prevented, although the collective conscience may carry the State at times to anarchy.

This uncertainty in the eventualities resulting from the exercise of the collective conscience is used to support the argument of Roman Catholics in favor of the moral supremacy of their Church under the Pope in his Divine and supernatural right, supreme and infallible in moral determination because Divine and supernatural; but the argument is annihilated by the fact that the Church and the Pope have, at times, carried Western civilization to moral anarchy, and that restoration to order has been accomplished only by the intervention of the State, and the moral constraint exercised by it on the Popes.

The philosophy and constitution of the Roman Catholic Church set up the moral supremacy of the Pope as supreme in theory over the conscience of the individual, and over the collective conscience of the State. That Church claims that the moral standard is determined and declared in virtue of the supremacy and the infallibility of the Pope; the modern State claims that it is determined and declared in virtue of the collective conscience of the civic community or State under conditions of the freedom of the individual conscience acting in the light of reason and experience. To the Roman Catholic consciousness there is present what is unknown to the consciousness of the rest of the world, to wit: a verifiable, visible, tangible and universal authority in respect to moral truth and the validity of political authority, and a supreme and infallible organ for the declaration thereof. The conIflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the

modern State would seem, therefore, to be very clear. In order to escape the horrors of the sovereign Hegelian State, mankind need not take refuge in the horrors of the sovereign Roman Church. There is a refuge from each in the sure fastnesses of the sovereignty of conscience 2-a sovereignty that may involve some martyrdom at the hands of both civic and ecclesiastical authorities, but, in the law of God, martyrdom under either is not the defeat but the triumph of conscience.

As to the menace of anarchy: It is to be observed that nothing can lead more precipitately to anarchy in the modern State than the insistence by the Roman Catholic Church that its members must renounce that freedom of the individual conscience on which the modern State rests, and accept in lieu of it the supremacy, in matters belonging to morals, of the Papal government at Rome whenever, in the judgment of the Pope, the claims of the State conflict with the claims of the Papal government. Such insistence by the Roman Catholic Church has more than once proven to be the hotbed of anarchy in the State.

The conclusion is inevitable that Roman Catholic citizens are radically differentiated from all others in their relation to the social and political complex of life in the American or modern State. The Roman Catholic solidarity in the State cannot be a valid part of the collective conscience, or consensus of moral opinion, on which the civic order of the State depends,

2 What independence is allowed of right by the doctrine of the Roman Church to the individual conscience as against Papal supremacy and infallibility will be found set forth at pp. 20-21 infra.

for that collective conscience or consensus, to be valid, must be arrived at under the freedom of the individual conscience. Roman Catholics are not free in conscience because of their subordination, under the penalty of damnation, in matters belonging to morals to the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope in his Divine right.

It may be that the facts which I present support in reason the position of the State in the modern world in respect to religion and the Roman Catholic Church, but I have at no point intended to argue to conclusion in regard to the claims of either party to the controversy, limiting my work to the disclosure of those considerations which lead to the existing antagonism between the Church of Rome and the State. The modern State is obviously in dire need of the aid of the contribution of every valid instrumentality for the dispensation of the pure Gospel of the Son of God.

It is not my purpose to disparage the just, historic and rational claims of the Roman Church and of the Papacy to the consideration of the world. Mankind might do well to listen to, and to heed, the venerable voice of the most ancient of Christian Sees expressing the collective wisdom of the Latin Church, if it could hear in the freedom of conscience and act in the freedom of the will. But in the way of such a consummation the Roman Catholic Church, by coupling with the acceptance of its moral teaching the acceptance de fide and in Divine right of the supernatural supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, has imposed an insuperable obstacle. The Bishop of Rome is no longer the venerable Pastor and Patriarch of the Western world,

speaking in the right of human prescription and tradition; he is no longer the Pope of the early centuries. He is in his claims the Supreme Pontiff, holding "upon this earth the place of God Almighty," and incontestable in Divine right.

THE IDEAL STATE

My presentation of authoritative Roman Catholic pronouncements, both doctrinal and dogmatic, asserting the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church over the State at all vital moral points, the validity of its doctrine of the union of that Church and the State, the duty of the State to proscribe all other religious bodies as heretical, and the inherent right of the Roman Catholic Church over education and other subjects, has been met by the rejoinder that the doctrines have application only to an ideal State which at present does not exist. The ideal State is defined by Roman Catholics as one whose population is substantially Roman Catholic, or one in which the Roman Catholic religion "is recognized and adopted by the vast majority of the citizens."

I deny that the rejoinder is in any way apposite. Too great a strain is put upon human credulity when men are asked to believe that the authorities of the Roman Church are setting forth doctrines in the textbooks of its schools and in its manuals of instruction, and that the Popes are proclaiming doctrines and dogmas in their Encyclicals and decrees, which have no application to any existing State. The fact is obvious that the doctrines in question apply, and, I repeat, are

intended to apply, in every State where there is a Roman Catholic solidarity, in proportion to the numerical strength of that solidarity. If such were not the case, the slogan "Make America Catholic" would never have been raised.

But the doctrines alluded to are indefensible in the modern State if there is even one citizen who is not a Roman Catholic, for in theory that State insists upon a standard of right and of religious liberty that shall accommodate every citizen, even including that one.

There is some truth in the paradox that even in a State where every citizen is a Roman Catholic the doctrines alluded to cannot be morally justified, however they might be imposed de facto, for the reason that successive generations of children entitled to freedom of conscience are prejudiced thereby, from their earliest days, with disastrous consequences to civilization. Burke was right when he said that "civilization is a contract between the great dead, the living and the unborn." The State is an integral part of civilization and the unborn are, in theory, entitled to its protection against the pernicious theories of older genera

tions.

THE CIVIC OATH

Protestant opinion, commenting on the words of the Rev. Dr. Pohle, quoted by the Hon. Alfred E. Smith in his Atlantic Monthly letter (see p. 44 infra), holds that I do not give due consideration to the grave question of the binding force of oath by Roman Catholics in relation to matters in which the doctrine of their Church conflicts with the doctrine of the State.