and foreign trade, characteristic of the city, have the upper hand. The real tiller of the soil then suffers even more. In any case, the fundamental truth consistently maintained by the social teaching of the Church is violated. The Church teaches that the whole economy of the people is organic and that all the productive capacities of national territory should be developed in healthy proportion. The conflict between country and city would never have become so great if this fundamental truth had been observed.12

TO EACH HIS SHARE

You farmers certainly do not desire any such conflict; you want every part of the national economy to have its share; however, you also want to keep your share. Therefore, you must have the help of sensible political planning and sound legislation. But your principal help must came from yourselves, from your cooperative unions, especially from your credit unions. Perhaps, then, the recovery of the whole economy may come from the field of agriculture.13

A COMMUNITY OF LABOR

And finally a word about labor. You tillers of the soil form within your families a community of labor. You and your fellow-members and associates also form another community of labor. Finally, you desire to form with all the other occupational groups a great community of labor. This is in keeping with what has been ordained by God and nature. This is the true Catholic concept of labor. Work unites all men in common service to the needs of the people and in a unified effort towards perfection of self in honor of the Creator and Redeemer. In any case, remain firm in regarding your labor from the point of view of its essential value. You and your families are contributing to the public welfare; such labor protects your fundamental right to an income sufficient to maintain you in accordance with your dignity and cultural needs as men. It implies also your recognition of the necessity of uniting with all other occupational groups who labor for the various needs of society. Your labor therefore, embodies your support of the principles of social peace.14

A PARTING BLESSING

With all Our heart, dear sons, We invoke heaven's choicest blessings on you and on your families. The Church has always blessed you in a particular manner, and in many ways has brought your working year into her liturgical year. We invoke these blessings upon the work of your hands, from which the holy altar of God receives the bread and wine. May the Lord give you, in the words of Holy Scripture, "the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, abundance of corn and wine!" (Gen., XXVII:28) May your lands, like the fertile Etruscan fields between Fiesole and Arezzo, so greatly admired by Livy, "be rich in grain and cattle and an abundance of all things," "frumenti ac pecoris et omnium copia rerum opulenti" (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1. XXII, cap. 3). With these sentiments and these wishes We impart to you and to all those dear to you Our paternal Apostolic Blessing.

POPE LEO XIII SPEAKS FIFTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER

VALUES OF LAND OWNERSHIP

". . . If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another. A further consequence will result in the greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them, nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. That such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self- evident. And a third advantage would spring from this: men would cling to the country in which they were born; for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life . . ."

Leo XIII, "Rerum Novarum," May 15, 1891.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENDNOTES

1. Catholic Rural Life Objectives First Series: O'Hara, Most Rev. Edwin V., "A Spiritual and Material Mission to Rural America," pp. 3-6.
LaFarge, John, S.J., "The Church and Rural Welfare," pp. 37-41.
Bishop, W. Howard, "Agrarianism, the Basis of the New Order," pp. 49-52.
Third Series: Ciognani, Most Rev. Amleto Giovanni, "Address of the Apostolic Delegate," pp. 9-11.
Muench, Most Rev. Aloisius J., "The Catholic Church and Rural Welfare," pp. 15-19.
Sheen, Fulton J., "Challenge to Our Democracy," pp. 99-102.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter VIII, The Rural Pastorate, pp. 35-38. Chapter IX, Rural Church Expansion," pp. 39-42.
Agricultural Handbook for Rural Pastors and Laymen, Thomas E. Howard, pp. 44-52.
For This We Stand, L. G. Ligutti.
Standing on Both Feet, Patrick T. Quinlan.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, p .1.
The Popes and Social Principles of Rural Life.
The Classics and Rural Life.
2. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Third Series: Cram, Ralph Adams, "What Is a Free Man?" pp. 35-42.
The Rural Homestead, Decade of Homesteading, Patrick T. Quinlan.
Pioneering Today, C. W. Couture.
Catholic Benedicta, Thomas C. Duffy, C.S.C.
3. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Fourth Series: Kalven, Janet, "Woman and Post-War Reconstruction," pp. 25-28.
Salm, Martin L., My Family Cooperative," pp. 77-82.
First Series: Baker. O. E., "The Church and the Rural Youth," pp. 7-29.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter I, "The Rural Catholic Family, pp. 3-7.
Task of Woman in the Modern World, Janet Kalven.
Land and Life for Woman McDonald, Rosemary, A Rural Mother Looks at the Land," 14-22.
Home Making a Life-time Job, Catherine E. Dorff.
Sacramental Protection of The Family, Emerson Hynes.
Population Trends, L. G. Ligutti.
The Bottom of the Barrel, Can We Survive, Patrick T. Quinlan.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, p. 2.
4. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Fourth Series: Berger, Leo, "Caring for the Spiritually Underprivileged," pp. 57-59.
Urbain, Joseph V., "Catholic Rural Communities of Tomorrow," pp. 52-56.
Schimek, William, "What Can the Rural Pastor Do?" pp. 60-64.
Third Series: Boyle, Most Rev. Hugh C., "The More Abundant Life," pp. 13-14.
Pitt, F. Newton, "Youth Problems in Rural Areas," pp. 53-59.
Taylor, Carl C., "The Restoration of Rural Culture," pp. 83-91.
Treacy, John P., "Will Youth Be Served?" pp. 103-109.
Mother Mary of the Incarnate Word. "Evangelizing the Disfranchised," pp. 111-121.
Willmann, Dorothy J., "Reading in the Rural Home," pp. 163.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter VI, "Catholic Culture in Rural Society," pp. 26-28.
Speaking of Education Sister Helene, O.P.. "Rural Life and Art," pp. 13-17.
Land and Life for Woman Buckley, Mary Imelda, "Christian Culture and Rural Life." pp. 1-4.
Rogations at Maranatha, Josephine Drabek.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, pp. 4, 13-16.
Catholic Rural Life Songs.
5. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Second Series: Walster H. L., "Backgrounds of Economic Distress in the Great Plains," pp. 101-109
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, pp. 9-10.
6. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Second Series: Schmiedeler, Edgar. O.S.B., "The Status of the Laborer in Agriculture," pp. 81-89.
Kenkel. Frederick P.; "The Economic Disfranchisement of the Share-Cropper," pp, 91-100.
Manifesto of Rural Life Chapter XI, "Rural Social Charity," pp. 47-51. Chapter XII, "The Farm Laborer," pp. 52-54.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, p. 6.
7. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Fourth Series: Muench Most Rev. Aloisius J., "Education for Rural Life," pp. 19-21.
First Series: Johnson, George, "The Professional Preparation of Teachers for Catholic Rural Schools," pp. 53-56.
Second Series: Christensen Chris L., "The Place of Youth in Agriculture and Rural Life"pp. 19-26.
Gillis, Michael M., "The Adult Education Movement in Nova Scotia," pp. 73- 80.
Third Series: Johnson, George, "The Federal Government and Education for Rural Life," pp. 27-33.
Rawe, John C. S.J., "Catholic Rural Social Planning," pp. 71-81.
Strittmatter, Denis, O.S.B., "Vocational Training for Colored Youth" pp 123-126.
Byrne, Francis J., "Problems and Policies in Catholic Rural School Work in the South," pp. 127-132.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter IV, "Catholic Rural Education," pp. 18-22. Chapter V, "Rural Catholic Youth," pp. 23-25.
Agricultural Handbook for Rural Pastors and Laymen, Howard, pp. 107-111.
Speaking of Education Nutting, Willis D., "What Parents Think," pp. 1-12
Sister M. Samuel, O.S.F., "The Rural Elementary Teacher," pp. 18-27.
Sister M. Mark, O.S.F., "The Rural High School Teacher," pp. 34-39.
A First Born Grows Up, Olive M. Biddison.
Cultural Erosion, L. G. Ligutti.
A Practical School of Agriculture, Paul Sacco.
Dear Sister, Sister M. Gerald, S.S.J.
Training a Land Queen, E.L. Chicanot.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, pp. 16-17.
8. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Fourth Series: Jansen, Cornelius H., "The Role of the Scientist," pp. 22-24.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter X, "Rural Health," pp. 43-46.
Land and Life for Woman McNally, Patricia, "Health and Rural Living," pp. 8-10. Drabek, Josephine, "Nobility of Rural Work," pp. 10-13.
Health from the Ground Up, Jonathan Forman.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, p. 17.
9. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Fourth Series: Lissner Will, "Natural Law and Human Rights," pp. 13-18.
Taeusch, Carl, "What Can the Catholic Church Do?" pp. 37-42.
First Series: Williams, Michael, "The Green Revolution," pp. 31-36.
Rawe, John C., S.J., "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in Agriculture," pp, 35-45.
Miller, Raymond J.. "The 'Quadragesimo Anno' and the Reconstruction of Agriculture," pp. 47-56.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter XVI, "Rural Taxation." pp. 66-70.
Agricultural Handbook for Rural Pastors and Laymen, Howard, pp. 55-66; 127- 141.
Man's Relation to the Land.
10. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Second Series Fichter, Joseph H., S.J., "A Comparative View of Agrarianism," pp. 111-116.
Speaking of Education Sister M. Canice, S.S.N.D., "From Urban Teacher to Rural Teacher," pp 28-33.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, p. 18.
11. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Second Series: Baker, O E, "Will More or Fewer People Live on the Land?"
Third Series: Briefs, Goetz; "The Back to the Land Idea," pp. 93-98.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter III, "Rural Settlement," pp. 13-17.
I Am a Country Pastor, Figures Speak for Themselves, Patrick T. Quinlan.
12. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Second Series: Crowley, Francis M. "Absentee Landlordism in a New Form," pp. 27-34.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter II, "Farm Ownership and Land Tenancy," pp. 8-12. Chapter XV, "Agriculture In the Economic Organism," pp. 63-65.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, pp. 6-7.
13. Catholic Rural Life Objectives Fourth Series: Ryan, Most Rev. Vincent J., "State and Reconstruction," pp. 29-36.
First Series: Kenkel, Frederick P "The Ethical and Religious Background of Cooperation," pp. 43-47.
Second Series: Michel, Virgil, O.S.B., "The Cooperative Movement and the Liturgical Movement," pp. 13-18.
Schmiedeler, Edgar, O.S.B., "A Review of Rural Insecurity" pp. 43-52.
Matt Alphonse J., "Economic and Social Justice for the Negro, pp. 61-69.
Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter XIII, "Farmer Cooperatives," pp. 55-59. Chapter XIV, "Rural Credit" pp. 60-62.
Agricultural Handbook for Rural Pastors and Laymen, Howard, pp. 27-38, 69- 88- 91-102; 105-107; 115-122.
Catholic Churchmen and Cooperatives.
St. Paul to the Galatian Farmers, Most Rev. Joseph H. Schlarman.
Rural Life in a Peaceful World, pp. 5; 10-13; 19-20.
14. Manifesto on Rural Life Chapter VII, "Rural Community," pp. 29-34.
15. The Land and the Spirit, Most Rev. Peter W. Bartholome.
Land and Life for Woman Wickes, Mariette, "The Unfolding of the Christian Seasons," pp. 4-8.
Agriculture and the Liturgical Year, Benedict Ehmann.
St. Isidore -- Patron of Farmers.

THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC RURAL LIFE CONFERENCE 4625 Beaver Avenue Des Moines, IA 50310-2199

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The State's Obligation to Recognize and Protect the Catholic Church

by Lt. Col. James Bogle

"When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit"
-St Ivo of Chartres to Pope Paschal II 1106 A.D.

The prime papal teachings on the subject date chiefly from the 19th and early 20th century, since that was when the Church had to face the issue most acutely. Some, therefore, think that the encyclicals that date from that time are therefore no longer relevant and may be safely ignored.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It almost seems customary among many modern Catholics to think that any document before Vatican II can be safely ignored. Vatican II itself taught the exact opposite and makes it quite clear that such an attitude is not only not Catholic but not Christian. Indeed, it is scarcely human. How can one ignore one’s own history and traditions? But it is much worse in a Catholic since traditio – the handing on of traditional teachings and practices – is the very essence of Catholicism. We were given a Fidei Depositum (Revelation – the “Deposit of Faith”) and told by our Lord Himself to hand it on faithfully. Therefore to ignore Catholic tradition is already to disobey Christ and that radically. Indeed, if we did so fully we would be able to ignore even Christ Himself, since He is, humanly speaking, a figure of the past. Likewise we could ignore the Bible, since it is a document of the past.

Thus is demonstrated the absurdity of the theological position that diminishes the authority of past tradition.

However, such a view is so current today that very few now read the great papal encyclicals of the past, although they form part of the magisterial teaching of the Church and often contain infallible teaching, the denial of which constitutes apostasy.

So what do the former popes teach about the Christian constitution of states? I have listed below just a few of the many encyclicals on the subject considering that most will not have time to read them all. I start with the condemnation by Blessed Pius IX of the idea that the Church and the State should be separate. In short, any Catholic state worthy of the name must first recognise the truth of the Catholic religion. Second, it must give a special, protected place to the Catholic religion. It is a grave error to say that a Catholic state can allow all religions an equal footing before the law with no special position given to the true religion.

If a Catholic state fails to recognise the Catholic religion as true then that state is putting itself above God and God’s truth. That is a reversal of right order. God is above the state not vice versa.

It is not enough to say that all the state need do is recognise the Natural Law. States must also recognise God, truth and the true religion. That is the obligation of all states. Catholic states have a more pressing obligation since they call themselves “Catholic”.

Naturally, the realisation of these obligations becomes difficult, or even impossible, the less Catholic a state is. In a non-Catholic state the obligation remains but cannot be realised and circumstances mitigate, as they do in all judgments and laws. Thus Catholics still owe a duty of allegiance to their own state even if it is not Catholic or where the state refuses to recognise the truth of the Catholic religion. They must still “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”, as our Lord Himself expressly taught2, but that does not absolve them from continuing to work for a fully Catholic society.

In short, no Catholic may settle for the “second best” position of saying that there is no obligation to work for a Catholic state and that one may be satisfied with a state that is merely neutral in matters of religion. However, prudence must, as ever, be exercised. Where there is no prospect of the state ever becoming Catholic in the lifetime of an individual Catholic and, indeed, when to proclaim publicly such an intent may actually do harm to the Catholic cause in public life, then it would be imprudent to make such a proclamation or even to speak of it openly. Nevertheless, it remains the ideal that should maintain a place in the breast of every true Catholic.

If any man – be he even a priest or a bishop – tell you otherwise, then he has departed from the Faith and, what is more, is seeking to destroy your faith, too. As even the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)3 so succinctly puts it, quoting Centesimus Annus of John Paul II:

"2244 Every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct. Most societies have formed their institutions in the recognition of a certain pre-eminence of man over things. Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognized man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer. The Church invites political authorities to measure their judgments and decisions against this inspired truth about God and man:

"Societies not recognizing this vision or rejecting it in the name of their independence from God are brought to seek their criteria and goal in themselves or to borrow them from some ideology. Since they do not admit that one can defend an objective criterion of good and evil, they arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny, as history shows."4

Moreover, the right to a certain degree of religious freedom is not denied thereby. On the contrary, the Catholic State is better able than any other to grant the proper degree of freedom to practitioners of other religions – a freedom that the secular state is unable and unwilling to do, either by giving too much or not enough.

It is not a coincidence that King James II of Great Britain and Ireland in his Declaration of Indulgence of 16875 gave a freedom to minority religions that the Anglican establishment utterly refused to give and that, together with the fact that James was a Catholic, is the reason why the Anglican Whigs conspired with the Dutch Protestants to overthrow him, their rightful and lawful ruler. Anglicanism was then imposed by force and by one of the most savage penal codes the world had ever seen. Some scholars even have the cheek to suggest that this was a victory for “liberty”! The CCC teaches:

"2105 The duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ."6 By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them “to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live.”7 The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church.8 Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.9

2106 "Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits.”10 This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it “continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it."11

2107 "If because of the circumstances of a particular people special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional organization of a state, the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom must be recognized and respected as well."12

2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error13, 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.[38]

2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a "public order" conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner14. The "due limits" which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with “legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."15

Please note this: 'the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies'. The footnote refers to Quas Primas of Pius IX, the encyclical on Christ the King and the kingship of Christ over civil society and the need for men to recognise that kingship expressly in the laws of the nation.

Paragraph 2107 expressly recognises that special civil recognition can be given to one religious community. It follows that this applies a fortiori to the true religious community, namely the Catholic Church.

Equally, however, the "due limits" of religious liberty must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good in conformity with the objective moral order.

Moreover, it will be later seen that, whilst historically and in its documents16, the Church has favoured the monarchical form of government, Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei17, his encyclical on the Christian constitution of states, points out that any form of government that does not conflict with Divine or Natural Law may form the basis of the state. This applies even though the Church has, herself, favoured certain specific forms of government.

There is no question that the Church has favoured the monarchical form of government and especially the Roman imperial form of government which was passed on from classical Roman times.

Any who doubt that may see this from history itself, wherein the Church has always approved that form of government, since the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, through to the time of the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire, to the time of the Western Roman Emperor Charlemagne, King of the Franks, to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and beyond during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which succeeded it. This is matter of historical record.

Moreover, it is expressly spelt out in the Papal Decretal of Pope Innocent III entitled Venerabilem18, in which he writes:

"...We acknowledge as we are bound, that the right and authority to elect a king (later to be elevated to the Imperial throne) belongs to those princes to whom it is known to belong by right and ancient custom; especially as this right and authority came to them from the Apostolic See, which transferred the Roman Empire from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of Charles the Great. But the princes should recognize, and assuredly do recognize, that the right and authority to examine the person so elected king (to be elevated to the Empire) belongs to us who anoint, consecrate and crown him."

Moreover, the Church gave special pride of place to the Catholic Roman Emperor in its liturgy – including at the Solemn Intercessions on Good Friday and in the Exultet at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday – right up until as late as 1955 when the late Archbishop Bugnini rather secretively removed the imperial prayers from the Roman rite of liturgy.

In its “Collect for the Emperor” the Church used to pray:

"O God, who prepared the Roman Empire for the preaching of the Gospel of the eternal King, extend to Thy servant (name), our Emperor, the armoury of heaven, so that the peace of the churches may remain undisturbed by the storms of war".

The Church thus expressly recognised the hand of God in the choice of the Roman Empire as the seedbed of the Church and of Roman Catholicism and of its initial primary evangelisation.

Indeed, St Peter, the first pope, likewise gave his endorsement to the Roman imperial system in his own very first encyclical letter, the First Epistle of St Peter19, when he wrote:

'Be ye therefore subject to every creature for God’s sake: whether it be to the Roman Emperor [NT Gr: ho Basileus which means the Roman Emperor] as excelling; or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of the good….Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the Emperor.’

The political realisation of “Gospel values” was thus not some hippie-like commune seemingly beloved of some utopian Christian sects, and even of some modern Catholics, nor even of some modern, religiously liberal, Federal Democratic Capitalist Republic as one might be mistaken for thinking from reading the political writings of some American theologians, but rather the Christianised Roman Empire beginning with the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius.

That is simply a matter of historical and theological record.

Even today, the Church enjoys cordial relations with the remaining Catholic monarchies such as Belgium, Spain, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein.

Equally, however, the Church, despite favouring the Roman imperial system, does not rule out other forms of government. Indeed, history gives us the examples of the Florentine and Venetian Republics which, although largely aristocratic republics, nevertheless placed great emphasis upon their parliamentary customs.

We should also remember that it was the Church itself that preserved the democratic ideals of the ancients but without their reliance upon slavery (both the Greek and the Roman republics depended upon slaves who had no votes). Indeed, over the centuries Catholic kings and popes gradually abolished the institution of slavery replacing ancient slavery with the Feudal serf and then replacing the serf and the unfree villeins, bordars and cottars with a free, land-owning peasantry and villeinage.

That happy state of affairs was exploded by the Protestant Reformation which stole the common lands from the free peasants, surreptitiously invaded their rights and, by blood, murder and rapine, enriched the partisans of the Reformation out of the plunder of the monasteries and religious houses which were, in a demonstrably concrete form, the infrastructure of social welfare and the patrimony of the poor.

It was also the Catholic Dioceses and monasteries that had helped to preserve much of the democratic traditions that survive today. The Chapter of Canons elected the bishop and the monks elected their Abbot.

Even the Roman Emperor himself was elected from among suitable candidates by the 7 Prince-Electors of the Empire who, themselves, had the same status as the Cardinals who elect the Pope.

The Roman emperors, moreover, helped to preserve the spirit of democracy by granting charters of, and rights to, self-government and election for districts, groups and institutions. The people of the Tyrol region of the Holy Roman Empire had for long elected their own deputies and had their own Parliament at Innsbruck without whose approval they could not be taxed or conscripted. This was eventually formalised in an Imperial brief of 1342 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Kaiser Maximilian I. Now this was over 300 years before the English Whigs demanded “no taxation without representation” (all the while persecuting Catholics and minority religions in England!) and over 400 years before the American Colonists made their demands at the time of the Boston “Tea Party”!

The Holy Roman Empire itself, whilst under the overall suzerainty of the Emperor, was, in fact, divided into a Distributist patchwork of hundreds of kingdoms, duchies, counties, baronies and lordships, often ruled by abbeys or bishops, and power was diffused and decentralised in a way that we can hardly imagine today with our over-centralised organs of state, Internal Revenue Service, State Departments and heavy-handed, over-centralised government departments and law-enforcement agencies.

This same "Distributism" has been much extolled by more recent Catholic writers notably men like G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc who both founded the "Distributist League". Belloc writes extensively, in his book The Servile State, of the Distributism of Catholic Europe in former times and of the damage caused by the Protestant Reformation and of the gradual return of slavery and servility in Western society as a result.

In business and commerce in the days of Catholic Christendom, careful rules and customs prevailed under the Guild system which had begun back in Roman times and which allowed for a steady progression from Apprentice to Journeyman to Master, ensured full employment for all trades, a fair price for the consumer, a high standard of quality of goods and services, a social welfare system for all guildsmen and their families and the spiritual care of, and suffrages for, the members and their families.

Usury was forbidden as being alien to justice and, as Aristotle had written, “an exceedingly unnatural way to earn one’s living”20. Thus men could not make money simply by having money but had to work to earn their living or, at least, share the risk of any business venture and not simply demand their loan back with interest even if the business failed. Banking was thus run on Christian lines.

This, in turn, was backed up by the largest private system of social welfare and community care that the world has ever seen – the monastic system. Yes, it was a private system not a Socialist system owned by the government like our modern cumbersome, inefficient, corrupt and bureaucratic systems of social welfare and community care. Indeed, unlike so much modern bureaucracy, the monastic system of welfare was entirely founded upon charity in its true sense, that is, of love – love both divine and human.

So much leisure time was there in those days that between ¼ and 1/3 of the year was marked off as “Holy days” when servile work ceased. Compare this with the measly 2 weeks annual vacation which the average worker in the USA gets to spend with his or her family!

Indeed, there was so much leisure time that the people used much of it to build the great Cathedrals as an act of worship, love and homage to God. They laboured out of love and freely to construct these great monuments of love for God. They were not compelled to this task but did it out of love for God.

That, in itself, is an astonishing fact against which there is nothing to compare in our secularist age.

The laws and the courts were all founded upon principles of biblical and Natural Law from which developed the whole system of both Roman and Common law which, even today in our secularist world, are still the foundation of our legal systems.

Education was carefully organised and run with Diocesan, monastic, local, municipal, City, Guild and Royal foundations of all sizes and each carefully seeking out worthy and deserving candidates for schooling with a particular eye on future priests and clergy. There was a widespread system for detecting the brighter sons of the poor to benefit from the very considerable range of sources of funding to educate them. It was during the Christian centuries that the great educational foundations were established, most notably the great universities of Europe like Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, Coimbra, Heidelberg, Cracow’s Jagiellionian, Vienna and so many others, not least in Rome itself.

Modern science itself has its origins in the Christian centuries among Catholic scholars. The law of impetus, discovered and named by John Philoponus (John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria) at the 6th century University of Alexandria, and later expanded by the post-Lateran IV scholars at the Sorbonne, like Jean Buridan, is almost identical to Newton’s law of inertia. Indeed, Newton "borrowed" the idea from these earlier Catholic scholars. Scientists recognise that Newton’s law is the foundation of most modern science. Yet it was discovered by Roman Catholic scholars during the Christian centuries at a time when Church and State worked closely together.

Indeed, the condemnations of the false Aristotelianism of the Cathars and Albigensians by the 4th Lateran Council of the Church ensured that time was not wasted on such false ideas but was re-focussed upon more fruitful areas. The result was Buridan’s re-discovery of the principle of impetus and a huge leap forward in scientific understanding - and this not from an academic "free-for-all" but rather following an actual condemnation of false ideas by an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church! Yet modern secularist scientists will tell you that the Catholic Church is opposed to science. On the contrary, the Catholic Church founded modern science!

It is during the Christian centuries of the Middle Ages that the first parliaments of Europe have their foundation. Count Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, laid the foundations for the modern English parliament in 1265. He and his father, with a tiny army of only 750 Catholic knights, had defeated a huge army of some 50,000 Albigensians at the Battle of Muret in 1213, 2 years before the end of the 4th Lateran Council.

The Spanish Cortes, the Polish Sejm, the French Parlement and the Imperial Diet or Reichstag and the local Landtag and Landschaft of the German lands begin to take their modern shape over this period when Catholic Christendom is the unchallenged system of government in Europe. Parliamentary democracy has its beginnings then and not in the English Civil War or the American Revolution, still less the French Revolution. Parliamentary representation is an idea devised by Roman Catholic Christendom. That is merely an historical fact. Doubters need only look up the historical sources.

In those days, even wars were carefully regulated by laws, rules and customs in a manner designed greatly to mitigate their savagery. This set of rules formed part of the Christian Code of Chivalry by which knights were enjoined to exercise the virtues of compassion, gentleness, mercy and forbearance toward others even, nay especially, their enemies. They were to treat women with especial care and respect and their first task was to defend and extend, by lawful means, the boundaries of Christendom – the kingdom of Christ upon the earth. In this respect, the Roman Emperor was the First Knight of Christendom and his primary duty was to protect Christendom, the Church and the Pope.

Here, indeed, then, was a system designed entirely upon "Gospel values".

All of this was shattered at the Protestant Reformation.

Moreover, the Protestant governments, in stark contrast to the Catholic governments, actually re-introduced slavery and it was as a direct result of the Protestant Reformation that laws forbidding the enslaving of human beings were over-turned. Thus the infamous slave trade began once again to flourish, with Europeans daring to call themselves "Christians" making themselves fabulously rich by forcibly enslaving their fellow man.

Those who doubt this need only read the Recopilacion de las Leyes de Indias (‘the Compilation of the Laws of the Indies’)21 of the Spanish Habsburg kings and emperors, proclaimed almost immediately after the discovery of the New World which absolutely forbade the enslaving of the native Indians and demanded their fair and equitable treatment so as to persuade them, by the equity of Christian laws, that they should themselves consider converting to Christianity.

Then read the laws of the thoroughly Protestant State of Massachusetts regarding slavery and you will see a very different view of things.

Massachusetts was the first slave-holding colony in New England. Slavery there is said to have predated the settlement of Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629.

Samuel Maverick, apparently New England’s first slaveholder, arrived in Massachusetts in 1624 and, according to John Gorham Palfrey, owned two Negroes before John Winthrop, who later became governor of the colony, arrived in 163022.

The Pequot War in 1637 provided and opportunity for slaving. The Pequot Indians of central Connecticut, pressed hard by encroaching European settlements attacked the town of Wetherfield. Later the Massachusetts and Connecticut militias raided the Pequot village near Mystic, Connecticut with much slaughter and the women and children were enslaved in New England. Roger Williams of Rhode Island wrote to Winthrop congratulating him saying that God had placed in his hands ‘another drove of Adam’s degenerate seed.’

In 1645, Emanuel Downing, brother-in-law of John Winthrop, wrote to him of his desire for a "juste warre" with the Pequots, to enable the capture of enough Indian men, women, and chiddren to exchange in Barbados for black slaves, saying the colony would never thrive "until we get ... a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business."23

By 1676, Boston ships had pioneered a slave trade to Madagascar, and they were selling black human beings to Virginians by 1678. At home, the Puritans generally took black African slaves to the West Indies and exchanged them for experienced slaves to bring back to New England. Massachusetts merchants and ships were supplying slaves to Connecticut by 1680 and Rhode Island by 1696.

The principal families of New England were tied up in the slave trade. Cornelius Waldo, maternal great-grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a large scale slave merchant.

Massachusetts, like many American colonies, had roots in a very fundamentalist Protestantism. This did not prevent them from becoming slave-owners, however – far from it. All Puritans considered themselves to be God’s Elect, but they seemed to believe that the slave-trade was not forbidden by the God of Israel’s Law. The Calvinist Puritans seem to have considered that blacks were a people required by God to serve whites. Cotton Mather, the New England Puritan, even told black slaves because they were the “miserable children of Adam and Noah” and that slavery was their punishment.

A 1642 Massachusetts law of 1641 established rules for slaves “which the law of God, established in Israel concerning such people, doth morally require”24 expressly claiming a Scriptural basis for their slavery laws.

The fact that English-speaking people tend to live in English-speaking countries, not least those former British colonies like Canada, the USA and so on, has tended to permit a certain blindness to these facts and to result in comparisons with the Catholic monarchies odious to the latter and favourable to the former. The reality is rather different. It has been largely the legislation of the Catholic monarchs which, under the guidance of the Church, has been more favourable to true human freedom and dignity. Protestant legislation has varied from the thoroughly oppressive – like the penal codes introduced after the Dutch invasion of England in 1688 and the expulsion of King James II – to the downright bizarre in Calvin’s Geneva or in the form of some of the early Puritan legislation in the American colonies.

Once these historical facts are appreciated it soon can be seen that the teachings of the popes about the need to retain a strong relationship between Church and State are not the fruit of some obscurantist, dark, self-serving, oppressive “Popish Plot” designed to reduce mankind to slavery and servitude, as the Puritan Protestants and Secular Humanists would have us believe, but rather the very opposite.

There is a much stronger case for arguing that Puritanism and its bastard offspring, Secular Humanism, have conspired to return much of mankind to servitude and misery.

The strong influence of Catholic teaching on the political life of a nation is the best way to guarantee freedom, security, wealth, the happiness and holiness of any people and, ultimately, their salvation in the next life. Since Catholicism is the true religion this should not surprise us! How could truth have the opposite effect? If it did, it could hardly be called truth.

Moreover, despite the further false propaganda of the Church’s enemies, history testifies to this. Institutions founded in the Christian Middle Ages when Church and State worked in harmony, survive to this day.

Let us then see what the popes have to teach us about the relationship between Church and State.

Syllabus Errorum (The Syllabus of Errors) (Bl Pius IX) –

“On Modern Errors”

Condemned proposition: ’55.
The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.
— Allocution “Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27, 1852.’

Quas Primas (Pius XI) –

“On the Kingship of Christ”

'17. It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia.

18. Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.”25] Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.”26 He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?”27 If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”28

19. When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. “You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.”29] If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.

20. If the kingdom of Christ, then, receives, as it should, all nations under its way, there seems no reason why we should despair of seeing that peace which the King of Peace came to bring on earth — he who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, who, though Lord of all, gave himself to us as a model of humility, and with his principal law united the precept of charity; who said also: “My yoke is sweet and my burden light”. Oh, what happiness would be Ours if all men, individuals, families, and nations, would but let themselves be governed by Christ! “Then at length,” to use the words addressed by our predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, twenty-five years ago to the bishops of the Universal Church, “then at length will many evils be cured; then will the law regain its former authority; peace with all its blessings be restored. Men will sheathe their swords and lay down their arms when all freely acknowledge and obey the authority of Christ, and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father”.30’

Une Fois Encore (St Pius X) –

“On the separation of Church and State”


Vehementer Nos (St Pius X) –

“On the French law of separation of Church and State”

Iamdudum (St Pius X) –

“On the law of separation of Church and State in Portugal”

In these three encyclicals, St. Pius X expressly rejects the laws for separating the Church from the State brought in by anti-clericals and secularists in France and Portugal. These laws were designed not only to de-couple the Church from any part of government but were designed to allow the state to interfere with the institutions of the Church and to attack them and the Church generally. Under similar laws the children-seers of Fatima were persecuted by the anti-clericals of Portugal.

Notre Charge Apostolique (Our Apostolic Mandate) (St Pius X) –

“Condemnation of the Sillon”

‘...However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.’

Immortale Dei (Leo XIII) –

“On the Christian constitution of states”

‘21. There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favour of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is — beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

22. A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: “When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay.”31

36. This, then, is the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the constitution and government of the State. By the words and decrees just cited, if judged dispassionately, no one of the several forms of government is in itself condemned, inasmuch as none of them contains anything contrary to Catholic doctrine, and all of them are capable, if wisely and justly managed, to insure the welfare of the State. Neither is it blameworthy in itself, in any manner, for the people to have a share greater or less, in the government: for at certain times, and under certain laws, such participation may not only be of benefit to the citizens, but may even be of obligation. Nor is there any reason why any one should accuse the Church of being wanting in gentleness of action or largeness of view, or of being opposed to real and lawful liberty. The Church, indeed, deems it unlawful to place the various forms of divine worship on the same footing as the true religion, but does not, on that account, condemn those rulers who, for the sake of securing some great good or of hindering some great evil, allow patiently custom or usage to be a kind of sanction for each kind of religion having its place in the State. And, in fact, the Church is wont to take earnest heed that no one shall be forced to embrace the Catholic faith against his will, for, as St. Augustine wisely reminds us, “Man cannot believe otherwise than of his own will.”

37. In the same way the Church cannot approve of that liberty which begets a contempt of the most sacred laws of God, and casts off the obedience due to lawful authority, for this is not liberty so much as license, and is most correctly styled by St. Augustine the “liberty of self-ruin,” and by the Apostle St. Peter the “cloak of malice.”32 Indeed, since it is opposed to reason, it is a true slavery, “for whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.”33.’

(Footnotes)

1 James Bogle is a barrister (trial attorney) in private practice in London, England. He is a former British regular cavalry officer but still serves in the reserve forces as a Lt Colonel. He is Chairman of the Catholic Union of Great Britain and has written, among other books, a biography of the last Habsburg Emperor, Blessed Charles I of Austria. He is a Knight of Malta and of the Constantinian Order of St George. He is a convert to Catholicism from the Scottish Episcopalianism of his family.

2 Matt 22:21.

3 Pope John Paul II. 1994. Catechismus Ecclesiae Catholicae. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Catechism of the Catholic Church (English Translation). 1994. London: Chapman. Publication authorised by: Pope John Paul II. 1992. Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum.

4 Pope John Paul II. 1991. Centesimus Annus. 45, 46.

5 King James II and VII. 1687. The Declaration of Indulgence in Browning, A (ed). 1953. English Historical Documents, 1660-1714. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953, pp. 399, 400.

6 Second Vatican Council. 1962-65. Dignitatis Humanae. 1 § 2.

7 Ibid. Apostolicam Actuositatem. 13 § 1.

8 Ibid.. Dignitatis Humanae. 1.

9 Ibid. Apostolicam Actuositatem. 13; Pope Leo XIII. 1888. Immortale Dei. 3, 17; Pope Pius IX. Quas Primas. 1920. 8, 20.

10 Ibid. Dignitatis Humanae. 2 § 1.

11 Ibid. 2 § 2.

12 Ibid. 6 § 3.

13 Pope Leo XIII. 1888. Libertas Praestantissimum. 18; Pope Pius XII. 6 December 1953. Discourse in Acta Apostolicae Sedis. 1953. 799.

14 Ibid. Dignitatis Humanae. 2.

15 Pope Pius VI. 1791. Quod Aliquantum. 10; Pope Pius IX. 1864. Quanta Cura. 3.

16 See, for example: Pope Pius VI. 1786. Super Soliditate; Pope Pius VI. 1793. Pourquoi Notre Voix.

17 Pope Leo XIII. 1888. Immortale Dei. 36.

18 Pope Innocent III. 1202. Venerabilem.

19 1 Peter 2:13-17.

20 Aristotle. Politics. I, x.

21 King Carlos II of Spain. 1681 (re-codified and re-printed). Tomado de Recopilación de Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias. Mandadas imprimir y publicar por la Majestad católica del rey don Carlos II, nuestro señor. Va dividida en cuatro tomos, con el Indice general, y al principio de cada tomo el Indice especial de los títulos que contiene. Madrid: por Julián de Paredes, año de 1681.

22 Greene, Lorenzo Johnston. 1942. The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776. N.Y.: Columbia University Press, p.16.

23 Ibid, p.62.

24 McManus, Edgar J. 1973. Black Bondage in the North.. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.

25 Pope Leo XIII. 1899. Annum Sacrum.

26 Acts 4:12.

27 St Augustine of Hippo. Ep. Ad Macedonium. C.iii.

28 Pope Pius XI. 1926. Ubi Arcano.

29 I Cor. 7:23.

30 Pope Leo XIII. 1899. Annum Sacrum.

31 Ivo of Chartres. Epist. 238 to Pope Paschal II in Migne, J-P. 1844-55. Patrologia Latina. 162, 246B.

32 1 Peter 2:16.

33 John 8:34.

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REMNANT COLUMNIST, London

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