One of the most disturbing things about the radical Islamic
movement is the insistence on imposing Sharia (religious) Law under a new
Caliphate, in which the head of state is also head of the religion, and
government enforces purely religious doctrines and practices. This violates the traditional separation of
Church, State, and Family that characterizes political theory based on the laws
and customs of the ancient Roman Res
Publica — the Republic.
In the Roman Republic and, to a great extent, the pagan
Empire, civil society (the State), religious society (the Church, or Temple),
and domestic society (the Family) were kept strictly separate. The Pater
Familias was not only the head of the family as we would understand it
today, but a judge of the domestic laws from whom there was no appeal from
domestic offenses, and the high priest of the family religion, that dealing
with the household gods.
An iconic image in Roman mythology (meaning the concept of
what it means to be a Roman, the national mythos) is in Virgil’s Æneid in which, in an extraordinary act
of pietas the Trojan hero Æneas
carries his aged father (who is carrying the household gods) on his back from
the burning city. The Family was sacred and separate from the State.
Nor was this merely mythical. At a dinner party, to
stop what he considered a hideously unjust punishment of a slave who had
committed a minor offense, the Emperor Augustus instantly committed the same
offense. Augustus could not, even as
First Citizen and Consul, legally order his host not to punish the slave, but
he could demonstrate that the fellow would be out of Augustus’s personal favor
if the slave owner punished the slave as he had every right under his absolute
authority in domestic society to do.
Even the Divine Julius (Gaius Julius Cæsar) had to become Pontifex Maximus (High Priest of all the Roman sects) because as mere head of state he could not offer sacrifice for the State to the gods — religious and civic duties had to be kept strictly separate. Also, certain diplomatic duties had to be carried out by a class of priests because civil officials could not deal with the gods of another nation or people, and treaties required oaths before a god or gods.
Things got much more reasonable and somewhat simpler when the Empire became
Christian, although this also meant that the government would always be tempted
to take over the Church for political purposes, while the Church would always
be tempted to take over the State for religious purposes. “Cæsaro-papism” was and remains a serious
problem down to the present day.
Established churches are a little out of fashion now, but the “wall of
separation” has been used in efforts to dictate religious practice and even
doctrine in many cases.
It becomes understandable why many Christians are suspicious
of “separation of Church and State,” even though it is at the heart of western
political philosophy. It never meant
that government would be hostile to organized religion, or that religion was to
be prevented from offering guidance to the civil power. Both Magna Charta and the U.S. Constitution
take for granted that organized religion has a role to play in the social
order, but that government must not dictate religious doctrines or practices,
any more than organized religion can have its purely religious doctrines or
practices enforced by government.
How, then, are we to understand Pope Pius IX’s condemnation
of separation of Church and State?
Fortunately, this is a very easy issue to deal with when we remember
that even Catholics believe that the pope teaches infallibly only when it comes
to the principles. He does not, and
cannot speak infallibly when it comes to applications
of principles. For example, when the
pope says, “An unjust war is wrong,” he is speaking infallibly as a matter of
principle. When the pope says, “This
appears to be an unjust war,” he is not speaking infallibly, but is, instead,
giving his considered, prudential judgment.
Thus, when Pius IX condemned “separation of Church and
State,” he was condemning an unjust misapplication of a principle, not the
proper application of something that the Catholic Church has always supported
and, in many cases, relied on to protect its interests.
When Pius IX was writing, “separation of Church and State” was
taken to mean that there were to be no areas of common concern between Church
and State, and that organized religion was to be shoved off in a corner
someplace, completely a private matter.
Civil law could dictate religious practices since the corporate body of
a religion has existence in civil society, but no religious beliefs or
practices were to be recognized or protected in any way. This was a residual of the anti-Christian
orientation of the French Revolution, still within living memory of many when
Pius IX wrote.
Within the American system, “separation of Church and State”
used to mean something different, at least until modernism made its
inroads. Pope Leo XIII, in fact, viewed
the U.S. model of Church-State relations as approaching the ideal in a country
in which Catholicism is not the predominant religion, cf. his careful
separation of “good” Americanism from “bad” Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae.
That is, organized religious bodies are recognized in civil
society, but the purely religious teachings were to be of no concern to the
State unless they violated fundamental human rights or posed a serious threat
to the common good, e.g., Mormon
polygamy. The State, for its part, was
supposed to recognize freedom of conscience, and not coerce anyone to act
contrary to religious beliefs, e.g.,
religious pacifists are excused from military service, religious schools are
allowed as long as minimal educational requirements are met, and so on. The State was not to dictate or define
religious beliefs or practices, but also could not enact purely religious
beliefs or practices to have the force of law.
This is one reason why the modernist shift in the basis of
the natural law from reason to faith has been such a disaster for religion in
the U.S. By claiming a faith-based
mandate for something, e.g., the
right to life, religious people ipso
facto violate others’ freedom of conscience. At the same time, by insisting that the State
has the duty to care for individual goods, normally a religious duty when the
family falls short in its efforts or abilities, the State can justify taking
over religion on the grounds that such things as funding contraception under
healthcare or even redefining marriage and family are not religious in nature.
Much of this confusion over the proper roles of Church and
State these days can be traced to the changes that Msgr. John A. Ryan, a.k.a., “Monsignor
New Deal” and “The Right Reverend New Dealer,” introduced into the system via
his editing of the dictionary with respect to the natural law, especially the
natural rights of life and liberty, and the distortion of the concept of
distributive justice.
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