The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-11-15
CONVERSATION

| hostile to the Catholic religion as you
suppose, my dear uncle; l am quite
willing to tolerate it as explained by
| Gallicans, for, so eXemplified, it can
never interfere with the power or ac-
ton of the temporal authority. We Pro-
testants have no wish to step in be-
| tween a man and his God, and we rec
ognize the right of every one to worship
God according to the dictates of his
| own conscience. AS long as your church
| confines herself purely to spiritual mat
tiers, to preaching her doctrines and adj
ministering her sacraments to those
| who choose to adhere to her commun-
ion, as Marsilius of Padua and John of
Jandun contended she should, we are
| required by our doctrine of religious
| liberty to tolerate her; but not when
| she claims to be government, a king
dom set up on the earth superior to
the temporal power, and to have au-
thority, even indirect, over the whole
temporal order. She thus becomes po-
litical as well as religious, and her ex-
istence is incompatible with the distinct
existence and autonomy of the state.
She then must be regarded as either
| imperium in imperio, or as being at
once, indistinctly, both church and
state. She absorbs the temporal in the
spiritual and leaves no state stand
ing. 1t is not against Catholicity, but
| against ultramOntanism, which pushes
| the papal power to a sort of universal
monarchy, that we make war, and as
! Gallicans make war also against that,
we have no hostility with them, and
are naturally drawn into friendly al
| lance with them.
Uncle Jack-"Even Gallicans, my
dear Dick, repudiate, or profess to re-
pudiate, the heresy of Marsilius of
Padua and John of Jandun, and will
not consider themselves honored by the
| preference of Young America
Nephew Dick.-'You do us less than
justice, and are very imprudent. You
certainly wish to convert us; but how
can you hope so to do it without be-
| ginning by conciliating us?"
| Uncle Jack.-'I certainly wish your
conversion to the church, not that of
| the church to you. 1 wish to treat
| you as men, who have the full possess
sion of your natural faculties, and have
no wish to begin by giving you sugar
plums or a dose of chloroform. What
l want is, that you should embrace the
truth as God has revealed it, and sub
! nit yourselves to the authority which
he has instituted for your government.
/ have no wish to aggregate you to the
external communion of the church
without any change in your present
moral dispositions and beliefs or nom
| beliefs. To profit by the church you
must be of her communion, not merely
in it. The real question is, not what
will best conciliate on-Catholics, but
what is the church which God has in
! stituted and tn. truth she teaches?
If God has really established his church
! as a governing as we'll as teaching
| church, with coercive as we'll as SIM
! ply directive powers, to govern all men
and nations in all things pertaining to
nn 11Hy
! real end for which, in hoe proVidentla,
| they exist, you must accept her in that
| character, or otherwise you do not &C
cept her at all.
"Even your Gallican friends, though
in my Judgment they assert principles
which, if logically carried out, would
result in the Marsilian heresy, assert,
in common with the papists, that the
church is a government, kingdom set
UP on the earth and clothed with au-
thority to govern all men and nations
in all things pertaining to salvation,
and they could not be Catholics if they
did not The difference between them
and ultramontanes, or, as prefer TO
say, papists, does not consist in the
formal assertion by the one and the,
formal denial by the other, of the
church as kingdom or government
but in regard to the relation in which
to the state. The difference may be
collected from the charges which they
bring each against the other. The Cal
lican charges the papist with absorb
ing the state, or making the church
herself the state; the papist charges
the Gallican with subordinating, IN
principle, the spiritual to the temporal,
which would lead to the assertion OF
man as God, or of the two governments
,+1Ixy Itctir Of "a H.
dependent in regard to each other,
which involves the Manichean dual
ISM
Nephew Dick-sBut that last charge
might easily be repealed. Why might
not the Gallican reply that the one
and the same God has established two
governments, each Independent and SUI
preme in its own order, the church Tor
the government of spirituals and the
state for the government Of tempo
rals?"
Uncle Jack-"Because he would then
assert only what the papist himself
comedies. The papist even asserts and
maintains as strenuously as the CALI
can that God has instituted two dis
tinct governments for human society,
each holding all powers from him, and
each independent and supreme in It's
own order, as Pope Gelasius says IN
his letter to the Emperor Anstasius. |
The difference between the Gallican
and the papist is not here, and the
Gallican, to have something to oppose
to the papist, must go further, and
assert each government to be independ-
ent and supreme in relation to the |
other, and, therefore, either that the |
state in certain matters has spiritual
jurisdiction, which is a manifest de-
NAL of the principle he contends for,
or else that the temporal is separate
from the spiritual and Independent of
it, which is Manicheism.'
Nephew Dick-'I do not see that. You |
concede the two governments; how,
then, can you maintain that the as |
sertion of the independence of each in
VoiveS the Manichean dualism?"
Uncle Jack-'I concede, nay, l assert, |
two distinct governments, each indie
pendent and supreme in it's own order, |
but as bearing that relation one to the |
other which naturally exists between
the temporal and the spiritual. The
temporal order represented by the state
is naturally subordinated to the spir-
itual order represented by the church.
The spiritual stands for the divine, |
for God the creator, and the temporal |
for the creature; and the creature in /
the very nature of things is and can
not be subordinated to the creator. |
AS the creature is subordinated to the !
creator, so must the temporal be sub |
ordinated to the spiritual, and there
fore the temporal be subordinated to
the spiritual authority, or the state to !
the church. So reasons the papist. |
Now. this the Gallican must either con-
cede or deny If he comedies it, and
still asserts the absolute independence !
and supremacy of the state, he must
claim for the state in itself and in
dependently of the church. the author
ity to direct temporals to spiritual and
eternal good, to which by the law of |
or OIL Z h.