ecution of the laws of my country.' The Pope has sent no message of authority to Mr. Alfred Smith. He has left him in possession of his own opinions. Wisely do MM. Daudet and Maurras demand that they remain in possession of theirs. 'No one,' they declare, ‘shall take them from us.""

The lofty and generous sentiments in respect to religious liberty expressed by Governor Smith in his article in the Atlantic Monthly 76 are also referred to by the Parisian journal, L'Europe Nouvelle, in a recent issue," as follows:

"Nevertheless these opinions that are universally admitted in the United States not only by the Catholic laity, but by the priests and the bishops, do not appear to arouse the least condemnation at Rome. Perhaps the reason for this strange phenomenon is to be sought in the fact that Americans do not hear announced a universal doctrine which would apply to the whole Catholic Church, but solely one that would defend and support their special privileges which are considered as in derogation of the common ecclesiastical law.

76 May, 1927, p. 721.

77 July 16, 1927, p. 926. Et pourtant ces idées, qui sont universellement admises aux Etats-Unis, non seulement par les catholiques laïques, mais par les prêtres et les évêques, ne paraissent pas soulever à Rome la moindre réprobation. Peut-être faut-il chercher la raison de cet étrange phénomène dans le fait que les Américains n'entendent pas énoncer une doctrine générale qui dût s'appliquer à toute l'Eglise catholique, mais seulement défendre et maintenir leurs propres franchises considérées comme dérogation au droit ecclésiastique commun. Le Saint-Siège admet, en effet, qu'il peut, en certains cas d'espèce, y avoir dérogation à ce droit commun du fait d'un concordat, ou d'un privilège ou d'une coutume immémoriale. Et il semble bien que l'Eglise américaine soit, grâce à la Constitution des Etats-Unis, en possession d'un tel régime particulier." See El Sol, Madrid, and El Debate, in Living Age, June 15, 1927.

"The Holy See admits, in effect, that it can in certain special cases act in derogation of that common law by means of a concordat or of a privilege or of an immemorial custom. And it may well be that the American Church is by the grace of the Constitution of the United States in possession of such particular arrangement."

Thus Europeans claim to find proof that the authoritative and universal doctrine of the Roman Church is irreconcilable with American constitutional principles, although by the machinery of the Canon Law such irreconcilability is locally and temporarily accommodated as expedient because of present constitutional requirements,78 and that under this marvelous system a local Hierarchy approves opinions that are obnoxious to such universal and authoritative doctrine, and the Vatican is silent, or professes its entire indifference to politics in America, while at the same time it proscribes opinions in France and puts a political jour

78 Mr. George N. Shuster, Associate Editor of The Commonweal, the leading Roman Catholic journal in New York, in his recent work The Catholic Spirit in America, says (pp. 122-123): "The candidacy of Governor Alfred E. Smith has been challenged, in public and in private, because of what his profession of faith has been believed to imply. I may be pardoned for saying here that while I am interested, like every other private citizen, in Mr. Smith's record as an executive and in his fitness for high office, I am thoroughly convinced that no real point of principle ought to be sacrificed or ignored in his behalf. Indeed the worst thing that could happen to Catholics in this country is that they should be impelled . . . into willingness to repudiate an essential part of their tradition. Realization of this fact induced Mr. Smith himself to entrust that portion of his argument which concerned the specific teachings of the Church to a trained theologian.”

nal there on the Index, with the inevitable result of promoting the influence of the Pope against the Civic Primacy of the French People.79 Such proceedings are utterly antagonistic to the democratic conception of law as universal and immutable, except as it changes, as Lincoln said, with deliberate changes of opinion constitutionally determined and universally expressed in the sovereignty of a free people 80_words which seem more harmonious with the conception of law as dePrived from God through the Revelation of Jesus Christ than the words of Gratian and the teaching of the Roman Canonists.

It is well known that about 750 and 850, respectively, forged documents came into recognition as authentic; the Donation of Constantine 81 and the compilation of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.82 The contents of both in their terms enormously supported the claims to the pontifical sovereignty of the Pope. The Donation purported to be a great concession of power and territory made by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester I (314-335). The Decretals were, in part, forged letters purporting to be written by some thirty early Popes magnifying Papal rights and supporting Papal claims to the pontifical sovereignty. For seven hundred years these documents were universally regarded as authentic. About the middle of the fifteenth century they were abandoned as spurious, but the towering fabric of a factitious Papal sovereignty, raised in part on their 79 See further facts stated, p. 252 infra.

80 Supra, p. 136.

81 C. E., vol. v, p. 118 d.

82 Ibid., p. 773 b, c.

83 Ibid., pp. 119 b, 773 d.

authority, remained to crush the spirit of truth and to harass the natural liberties of man.84

Such is the Canon Law. "Supreme in Europe," says Dr. Luchaire, "the papacy gathered into a body of doctrine the decisions given in virtue of its enormous de facto power, and promulgated its collected decrees and oracula to form the immutable law of the Christian world." 85

Such is the bulwark of the Roman Church against any encroachment on Papal sovereignty of the democratic development with its principles that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that irresponsible power is never justified.

84 Janus, pp. 94–95, 105–106.

85 E. B., vol. xx, p. 698 b.

CHAPTER IX

FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND

TOLERATION

FREEDOM of Conscience and Toleration are perhaps the youngest of human political ideals. They were, like modern democracy, born in the throes of revolutions. Scripture was their nurse and taught them St. Peter's doctrine that "we ought to obey God rather than men." Those words were spoken by St. Peter in defiance of an edict of the State forbidding the Apostles to preach the religion of Christ. His words are commonly referred to as expressing a new and original idea, but in the moral life of man it was as old as time. Plato had recorded the saying of Socrates, "I "2 and Socrates, go my way, obedient to the god.

defying the control of the State over conscience, had drunk of the cup of hemlock four centuries before the Cross. It is true that Peter's words connoted the new revelation from God of the Church of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, he held conscience obedient unto God, not unto the Church or unto Peter.

The effort of man to maintain his sovereignty of conscience constitutes the most tragic story of history. In bargaining with the State for the surrender of his aboriginal rights, under the social contract, he has

1 Acts v, 29.

2 Plato, Apology, vol. i, p. 355.