CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.

According to recent statements of the press, large numbers of our citizens are enrolling themselves in an organization, the object of which is to exclude Roman Catholics from public offices. The fact that the Roman Catholic press is teeming with denunciations of the order, makes it very probable that the movement is a large and growing one. A recent article in the most conservative of Roman Catholic magazines urged its readers to leave one and join the other of the two great political parties, and Cardinal Gibbons, in an open letter (published in the Catholic Review for May 23, 1896), has threatened that all Roman Catholics will take this course, unless opposition to them, as such, ceases. This suggestion has already been followed by the institution of the Order of Catholic Americans, with the object of questioning all candidates as to their opinions concerning the right of Roman Catholics to hold public office.

According to the published statement of the leader of one of the great political parties in this State, the recent murder at the election in Troy was due to a feud which grew out of this antagonism. In many cities the municipal elections were conducted avowedly on these lines, especially where the choice of officials having charge of public education, was

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involved; in some States, the nominations for State officers are made with reference to this issue, and a presidential candidate has been denounced on account of his alleged friendliness to Roman Catholics in politics.

Has this Anti-Roman Catholic movement any justification? Is it destined to spread and grow? Or, is it merely a revival of the old Know-nothing spirit, which will shortly disappear on account of its own folly?

According to the statement of Roman Catholics, there was never a time when such an attack had less excuse. Leo XIII. is represented as being favorably inclined to the modern liberal spirit; in France he has declared himself in favor of a republic, and broken off the long-standing alliance between the Papacy and the royal factions; in our country his Ablegate has consorted mainly with the priests who represent the liberal American tendency in the Church, and his Holiness has expressed himself as well pleased with the course of his representative.

What, then, have the enemies of this Church to complain of at this time?

Has anything happened since the Know-nothing party was laid to rest in its forgotten grave?

Is all this show of liberalism of the present Pontiff and his accredited representative a false pretense anda blind, intended merely to cover up designs upon our national institutions, so dangerous as to require citizens to drop their former party affiliations and range themselves in opposition to every candidate for public office, who holds the Roman Catholic faith?

Let us glance at the principal events in of the Church of Rome since the days of nothing party.

At that time Roman Catholics coul Declaration in 1826 of the Vicars Ap with Episcopal authority governed t Catholics of Great Britain, as follows:

"The allegiance which Catholics hold and are bound to pay to their Sovere the civil authority of the State is perf divided.

"They declare that neither the Pope, no prelate or ecclesiastical person of the Rom Church . has any right t directly or indirectly, with civil governm nor to oppose in any manner the perform civil duties which are due to the King."

Moreover there was the Pastoral Roman Catholic Hierarchy of the same declared on oath their belief "that it is n of the Catholic Faith, neither are they quired to believe that the Pope is infalli

In this country, they could also point Doctrinal Catechism, approved by Bish which contains the following (p. 305): General Council or Papal Consistory sh take to depose a king, or absolve his su their obedience?

"Answer: No Catholic is bound to sub a decree. Indeed every Catholic ma upon oath any such doctrine, and this least breach of Catholic principle.

Question: Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible?

"Answer: This is a Protestant invention, it is no article of the Catholic faith."

Pius IX., as above set forth, published no positive plan on the general subject of the relation of Church and State; the Syllabus of Errors being merely a negation of certain doctrines, and, moreover of uncertain authority. Has Leo XIII., the omnipotent superintendent of Roman Catholic schools, advanced or receded from the position of the Irish Bishops and Bishop Hughes?

In the first place, what are the teachings on the relation of Church and State of the Angel of the Schools, St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Leo XIII., as above set forth, has lauded so highly, and whose doctrines, according to his directions, all Roman Catholic teachers are "to gently instill into the minds of their pupils "?

In the passage from the Encyclical above cited, in which St. Thomas is extolled as offering great safeguards to the modern Family and State, particular mention is made of his treatise "on the fatherly, just government of sovereign princes."

The treatise" De regimine principum " is evidently intended; what are its teachings concerning the science of government, and particularly on the relations of Church and State?

After setting forth the advantages which render a monarchy the most desirable form of government ("since states which are not ruled by one, labor under dissentions and are tossed about without peace")

he proceeds in Chapter XIV. of the First Book to state the relation of Church and State as follows:

"If indeed men could attain this end (heaven) by human nature, it would be necessary that it should be the king's duty to guide men towards this end. A government is higher in

proportion to its aim. But since man attains the end of divine enjoyment not by human but by divine virtue, to guide toward that end will be the duty not of human but of divine government. Therefore the administration of this government, in order that spiritual matters should be distinct from earthly matters, is committed not to earthly kings but to priests, and especially to the highest priest, the successor of St. Peter, the vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff, to whom all kings of the Christian people should be subject as to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. For thus those who direct towards inferior ends should be subject to him who directs to the ultimate end. Hence in the

law of Christ, kings shall be subjects to priests."

In Chapter X. of the Third Book, he treats of the rank of dignitaries as follows: "If then our Lord Jesus Christ is so called (priest and king) as Augustine proves (7 de Civit. Dei) it does not appear incongruous so to call his successor In the Supreme Pontiff is all grace, for he alone confers full indulgence for all sins This cannot be referred merely to spiritual, because the corporal and temporal depend from the spiritual and eternal, as the operation of the body from the virtue of the soul. As, therefore, the body has through the soul, virtue