The Church

a) Nature and Function of the Church

In a former Chapter we proved the existence of God. Further, we proved that Christ is God, and that He established upon earth a Church, to keep current among men the gifts and graces that redeemed them. All men are manifestly called upon, in strict justice, to belong to the Church which God Himself founded (when He walked this earth as Man) for their salvation. Now, the Church which the God-Man founded is the Roman Catholic Church, and no other. All men are, therefore, strictly required to belong to the Catholic Church. This is a requirement of cold reason; it is no impudent claim; nor does the fact that many misinformed persons think the claim impudent, nay, even monstrous, make it so. The logic of the Catholic position is unassailable. Only those who do not know the true nature of that position, and who will not investigate it, can fail to see how inevitably right and necessary it is. Truly has Mr. Belloc said, “If the Catholic Church is not what she lays claim to be, then all is void.” In speaking, therefore, of the Church, we speak of the Catholic Church. We do not employ the term the Church in that vague, intangible sense in which it is used in modern books, reviews, and newspapers. In other words, we do not use the term to signify the body of all those persons who have some sort of religious feeling, accompanied or unaccompanied by definite religious beliefs, and who recognize Christ as a sort of model and leader among men. By the Church we mean the society of all those who, being baptized, profess the faith of Christ, and are governed by their lawful pastors under one visible head. In a word, we mean the Catholic Church. The function of the Church may be summed up as follows: the Church exists to teach men truths that are necessary to their eternal well-being, and which cannot be ignored by any agency which looks to men’s material and temporal welfare, since the temporal well-being of men looks ever to their supernatural and endless destiny and “lies in the same plane” with the latter. Further, the Church exists to promote and foster right morality, which is neither more nor less than the adjustment of lives to the requirements of the Natural and Eternal Law, the law of God. The Church is a perfect society. That is to say, it contains within itself all that is requisite for the full discharge of its function, and does not depend upon any other earthly establishment. True, the Church must have men as members, and exists on account of them and to serve their most intimate and important needs; and men need the State; and so the Church permeates all States and peoples, and is meant to be truly universal in membership. But this is not dependency in the sense that excludes perfection in a society or social group; such dependency, for instance, as a town or county has with reference to the State in which it exists. This is merely structure, and not extrinsic dependency. Manifestly, every society (even the State, which is a perfect society) depends upon its membership for existence. To function properly the Church requires, in its supreme government, a certain earthly independence and temporal sovereignty, and without it, the Church is unjustly hampered. The Church enjoyed such temporal sovereignty of old, but was deprived of it, by civil encroachment, from 1870 to 1929. In the latter year, however, the temporal sovereignty was restored to the Church by the Treaty of the Lateran (commonly referred to as “The Vatican Accord” or “The Settlement of the Roman Question”), and the Pope, the head of the Church, is now an independent temporal sovereign with his recognized place and prerogatives among the rulers of the world.

b) The Church and the State

The basic principle which must guide sane minds in this interesting and much debated question is the following: the State exists to serve man’s temporal needs; the Church exists to serve man’s spiritual and eternal interests; in so far as the temporal affairs of mankind have no bearing upon things spiritual, they are the concern of the State alone; in so far as the spiritual needs of men involve things temporal, the Church is supreme and must be accorded the submission, concurrence, and cooperation of the State. The Church and the State are not to be regarded as rivals for power. They are necessary societies, each with its own proper sphere. Where their provinces appear to overlap, the situation is to be accurately determined, and, if doubt endures, the Church, as a divine institution concerned with the most important interests and issues that can affect mankind, is to be recognized as supreme. God made man, man requires society, and society involves the State. God also made the Church to serve man’s eternal needs. Manifestly, God is not contradicted in His works; He is not the author of conflicting things. In their true nature and ideal functioning, Church and State can never conflict. The fact that many men deny God’s existence or his right to rule the world; the fact that thousands will not recognize the true Church, and refuse to investigate her perfectly justified claims; the fact that some few churchmen in the course of history have been forgetful of their character and proper sphere of action; the fact that fallen human nature is always pridefully resentful of spiritual rule—these facts account for the lamentable bickerings, quarrels, and even persecutions that have soiled the pages of history and have spread abroad a fallacious notion of the nature and the relations of Church and State. The State, while supreme in purely secular and temporal affairs, is ever subject to the rule of right morality and the requirements of the natural law. The State must give its own proper worship to Almighty God. Now in these matters the State needs the direction of religion and the Church. Hence the State requires the Church, and, without her, is no true State. Further, the State must protect the Church, and assist her in her indispensably important function among men. On her part, the Church must assist the State, promoting, by her instructions and the example of her officials, submission and obedience to justly established civil authority, and training her children in true Christian patriotism. The Church must also promote the spirit of justice and Christian charity among rulers, guiding them in their great duty of working always for the peace and prosperity of their subjects. While true and harmonious union of Church and State is the ideal condition, it cannot endure throughout a world that will not recognize God or His Church. A second-rate system must, therefore, be accepted in most States. In some States a condition called separation of Church and State obtains; but it is never a true separation, for the State inevitably infringes upon the province of the Church, in matters, for example, touching marriage and the duties of married persons. It is quite obvious that Church and State cannot be truly separate, for they rule the same people in the same territory, people whose interests for time and eternity are so intermingled and interwoven, that it is impossible to deal adequately with the one without some consideration of the other.

c) The Church and Society

“It must not be supposed,” writes Pope Leo XIII in his famous Encyclical “Rerum Novarum” issued May 15, 1891, “that the solicitude of the Church is so taken up with the spiritual concerns of her children as to neglect their temporal or earthly interests. Her desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness and should better their condition in life, and for this she strives.” Thus we see that the Church has a place in affairs that are usually called purely social or even purely economic. For nothing that affects men, or their earthly interests, is absolutely divorced from their eternal well-being, which is the first and direct concern of the Church. Therefore, the Church has a place and a function in the affairs of human society which are temporal and earthly. Indeed, the Church has by right (though the right be largely unrecognized in an unchristian world) the most important, prominent, and influential place among social agencies. All the evils and threats of evil which afflict human society are sometimes referred to by the handy phrases, the social question and the social problem; and the Church alone holds the full answer to the question and the full solution of the problem. Pope Pius XI rightly declares in his Encyclical “Quas Primos” that society will lack the blessings of true liberty, good order, peace, and harmony, until men and nations recognize the supreme kingship of Jesus Christ; and to obtain this recognition the Church labors tirelessly. The same Pontiff declares in the Encyclical a Quadragesima Anno,” that the remedy for social evils is to be found only in the frank and sincere return of all men and States to the teachings of the Gospel; and the Church exists to preach the Gospel and to bring its benefits to souls. The Church alone, among societies that exist upon earth, ever and always places God first, and recognizes Him as the supreme end and goal of all created activities. All created goods and all created institutions are seen by the Church as instruments of a service that is ultimately the service of God. Now, this is but saying that the Church alone sees things, not only as they should be, but simply as, in point of fact, they are. Groups of men, and human society itself as such, are therefore impotent as true forces and agencies for social welfare, if they refuse to align their views and aims with those of the Church, and to accept from the Church that light and guidance which is necessary to render their work truly fruitful. The light and guidance which the Church offers to human institutions, and to all human society, are found in her safely guarded treasure of true and infallibly pronounced moral principles. The Church sees man as he is; the Church knows her own character as the divinely appointed teacher of men; the Church steadfastly observes her duty of regulating human conduct in men and nations. Thus the Church guards from obscurity and teaches with clearness the basic truths which society employs as its very roots and sources of energy and life. She inculcates justice, the recognition of the dignity and rights of human persons, and the duties and rights of rulers and ruled. She steadily indicates to men the unselfishness that makes for social peace, and calls upon all for the exercise of real charity. She incessantly preaches the value and necessity of Christian homelife. She insistently teaches the virtue of Christian patriotism and love of country. Above all, she indicates to men and to society the first and greatest duty of religion, and the due recognition of God as the true end of every human activity. Thus the Church alone knows the remedy for social ills, and she labors in season and out of season to apply that remedy effectually. Even in matters that are purely economic and industrial, the Church has her place and her work. She tries always to better the condition of the workingman; she preaches the only socially sound doctrine in point of property and the rights of the laborer; she defends the sane doctrine of interdependence—functioning on Christian principles—of Capital and Labor. The Church has ever at heart the care of the poor, and by her societies and congregations she establishes means for their support, striving to spare them indignity, and to maintain them in honor as her most dear children and her treasure. Thus we see that the Church has a truly indispensable function in earthly and temporal society. In vain will sociologists scheme and plan; in vain will they labor at investigations and studies and the compilation of statistics; in vain will they promote legislation and guide fashion and custom, if they fail to recognize the place and power of that Church which God Himself has established on earth to lead men to Heaven through a tolerable and decent human existence. To recognize the place of the Church in society is not only a matter of duty—it is a requirement of common sense and sound reason. To refuse such recognition, renders sterile at the outset all social plans and programs and schemes for human betterment.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have defined the Church, and have indicated her first function as the spiritual care of men. We have noticed that the direction of temporalities among men is inevitably bound up with issues that are spiritual and eternal. Thus we have seen that the Church has a true place and service in the earthly affairs of society. We have shown that the Church is a perfect society, and that she requires a measure of earthly independence and temporal sovereignty for the unhampered discharge of her duties. We have investigated the relations of Church and State> and have explained the principle of sound reason which must guide men in their estimation of the place and function of these necessary social groups. Finally, we have studied, in brief detail, the actual work of the Church in society.

A problem, in the sense accepted by sociology, is a social situation which calls for attention, study, and action. It usually means a social evil, or threat of such an evil, which must be remedied or prevented. This Book studies important social problems which affect the family, the community, and the world-group of States. This Book is accordingly divided into three Chapters, as follows: Chapter I. Problems of the Family Chapter II. Problems of the Community Chapter III. World Problems