OCR Text |
Show ilncle 3adi -and Wi$ llepbew. SSSJL CONVERSATION IX. Nephew Dick. "I am far from being hostile to the Catholic religion as you suppose, my dear uncle; I am quite willing to tolerate it as explained by Gallicans, for, so exemplified, it can never interfere with the power or action ac-tion of the temporal authority. We Protestants Pro-testants have no wish to step in between be-tween a man and his God, and we recognize rec-ognize the right of every one to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. As long as your church confines herself purely to spiritual matters, mat-ters, to preaching her doctrines and administering ad-ministering her sacraments to those who choose to adhere to her communion, commun-ion, as Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun contended she should, we are required by our doctrine of religious liberty to tolerate her; but not when she claims to be a government, a kingdom king-dom set up on the earth, superior to the temporal power, and to have authority, au-thority, even indirect, over the whole temporal order. She thus becomes political po-litical as well as religious, and her existence ex-istence is incompatible with the distinct existence and autonomy of the state. She then must be regarded as either imperium in imperio, or as being at once, indistinctly, both church and state. She absorbs the temporal in the spiritual, and leaves no state standing. stand-ing. It is not against Catholicity, but against ultramontanism, which pushes the papal power to a sort of universal monarchy, that we make war, and as Gallicans make war also against that, we have no nostiaty with tnem, ana are naturally drawn into a friendly alliance al-liance with them." Uncle Jack. "Even Gallicans, my dear Dick, repudiate, or profess to repudiate, re-pudiate, the heresy of Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, and will not consider themselves honored by the preference of 'Young America.' " Nephew Dick. "You do us less than justice, and are very imprudent. You certainly wish to convert us; but how can you hope so to do it without beginning be-ginning by conciliating us?" Uncle Jack. "I certainly wish your conversion to the. church, not that of the church to you. I wish to treat you as men, who have the full possession posses-sion of your natural faculties, and have no wish to begin by giving you sugarplums sugar-plums or a dose of chloroform. What I want is, that you should embrace the truth as God has revealed it, and submit sub-mit yourselves to the authority which he has instituted for your government. I have no wish to aggregate you to the external communion of the church without any change in your present moral dispositions and beliefs or non-heliefs. non-heliefs. To profit by the church you must be of her communion, not merely In it. The real question is, not what will best conciliate non-Catholics, but what is the church which God has Instituted, In-stituted, and thv truth she teaches? If God has really established his church as a governing as well as teaching church, with coercive as well as simply sim-ply directive powers, to govern all men and nations in all things pertaining, to spiritual and eternal good, the only real end for which, In hoc providentia, they exist, you must accept her in that character, or otherwise you do not accept ac-cept her at all. ''Even your Gallican friends, though In my judgment they assert principles which, if logically carried out, would result in the Marsilian heresy, assert, in common with the papists, that the church is a government, a kingdom set up on the earth and clothed with authority au-thority to govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to salvation, and they could not be Catholics if they did not. The difference between them and ultramontanes, or, as I prefer to say, papists, dogs not consist in the formal assertion by the one and the formal denial -by the other, of the church as a kingdom or government, but in regard to, the relation in which they respectively suppose she stands to the state. The difference may be collected from the charges which they bring each against the other. The Gallican Gal-lican charges the papist with absorbing absorb-ing the state, or making the church herself the state; the papist charges the Gallican with subordinating, in principle, the spiritual to the temporal, which would lead to the assertion of man as God, or of the two governments as absolutely distinct, separate and in dependent in regard to each other, which involves the Manichean dualism." dual-ism." ' Nephew Dick "But that last charge might easily be repelled. Why might hot the Gallican reply that the one and the same God has established two governments, each independent and supreme su-preme in its own order, the church for the government of spirituals and the state for the government of temporals?" tempo-rals?" Uncle Jack "Because he would then assert only what the papist himself concedes. The papist even asserts and maintains as strenuously as the Gallican Galli-can that God has instituted two distinct dis-tinct governments for human society, each holding all powers from him, and each independent and supreme in its own order, as Pope Gelasius says in his letter to the Emperor Anstasius. The difference between the Gallican and the papist is not here, and the Gallican, to have something to oppose to the papist, must go further, and assert each government to be independent independ-ent and supreme in relation to the other, and, therefore, either that the state in certain matters has spiritual jurisdiction, which is a -manifest denial de-nial of the principle he contends for, or else that the temporal is separate from the sDiritual and independent of it, which is Manicheism." Nephew Dick "I do not see that. You concede the two governments; how, then, ' can you maintain that the assertion as-sertion of the independence of each involves in-volves the Manichean dualism?" Uncle Jack "I concede, nay, I assert, two distinct governments, each independent inde-pendent and supreme in its own order, but as bearing that relation one to the other which naturally exists between the temporal and the spiritual. The temporal order represented by the state is naturally subordinated to the spiritual spir-itual order represented by the church. The spiritual stands for the divine, for God, the creator, and the temporal for the creature; and the creature in the very nature of things is and "can- j not be subordinated to the creator. As the creature is subordinated to the creator, so must the temporal be subordinated sub-ordinated to the spiritual, and therefore there-fore the temporal be subordinated to the spiritual authority, or the state to ! the church. So reasons the papist. Now. this the Gallican must either concede con-cede or deny. If he concedes -it, and still asserts the absolute independence and supremacy of the state, he must claim for the. state, in itself and independently in-dependently of the church thf author ity to direct temporals to spiritual and eternal good, to which by the law of God they are all to be referred, which is to contradtct himself and to claim for the state, pro tanto at least, spiritual spir-itual authority, and to deny the independence inde-pendence and supremacy of the church in all things spiritual. If, on the other hand, he denies the natural subordination subordina-tion of the temporal to the spiritual, he must assert its independence of God. Then he must .maintain that it is not God's creature; and then, that it has had another origin than God, and depends on a principle independent of him, therefore on another principle, external and independent, than that on which the spiritual order depends. Therefore, there must have been two original, externaj, distinct and independent inde-pendent principles, which, as I understand, under-stand, is precisely the Manichean dualism. dual-ism. "The Gallican has no tendency to Manicheism in that he simply asserts two distinct orders, one spiritual, the other temporal, or two distinct governments, gov-ernments, each independent and su- ' preme in its own order. He so tends only when he asserts their mutual independence' in-dependence' in regard to each other, and denies the subordination, not in excellence and dignity alone, but in authority also, of the temporal to the spiritual. What I regard as the error of the Gallican arises from a disregard to the natural relation of the two orders. or-ders. Temporals are naturally subordinated subor-dinated to the spiritual, as the body to the soul, and are always to be referred re-ferred to a spiritual end. This is as true under the natural as under the revealed law. In the natural order, as well as in the supernatural, God is the final cause, and man is morally bound to refer all his actions to him as to their ultimate end; therefore, to an end not temporal, but spiritual. The revealed law does not abrogate the natural nat-ural law, but presupposes and confirms con-firms it. All theologians agree than man is bound by the law of nature to worship God, and even to worship him according to the requirements of a supernaturally revealed law, if God gives such a law, as soon as it is promulgated pro-mulgated and sufficiently made known. God can, unquestionably, establish two powers for the government of human society; but these v.o powers must have the same relation to one another that is borne by the two orders which they respectively represent. "The mistake is not in regarding the two orders as distinct, for that they are; but in regarding them as separate, for that they are not. All spirituals in this world have temporal relations, and all temporals have spiritual relations, rela-tions, inasmuch as they Hie and must be related to a spiritual end. To govern gov-ern temporals in their relation to this spiritual end is necessarily a spiritual function, and if you claim it for the state, you claim for the state, up to a certain, point, spiritual jurisdiction, which all Catholic theologians, so far as I am aware, agree in denying. They are unanimous, I believe, in asserting that, under the new law, the state has no spiritual jurisdiction whatever. Either, then, the Gallican must, in violation, vio-lation, of the principles he professes to concede, and which as a Catholic he must hold, suffer the temporal government govern-ment to exercise spiritual funccions, or with the papist, extend the authority of the church over temporals in the respect in which thev are to be referred re-ferred to a spiritual end, or, as theologians theolo-gians say, to spiritual and eternal good." (To be Continued.) |