The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-04 00:00:00

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND 5T..47E.

We quoted last week a passage from a Ger-
man Catholic periodical of great authority, re-
ferring to the political importance of the Syl-
labus, and to the duty incumbent on writers
in the Catholic press of applying its principles
to the existing conditions of society. Such a
study of the political principles of the Sylla-
bus, it urged, would preserve Catholics from
the danger of falling into the grave but too
common errors of the day. The most common
of these false political principles is the separa-
tion of Church and State, a principle main-
tained and propagated by every organ of re-
volutionary and un-Christian Liberalism in
Europe. This theory was one of the unhappy
errors into which Lamennais fell. In his paper,
the Aven it., he advocated, as is well known,
the advantages which the Church would de-
rive in being free from the trammels of the
State ; he descanted on the freedom which the
prelates of a Church separated from the State
would enjoy in their intercourse with Rome,
on the superiority of the voluntary system
to State endowments; he declared that the
idea of the Church influencing the State, and
the State fashioning its actions by the Church,
sounded very well in theory, but was evil in
practice ; in fine, that only where the Church
was separated from'the State can true religion
increase and flourish. Such, in substance, was
the error of the unhappy Lamennais set forth
in eloquent appeals to the clergy of France and
of Belgium. The Holy See pronounced a for-
mal censure on Lamennais for thus advocating ,
the separation of Church and State ; Pope
Gregory XVI. declaring, in the Mirari Vos,
that " the union between Church and State
has ever been propitious and salutary to the
interests of both."

Every Catholic who in a Catholic paper ad-
vocates the separation of Church and State is
at least guilty of culpable ignorance if, before
venturing to propound such a theory, he has
not made himself familiar with the discus-
sion which Lamennais's error excited in
the Catholic world, or, at any rate, with
the ultimate judgment pronounced on this
error by the Holy See. We did. not imagine,
until we read a leading article in the Weekly
Register of the 18th April, that any Catholic
of education could be ignorant of so important
a decision on a matter regarding not an ab-
struse point in theology, but a cardinal prin-
ciple of Catholic politics, as that promulgated
to the whole Catholic world by Gregory XVI.
But if it is a culpable ignorance on the part
of a Catholic writer not to know that Lamen-
nais's error, as to the relation of Church and
State, was condemned by Gregory XVI., what
shall we think of a writer in a Catholic paper
maintaining a proposition condemned, not only
in the last Pontificate, but by the recent Syl-
labus of Pius IX. ? That we wish to believe
is that the writer is not a Catholic, and, there-
fore, ignorant of the importance which Catho-
lics attach to the condemnations of the Sylla-
bus. Of course, the editor of the Weekly
Register cannot intend to support condemned
propositions in his paper, and will, on having
this grave offence against Catholic teaching
pointed out to him, hasten, we have no doubt, to
recant theerrorand disavow the writer. In these
days, when secularists and irreligious liberals
are advocating a complete severance of politics
from religion, of the State from the Church,
it is of the highest importance that Catholics
should not be misled on this great question,
especially by writers in a Catholic paper, so
much respected on account of its religious zeal,
as the Weekly Register. It was for our
guidance under circumstances such as the pre-
sent that the Holy See has provided Catholics
with a Syllabus of eighty condemned proposi-
tions. The fifty-fifth proposition of the Sylla-
bus, condemning the theory maintained by the
Weekly Register of the 18th of April, in its
article on the relations between Church and
State, is as follows :—" The Church ought to
be separated from the State, and the State
from the Church." The animus of the
article is to show the ill-effects of a union
between the ecclesiastical and secular powers,
but the writer not only displays throughout
the article an animus contrary on this matter
to the mind of the Church, but states in terms
the condemned proposition in the following
passages:—"ln proportion as a State (" in
Catholic lands ") becomes united with the
Church, so surely does real, vital religion fall
off in that State. . • . In Rome, and in
Rome alone, is the union between Church and
State a thing to hold fast, and the reason is
because in the patrimony of St. Peter, the
Church is the State. Rome in this, as in many
other things, is an exception to the rest of the
world."

The advancement by the Weekly .Ij),egister
of this condemned proposition is especially to
be deplored at the present moment, as, unless
it is rejected by Catholics, it may mislead Pro-
testants on a very important and practical
point of Catholic teaching. We. know that it
has already given great offence to Catholics.
But what strikes us as most singular and is
really the cause of our calling attention to this
article is, that it is not the first offence. We
remember in the beginning of the year point-