moral, temporal and spiritual. Even the medieval notion of unity at its best could not obliterate it. Over this twilight zone there was necessarily a twofold jurisdiction which multiplied the medieval controversies between Popes and Emperors. The advantage was with the Pope as the head of the Spiritual Power, for the spiritual interests of man were postulated in medieval political thought as superior to his temporal interests, and the alleged superiority was made the basis of the political constitution.

A Divine Revelation, which at the time experience could not and reason dared not dispute, had given to the Pope the Keys of Heaven and Hell and the Power to Loose and to Bind. With such powers the Pope's Vicariate over the moral and religious affairs of men dwarfed the Emperor's Vicariate over secular affairs.11

Under such empire builders as Gregory VII and Innocent III 15 the assertions of Papal sovereignty mounted higher and higher, until in 1302 Pope Boniface VIII in the Bull Unam Sanctam declared the Church to be the source of political power.10

16

14 "He (the Pope) came out victor, and the Emperor was made to see that the great institution which claimed, and in the belief of the age held, the authority of consigning men's souls to heaven or hell, could never be conquered by a power which was confined to the exercise of earthly punishments, no matter how severe." J. W. Burgess, The Sanctity of Law, pp. 40-41.

15 Innocent III in the decree Venerabilem asserted that the Holy Roman Emperor derived his political authority from the Popes who had transferred the right to Imperial authority from the Emperors of the East to Charlemagne and his successors in the West. See C. E., vol. viii, p. 14 b.

16 The Catholic Encyclopedia (vol. xv, p. 126 b. c.) sums up the declarations of the Bull as follows:

"(1) Under the control of the (Roman) Church are two swords,

With the decline of the imperial idea and the rise of national States, the democratic idea asserted itself more and more over the monarchical idea. As the centuries went by it triumphed in the development of modern States based more and more on the principle of government by the consent of the governed. One political sovereignty, wide in its extent, prodigious in its claims-the Church of Rome-adhered to the medieval doctrine that its sovereignty was derived directly from God, and not from its subjects, and existed by the fiat of God and not by the consent of the governed. The claims of Papal sovereignty in their essential nature have never changed since the close of the Middle Ages. The political philosophy of Leo XIII differed in no wise from that of Innocent III

that is two powers, the expression referring to the medieval theory of the two swords, the spiritual and the secular

...

(2) Both swords are in the power of the (Roman) Church; the spiritual is wielded in the (Roman) Church by the hand of the clergy; the secular is to be employed for the (Roman) Church by the hand of the civil authority, but under the direction of the spiritual power.

(3) The one sword must be subordinate to the other; the earthly power must submit to the spiritual authority, as this has precedence of the secular on account of its greatness and sublimity; for the spiritual power has the right to establish and guide the secular power, and also to judge it when it does not act rightly. When, however, the earthly power goes astray, it is judged by the spiritual power; a lower spiritual power is judged by a higher, the highest spiritual power is judged by God.

(4) This authority, although granted to man, and exercised by man, is not a human authority, but rather a Divine one, granted to Peter by Divine commission and confirmed in him and his successors. Consequently, whoever opposes this power ordained of God opposes the law of God. . . . 'Now, therefore, we declare, say, determine and pronounce that for every human creature it is necessary for salvation to be subject to the authority of the Roman pontiff.""

and Boniface VIII. If secular government by the consent of the governed be substituted for the government of the Holy Roman Empire, the issue between the Roman Church and the modern State remains the same as the issue between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen.

The Roman Church with its doctrine of Church sovereignty found most harmonious that medieval union of Church and State which recognized its sovereignty as well as the sovereignty of the State. It regards with natural aversion that separation of Church and State which is characteristic of the modern State, and which in its very nature repudiates the sovereignty of the Church of Rome. It is inevitable that it should find the modern political environment hostile to its nature and uncongenial with its traditions, and that it should still teach, as we shall later show, that its union with the State is essential to the consummation of its alleged divine mission.

The jurisdiction of a political sovereignty is enforced through laws to which obedience is compelled by physical sanctions or penalties. It will be urged that a Church cannot be a sovereignty because its sanctions are spiritual, but the penalties or sanctions of the sovereignty of the Church of Rome are as physical as the temporal sanctions of the secular State. The very idea of disobedience to the teaching of one who is the Vicar of Christ is terrifying to the orthodox believer. The express sanctions of the Pope's laws are excommunication in this world and presumptive damnation in the world to come; one involves ostracism here; the other agony after death; both necessarily involve for

the believer present intense distress of mind, a penalty that is both physical and temporal.

The doctrine of the Church of Rome justifies the use of physical sanctions and penalties, and its record through the ages reveals it in practice.17 Throughout its medieval history, as we shall see, it used force in the application of its laws, and as late as 1864 Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus condemned the proposition that his Church has not the power to use force.18 The Jesuit writers, Schneemann and Schrader, writing at about the same time, openly taught that the Church had the right to use force in the infliction of its penalties, and was prevented from doing so only by the oppression of the State. Schneemann taught the right of the Church to inflict fines, imprisonment, scourging, and banishment.19

At the present day it is taught:

"The question has been raised whether it be lawful for the (Roman) Church, not merely to sentence

17 When members of the Roman Catholic Church recently ventured to cite a Bishop of the Church before the secular courts of Rhode Island in an inquiry as to the disposition of trust property, the following statement was cabled by Cardinal Gasparri, the Papal Secretary of State, to Monsignor P. Fumasoni-Biondi, Archbishop of Dioclea, Apostolic Delegate to the United States:

"... The Right Reverend Bishop Hickey, of Providence, asks whether he can proceed to a sententia declaratoria of excommunication incurred by those who have cited him before the civil tribunal. Your Excellency may inform him, as soon as possible, that the Sacred Congregation has answered his question in the affirmative." (The letter from the Apostolic Delegate to Bishop Hickey containing this statement was published over his signature in the Providence Journal, October 22, 1927, p. 1).

18 Syllabus, Proposition XXIV, see infra appendix II, p. 295. 19 A reference to the statements of these writers will be found in Janus, pp. 10-11.

a delinquent to physical penalties, but itself to inflict these penalties. As to this, it is sufficient to note that the right of the (Roman) Church to invoke the aid of the civil power to execute her sentences is expressly asserted by Boniface VIII in the Bull Unam Sanctam." 20

Innocent III used force with the Albigenses.21 The Inquisition used it. The union of Church and State in the medieval system made it the duty of the Church to use force, if not directly then through its partner, the medieval State. Dr. Laski says that in the Middle Ages "it had been the function of the State to be the police department of the Church." 22 In the medieval system heresy was punishable with death. The Church from the early centuries had taught that it could not shed blood because its divine nature forbade.23 But St. Thomas Aquinas provided for the difficulty. He taught that in the case of the unrepentant heretic:

"... the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excom

20 C. E., vol. xii, p. 266 c. The claim that the doctrine in question could be applied only when a whole nation is thoroughly Roman Catholic in spirit is quite true. The matter under discussion is the fallacy of a theory, not the present practicality of its application. The application follows when sufficient power is obtained.

21 Martin Luther, too, prescribed the use of force in executing the decrees of his Church. "Heretics," he said, “are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue the evil to its source, and bathe their hands in the blood of the Catholic Bishops, and of the Pope, who is a devil in disguise." Table Talk, iii, 175, quoted by Acton, History, P. 164.

22 Laski, Studies, p. 235. 28 C. E., vol. viii, p. 27 d.