Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/166



160 HUMAN LIBERTY.

that the two powers, though dissimilar in functions and unequal in degree, ought nevertheless to live in concord, by harmony in their action and the faithful discharge of their respective duties.

But this teaching is understood in two ways. Many wish the State to be separated from the Church wholly and entirely, so that regard to every right of human society, in institutions, customs, and laws, the offices of State, and the education of youth, they would pay no more regard to the Church than if she did not exist; and, at most, would allow the citizens individually to attend to their religion in private if so minded. Against such as these, all the arguments by which We disprove the principle of separation of Church and State are conclusive; with this superadded, that it is absurd the citizen should respect the Church, while the State may hold her in contempt.

j Others oppose not the existence of the Church, nor 'indeed could they; yet they despoil her of the nature and rights of a perfect society, and maintain that it does /not belong to her to legislate, to judge, or to punish, but /only to exhort, to advise, and to rule her subjects in accordance with their own consent and will. By such opinion they pervert the nature of this divine society, and attenuate and narrow its authority, its office of teacher, and its whole efficiency ; and at the same time they aggran- dize the power of the civil government to such extent as to subject the Church of God to the empire and sway of the State, like any voluntary association of citizens. To refute completely such teaching, the arguments often used by the defenders of Christianity, and set forth by Us, especially in the Encychcal Letter Immortale Dei, are of great avail; for by those arguments it is proved that, by a divine provision, all the rights which essentially belong to a society that is legitimate, supreme, and perfect in all its parts exist in the Church.

Lastly, there remain those who, while they do not