Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 56

Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost.

Church and State.

"Render, therefore, to Cesar the things that are Cesar's, and to God the things that are God's." — Matt xxii. 21.

SYNOPSIS.

Ex. : I. Religion and patriotism. II. Conflict. III. History of question.

I. Church superior to State: 1. Origin. 2. Nature. Mission and destiny.

II. History: 1. Church's work. 2. State's opposition. 3. Europe of to-day.

III. Church in America: 1. Her enemies. 2. Her work. 3. Solution of problems.

Per. : Fidelity to Church, and golden rule in time of conflict.

SERMON.

Brethren, love of religion and love of country are two of the master passions of every Christian, every Catholic heart. And because master passions, therefore, by no other cause is the human breast so painfully convulsed as by a conflict between Church and State, by the conflicting emotions of patriotism and religious fidelity. In such a crisis, when called upon to choose between Church and State, between Christ and Barabbas, too often, alas! the world has answered, Barabbas. Thus when Pilate, presenting Jesus to the Jews, said: "Behold your King," they roared back: " Away with Him, we have no king but Caesar." Again, all through the history of the Middle Ages runs the echo of a struggle to haul down the sacred emblem of Christianity — the cross — and hoist in its stead the symbol of civil authority— the flag. And even in our own times and in our own country, Democracy, like a modern Nabuchodonosor, erects a statue to reason and liberty, and calls on all, at the sound of the national anthem, to fall down and adore. In view of such a crisis, therefore, it may not be amiss to consider briefly why we should give not only to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but especially to God and God's Church the things that are God's.

Man being composed of body and soul, living in time and destined for eternity, has many spiritual and corporal necessities; and among others the need of spiritual and temporal rulers. God, therefore, has established a twofold authority — the Church and the State — and given to each the right to claim our subjection and support. But the Church's claim to our allegiance is prior to that of the State. Each, it is true, derives its authority from God, but in the State authority comes from God through the people to .the government; but in the Church it comes to her government directly from God. The State is founded by and for its people, but the Church, though for the people, has for its Founder God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The State i9 a human institution, subject to the human conditions of change and decay, according to the vicissitudes of time and will of its people; but the Church is a divine institution, as unchangeable and everlasting here and hereafter as God Himself. Of the two, therefore, the Church stands nearer to God, and, as such, is the higher power. And as the moon reflects more of the sun's glory than the tiny star, such, too, is the relation — the semblance of the constitutions of the Church and State to the perfect constitution of God's heavenly kingdom. The Church is the most perfect society extant. Her authority emanates from one invisible through one visible head, pervading her entire system, down to the very lowliest official in the service, and binding her many and varied members into a very marvel of unity. And a unity not of bodies alone, such as the State can boast — bodies held together by moral or even physical force and aiming at social order and temporal prosperity — but a unity of souls, and hence of bodies too, whose object is man's spiritual welfare, whose methods are to convince with truth and persuade by love, and whose high destiny it is to bring man into the everlasting possession of the all-good — of God Himself. By reason, therefore, of her divine origin, mission, and ultimate destiny, the Church is as far above the State as God above man, as the soul above the body, as heaven above earth; and as such, while teaching us to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, she justly claims that in a conflict of rights our first duty is to give to God and God's Church the things that are God's.

But in this utilitarian age we are apt to reckon claims to our allegiance according to the benefits we receive from the claimant. What, then, has the Church done for mankind, and what the State? Nineteen hundred years ago each started on its beneficent mission. The State being a creation of the people, backed up by the support of the majority, with an end in view which all could understand and appreciate, its success was assured from the beginning. But in her very beginning the Church was handicapped. A few miserable, unlettered fishermen confronting a world of Pagan idolaters and fanatical Jews, preaching them a gospel antagonistic to their inclinations and prejudices; commanding the former to abandon their idols, and the latter to renounce their ancient traditions; preaching peace and good will to savage warriors; supplanting Venus with Mary, and Bacchus with a figure of temperance and mortification; commanding assent to doctrines they themselves did not even pretend to understand, and when asked: "Whence your authority?" they answered: "The village carpenter of Nazareth." "Whom shall we adore?" "Yonder felon on the cross." "What shall we hope for, what shall we fear? " " A heaven and a hell whose existence we cannot even prove." What wonder King Agrippa laughed at St. Paul and told him to " go to, for a learned madman." But madness though it were, still there was method in it, for this doctrine and the Church that preached it spread everywhere, invaded every country, and, in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, everywhere overcame. And wherever the Church went, there immediately began to be felt the humanizing effects of Christianity. Liberty, equality, and fraternity was her motto. Liberty for the wife and mother from the thraldom of her lord; liberty for the slave from the yoke of his master; liberty for the sinner from the dominion of the devil. Equality, too, established not by debasing all to an equal grade of servility, but by raising each to a sense of his dignity as a child of God and heir to heaven. Fraternity also, whereby the rich are bound to assist the poor, the victor to spare the vanquished, and peace is established and maintained between people and people and between man and man. And in the accomplishment of this social revolution the Church has never shed a drop of blood nor struck a single blow. With the book of science in one hand she has — even in the ages when learning was a reproach— she has gone through the world educating mankind up to an appreciation of the truth, and with the crucifix in the other hand she has presented to them the motive for conforming their lives to the lessons received. And in all that time she has never trespassed on the rights of king or people; in fulfilling her mission she has helped the civil authorities to accomplish theirs; and when persecuted by jealous rulers she has, in the interests of peace, retreated to the last limits of truth and justice before pronouncing her ultimatum: "Thus far and no farther shalt thou come." For just as her divine Founder by His very goodness excited the jealous hatred of the Caesars, and was consequently scourged and crucified, so too the Church. The State has tripped her up at every turn; dashed from her hand the wine and oil she would have poured into the wounds of suffering humanity. It forbade her first ministers, the Apostles, to preach the Gospel or name of Jesus Christ, and it arrested and executed them as rebels because they refused to rebel against God. The mighty army of Christian, of Catholic martyrs it ruthlessly slaughtered,, because, rather than prove disloyal to their great commander-in-chief, Jesus Christ, they preferred to disobey His subordinate officer, the State. Brave youth and gentle virgin, priest and nun and aged martyr, let the godless and uncatholic call you traitors and rebels if they will, but we venerate you as the heroes of the world, and yearn to follow your glorious example.. But who shall relate all the Church suffered from the State! Let the hills and caves of Ireland and the catacombs of Rome tell the story of her sufferings and her wrongs. While prating about liberty, the State refused liberty of conscience to the Catholic. Incapable itself of exercising spiritual authority, it forbade its exercise by the Church. Nay, while denying to the Church, which is at once human and divine, the least civil power, the State — which is purely human — dares to usurp spiritual authority by establishing national churches. Are not King Edward VII. and the Czar of Russia two worthy claimants to the honor of being successor to St. Peter? But apart from that, on the continent of Europe, in essentially Catholic countries, the Pope to-day cannot appoint a bishop without permission of the State; no marriage is valid except contracted before a magistrate; and only lately the Italian and French parliaments made it a criminal offence for any priest in the confessional or from the altar to object to any government ordinance, however unjust or unholy. One hundred and seventy times has the State wrung from the .Church her little temporal dominion necessary for the right exercise of her spiritual authority. Forty-five Popes have been either driven out or kept out of Rome. Hildebrand and the three Popes, Pius VI., VII., and IX., languished for years in exile; -and behold our own Leo of to-day robbed of his states and city, a prisoner in his last and only possession, his house; his priests and churches despoiled, his monasteries thrown down and their inmates cast out into the world, nay, his very life in danger — and all this from a beggarly government that has beggared itself in paying its minions for crying "Down with Catholicity! Death to the Pope! " There is the past record of Church and State — the Church, the highest power on earth; the State, which is but her lowly auxiliary. The Church, next to God, mankind's greatest friend; the State a perpetual dog in the manger, frustrating duties it was itself incapable of. The State claiming all for Caesar; but the Church mildly but firmly proclaiming the law of equity: "Thou shalt render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God and God's Church the things that are God's."

Brethren, the question comes home very close to us. If a member of the A.P.A., or one of our music-hall brethren, were asked America's greatest enemy to-day, he would answer: "The Catholic Church." And you know, if a fool only repeats his folly long enough and loud enough, wiseacres will begin to believe him. Well, then, where did the Catholic Church ever teach to give to God the things that are God's without also teaching to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's? Only the other day her highest prelate, speaking to the Catholics of America, defined her policy thus: " Go forward bearing in one hand the book of Christian truth and in the other the American Constitution." I venture to say that in working out the social problems that confront them, the real statesmen and true patriots of the country look to the Catholic Church as their ablest assistant. And well they may; and the Church, given fair play and no favor, is right ready to assist, for on America she looks as a mother on her young and beautiful daughter. I repeat it, America is a product of Catholicity. Her government is the most perfect among nations, because it most nearly resembles that of the Church. The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of Catholic principles as old as the Church, and the framers of our Constitution were guided by the Catholic theory of government — liberty, equality, and fraternity — borne to them like an echo from the times of their Catholic ancestors. The State without the Church can never handle the poor. " Father," says the poor old widow, " Father, I am destitute, send me to the Sisters' home; but sooner than go to the Island I will die in the street." The State alone can never subdue the lawless. Two or three policemen vainly struggle with a madman; but the priest comes along and immediately fury gives place to submission and repentance. The State locks up criminals and makes them more rebellious still, but the Church enlightens them with truth and softens them with love and restores them to society good citizens. Here are the things of Caesar and of God, of Church and State; and the mistakes of the State are as many as the times she refused God's Church the things that are hers. The Church had, in the Old World, proved her ability to abolish slavery without a blow, but the State robbed her of that privilege here, with a consequent sacrifice of innumerable lives. The State is vainly grappling with Socialism, a monster the Church kept at bay eighteen hundred years by laws of charity and conscience and the doctrine of a hereafter. The country is crying out against lynch law, and the State is powerless to prevent it; but when the Church was given the things that are hers, the shivering victim found a safe refuge in the sanctuary. A dangerous spirit of materialism is taking possession of the young, because in educating them the rights of the Church are usurped by the State. And finally, the marriage contract, the foundation of the home and consequently the cornerstone of society — marriage is being taken from the Church and lowered by the State from the dignity of a sacrament to the baseness of a bargain, while divorce is filling the country with ruined homes, a degraded womanhood, and an immoral society. The Church is the only body to-day that takes a determined stand against these evils. She is as ready to shed her blood now for her rights and God's as were her brave sons in the hour of the nation's need. With the gentle devotedness of her consecrated daughters on the battlefield and in the hospital, she nurses society back to moral strength and vigor. All she asks is fair play. " Give," she says, " to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God and God's Church the things that are God's."

Brethren, in America, thank God, one can be at once a good Catholic and a good citizen; and the better the Catholic the better the citizen. But many of us are intensely interested in politics and little concerned about religion. We look on State laws as grave precepts, on Church laws as pious counsels. We would give our lives for the nation's honor, but we laugh when our Church is insulted and wronged. We proudly march through the world wrapped in the American flag, but we blush when caught signing ourselves with the sign of the cross. And yet, by reason of her origin, constitution, mission, destiny, and services to mankind, the Church's claim to our allegiance is prior to that of the State. In times of peace, therefore, let Catholicity and patriotism go hand in hand; but in times of conflict let us avoid equally the extremes of giving all to the Church or all to the State, and let us be guided by the golden rule: " Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."