Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/128



122 CHRISTIAN CONSTITUTION OF STATES.

bility of matrimony. They lay hands on the goods of the clergy, contending that the Church cannot possess property. Lastly, they treat the Church with such arrogance that, rejecting entirely her title to the nature and rights of a perfect society, they hold that she differs in no respect from other societies in the State, and for this reason possesses no right nor any legal power of action, save that which she holds by the concession and favor of the government. If in any State the Church retains her own right â€” and this with the approval of the civil law, o"^dng to an agreement publicly entered into by the two powers â€” men forthwith begin to cry out that matters affecting the Church must be separated from those of the State.

Their object in uttering this cry is to be able to violate unpunished their plighted faith, and in all things to have unchecked control. And as the Church, unable to aban- don her chiefest and most sacred duties, cannot patiently put up with this, and asks that the pledge given to her be fully and scrupulously acted up to, contentions fre- quently arise between the ecclesiastical and the civil power, of which the issue commonly is, that the weaker power yields to the one which is stronger in human re- sources.

Accordingly, it has become the practice and deter- mination under this condition of public polity (now so much admired by many) either to forbid the action of the Church altogether, or to keep her in check and bondage to the State. Public enactments are in great measure framed with this design. The drawing up of laws, the administration of State affairs, the godless education of youth, the spoliation and suppression of religious orders, the overthrow of the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff, all alike aim at this one end â€” to paralyze the action of Christian institutions, to cramp to the utmost tK^ freedom of the Catholic Church, and to curtail lier every single prerogative.