Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/203



CHIEF DUTIES OF CHRISTIANS AS CITIZENS. 197

trary, be accounted by every one as holy and inviolate; nay, in the public order itself of States â€” which cannot be severed from the laws influencing morals and from religious duties â€” it is always urgent, and indeed the main preoccupation, to take thought how best to consult the interests of CathoUcism. Wherever these appear by reason of the efforts of adversaries to be in danger, all differences of opinion among Catholics should forthwith cease, so that, like thoughts and counsels prevailing, they may hasten to the aid of religion, the general and supreme good, to which all else should be referred. We think it well to treat this matter somewhat more in detail.

The Church alike and the State, doubtless, both possess individual sovereignty; hence, in the carrying out of pubHc affairs, neither obeys the other within the limits to which each is restricted by its constitution. It does not hence follow, however, that Church and State are in any manner severed, and still less antagonistic. Nature, in fact, has given us not only physical existence, but moral life hkewise. Hence, from the tranquillity of public order, whose immediate purpose is civil society, man expects that this may be able to secure all his needful well-being, and still more supply the sheltering care which perfects his moral life, which consists mainly in the knowledge and practice of virtue. He \\nshes moreover at the same time, as in duty bound, to find in the Church the aids necessary to his rehgious perfection, which consists in the knowledge and practice of the true religion; of that religion which is the queen of virtues, because in binding these to God it completes them all and perfects them. Therefore they who are engaged in framing constitutions and in enacting laws should bear in mind the moral and religious nature of man, and take care to help him, but in a right and orderly way, to gain perfection, neither en- joining nor forbidding anything save what is reasonably consistent with civil as well as with rehgious requirements. On this very account the Church cannot stand by, in-