Schools, that is not implicitly expressed in these titles of the Pope if accepted as intrinsically true. The political structure of the Church of Rome rests on the recognition of their intrinsic truth. As God is Truth, and as the Revelation of Scripture teaches that "... there is no power but of God" and that ". . . the powers that be are ordained of God," 29 the Pope, as God's Vicegerent and as Vicar of His Incarnate Son, becomes necessarily the source under God of all moral truth and of the validity of all political power, and in virtue thereof must assert his supremacy in the moral and political order of the world.30 The mind is not logical which can hold that in the determination of moral truth or the validity of political authority there can be a difference between God and His Vicegerent, between Christ and His Vicar.

It is not within the scope of these pages to consider whether the teaching in Roman Catholic schools at present reaches a point where the interests of the State require its intervention in behalf of its peace and safety and its civil supremacy. Our purpose has been to show that there is a Twilight Zone of Education in which antagonisms between the Church of Rome and the modern State exist, and that within that zone the religious sovereignty of the Church claims to teach, and does teach, doctrine that carried to its reasonable conclusion may, in the future as in the past, unhinge the civil supremacy of the State. If the State has not yet thought it necessary to protest, neither has it at any

29 Rom. xiii, 1.

80 Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Immortale Dei, appendix III, infra pp. 306, 308.

point qualified that sovereign right of intervention in education which its courts have accorded to it and its constitutional order prescribes, and of which Cardinal Gibbons, as we have seen, admitted the existence.

POSTSCRIPT

As the pages of this book come to a close the Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope Pius XI, issued January sixth, 1928, appears in the press.

In specific words it reaffirms the claims that have broken the unity of the Church of Christ and that still hold asunder its fragments; it reaffirms the claims that have set the secular states of the world in antagonism to the Church of Rome: The Encyclical declares that only the (Roman) Catholic Church is the true religion, and, again, that Roman Catholics believe in the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Vatican Council of 1870, as they believe in the Incarnate Christ and the Triune God.1

One hundred and fifty years ago the hand that

1 In this Encyclical, Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI adopts the words of Lactantius: "It is only the (Roman) Catholic Church that retains the true worship. It is the fountain of truth, it is the household of the faith, it is the temple of God, so that if any one does not enter it or if any one departs from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. No one should be deceived by continuous disputes. Life and salvation are in the balance; if they are not cared for carefully and diligently they will be lost and destroyed." And again Pope Pius says: "... as many as are of Christ give, for example, to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception the same faith they give to the mystery of the August Trinity and they believe in the Incarnation of the Word no differently than they believe in the infallible teaching power of the Pope, in the sense, be it understood, determined by the Vatican Ecumenical Council." These quotations are taken from the translation of the Encyclical Letter made for the National Catholic Welfare Council News Service; see Current History, March, 1928, pp. 796-800.

penned the Declaration of Independence wrote in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom these words:

66

... the impious presumption of legislature and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time . . ." 2

It is not necessary to enlarge on the inherent antagonism between the words of Jefferson in 1779 and the words of Pius XI in 1928. The issue they raise is sharp and distinct: Wherein is the seat of moral sovereignty? The State which Jefferson created answers that it is, under God, and by reason of His Creative Word, in the Civic Primacy of the People; and that it has but one earthly limitation-the moral consciousness of the People developed with the freedom of the individual

conscience.

The seat of moral sovereignty in the State must rest either in the Civic Primacy of the People, which holds itself responsible to every one, or in the ecclesiastical Primacy of a Sovereign Pope, which holds itself responsible to no one. The Primacy of the People and the Primacy of the Pope are the sole claimants of that moral sovereignty. It cannot rest in both. The choice is with mankind.

2 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. ii, p. 237.

APPENDIX I

THE CONSTITUTION PASTOR ÆTERNUS &

The Vatican Council

SESSION IV

July 18, 1870

FIRST DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH
OF CHRIST

PIUS, BISHOP,

SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD, WITH THE

APPROVAL OF THE SACRED COUNCIL FOR

PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE

THE Eternal Pastor and Bishop of our souls, in order to continue for all time the life-giving work of His Redemption, determined to build up the Holy Church, wherein, as in the house of the living God, all who believe might be united in the bond of one faith and one charity. Wherefore, before He entered into His glory, He prayed unto the Father, not for the Apostles only, but for those also who through their preaching should come to believe in Him, that all might be one, even as He the Son and the Father are one.1 As then He sent the Apostles whom He had chosen to Himself from the world, as He Himself had been sent by the Reprinted from Dogmatic Canons and Decrees, pp. 239-257, (Imprimatur of John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York), with the kind permission of the publishers, The Devin-Adair Company, New York.

1 John xvii, 20 f.