purpose of this book to disclose. Concerning the moral consequences to society of the decisions in the two cases there will be a difference of opinion, and I cannot in good conscience conceal my own opinion that those consequences are profoundly regrettable.

The two episodes stand out in sinister significance when viewed in the light of subsequent facts. Signor Marconi, shortly after his annulment, was married with all the rites of the Church to a Roman Catholic lady. The Duke of Marlborough, shortly after his annulment, announced his conversion to Rome, and when the drama closed the world beheld him at a great ceremony supporting with the prestige of an English Dukedom the throne of the Cardinal Archbishop at Westminster.

THE POPE'S RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD

In my closing paragraph there is a reference to the "Primacy of a Sovereign Pope, which holds itself responsible to no one." I have been admonished that I should have said, "responsible to no one but God." I admit with all respect that the Pope, under the constitution of the Roman Catholic Church, does indeed hold himself, in theory, responsible to God, but by all the pages of history and by all the experience of mankind I deny that he has been able to hold himself in fact responsible to God. It is by reason of this inherent human limitation of the Pope that the validity of Papal sovereignty in Divine right over the moral life of man falls to the ground.

CHARLES C. MARSHALL

October 15, 1928.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

I. The writer of this book is profoundly conscious of the difficulties of his subject and appreciates that, while it is found for the most part within the domain of the law and political science, it must occasionally lead toward, if not into, the more difficult provinces of theology and ecclesiastical history. He is conscious of the presumption that will be imputed to an adventure, however discreet, by a layman in that direction, but if the institutional relation of the Roman Catholic Church to the modern State is to be examined there is no alternative. That Church asserts, as an integral part of its faith, a moral and religious sovereignty, the exercise of which from time to time draws civic rights and interests within its alleged jurisdiction, and the citizen who would acquaint himself with the real situation must pursue his inquiries within ecclesiastical lines with such resources as may be at his command. It cannot be justly claimed that subjects of great civic importance to everyone can be understood only by the authorities of one religious cult; nor will it be denied that modern civic institutions, especially in the United States, have been established with due regard to the capacity of the average man to understand.

II. The writer owns a profound veneration for the religion of the Catholic Church, Greek, Roman and Anglican, East and West, excepting in so far as it asserts a church sovereignty by divine right as an

article of faith or unites itself to the secular State as the religion by law established. At the same time he owns a deep appreciation of the practical services rendered by Protestantism, and also by Skepticism, in maintaining the equilibrium of truth through a tempestuous period in Western civilization, and in recording a living protest against the absolutism claimed by the Papacy over the Universal Church and, indeed, over the entire moral and political world.

III. It is hardly necessary to call attention to the consideration that the supernatural claims and the proof supporting the same, commonly urged in behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, are neither expressly conceded nor denied nor are they considered in the following pages. The arguments advanced are drawn entirely from public law, from political science and from history, and have no connection with the supernatural. The purpose is to present the situation between the Church of Rome and the modern State, not from the viewpoint of any religious or sectarian prepossessions but from that of the disinterested observer.

IV. The title might have referred to the United States of America as well as to the modern State. The former may, with advantage, be in the reader's mind as the typical instance. The latter, as a concept, has a certain flexibility accommodating the political conceptions involved, and its employment may keep the mind of the reader responsive to the consideration that the modern State, although it may be represented by the United States of America, is not consummate therein, but is still in process of that development in which, by basing government on the consent of the

governed, it has diverged so widely from the institutional development of the Church of Rome. Only in the further development of both the Church of Rome and the secular State is there hope of a synthesis that shall give to the world Christianity and Democracy in a noble equilibrium. If that development ever takes place the Church of Rome must follow the State in the renunciation of the theory of the Two Powers, and with it the conception of itself as one of the political sovereignties of the world making its political "power irresistible by multiplying those who share it."

A consideration of such development is beyond the scope of a book limited, as is this, solely to the disclosure of those antagonisms between the two institutions which seem at present to prevent the realization of the dearest hopes of mankind, and the full fruition of the truth revealed by God to man in the life and words of the Divine Son of Mary.

V. It is recognized that there is in the following pages some lack of logical order in the presentation of the subject. Such order was impossible if the subject was to be treated, as desired, within a single volume. The chapters are presented as so many essays, connected in subject but having a certain detachment; an arrangement which has the advantage of presenting the subject in a variety of lights, after which it must be left to the fair judgment of the reader's good sense and just intention. As a result of this arrangement there is also some repetition which, under the circumstances, has been found unavoidable.

VI. In all quotations from Roman Catholic authorities the word "Roman", where clearly implied, is in

serted in parentheses before the words "Catholic", "Church", "religion", "faith", etc. Owing to the claim of the name of "Catholic" by the Greek and Anglican Churches, as well as by the Roman Church, and to the separation of the one pre-Reformation church of the West into many "churches", "religions" and "faiths", any use of these words without qualification is often misleading. Such insertion of the word "Roman" results only in expressing more clearly the intent, so that what might be considered as a liberty becomes really a courtesy.

VII. As far as possible sources of information hostile to the Roman Catholic Church have been avoided and preference given to authorities which it acknowledges. Thus it is hoped that whatever differences may be found as to conclusions will not be found as to facts. In pursuance of this end frequent reference has been made to the Catholic Encyclopedia, bearing the imprimatur of John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York. Never before, it may be assumed, has a human institution, claiming to incorporate a tradition in a legal continuity of two thousand years, laid at the bar of human judgment a compendious and popular statement of its proofs, its history and its aims. A work so magnanimously conceived and admirably executed can have no other effect than that of clarifying religious thought and promoting the consideration of those claims of institutional Christianity which now press upon the popular consciousness. The generous distribution of the Encyclopedia throughout this country makes the greater number of the citations in the following pages available for readers.