Encyclical Letter

OF OUR MOST HOLY LORD LEO XIII., BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE,

Concerning the Christian Constitution of States

To all the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of the Catholic World, in the Grace and Communion of the Apostolic See,

LEO PP XIII

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

The work of a merciful God, the Church looks essentially, and from the very nature of her being, to the salvation of souls and the winning for them of happiness in heaven, nevertheless, she also secures even in this world, advantages so many and so great that she could not do more, even if she had been founded primarily and specially to secure prosperity in this life which is worked out upon earth. In truth, wherever the Church has set her foot she has at once changed the aspect of affairs, colored the manners of the people as with new virtues and a refinement unknown before—as many people as have accepted this have been distinguished for their gentleness, their justice, and the glory of their deeds. But the accusation is an old one, and not of recent date, that the Church is incompatible with the welfare of the commonwealth, and incapable of contributing to those things, whether useful or ornamental, which, naturally and of its own will, every rightly-constituted State eagerly strives for. We know that on this ground, in the very beginnings of the Church, the Christians, from the same perversity of view, were persecuted and constantly held up to hatred and contempt, so that they were styled the enemies of the Empire. And at that time it was generally popular to attribute to Christianity the responsibility for the evils beneath which the State was beaten down, when in reality, God, the avenger of crimes, was requiring a just punishment from the guilty. The wickedness of this calumny, not without cause, fired the genius and sharpened the pen of Augustine, who, especially in his Civitate Dei, set forth so clearly the efficacy of Christian wisdom, and the way in which it is bound up with well-being of States, that he seems not only to have pleaded the cause of the Christians of his own time, but to have triumphantly refuted these false charges for all time. But this unhappy inclination to complaints and false accusations was not laid to rest, and many have thought well to seek a system of civil life elsewhere than in the doctrines which the Church approves. And now in these latter times a new law, as they call it, has begun to prevail, which they describe as the outcome of a world now fully developed, and born of a growing liberty. But although many hazardous schemes have been propounded by many, it is clear that never has any better method been found for establishing and ruling the State than that which is the natural result of the teaching of the Gospel. We deem it, therefore, of the greatest moment, and especially suitable to our Apostolic function, to compare with Christian doctrine the new opinions concerning the State, by which method we trust that, truth being thus presented, the causes of error and doubt will be removed, so that each may easily see by those supreme commandments for living, what things he ought to follow, and whom he ought to obey.

It is not a very difficult matter to set forth what form and appearance the State should have if Christian philosophy governed the commonwealth. By nature it is implanted in man that he should live in civil society, for since he cannot attain in solitude the necessary means of civilized life, it is a Divine provision that he comes into existence adapted for taking part in the union and assembling of men, both in the Family and in the State, which alone can supply adequate facilities for the perfecting of life. But since no society can hold together unless some person is over all, impelling individuals by efficient and similar motives to pursue the common advantage, it is brought about that authority whereby it may be ruled is indispensable to a civilized community, which authority, as well as society, can have no other source than nature, and consequently God Himself. And thence it follows that by its very nature there can be no public power except from God alone. For God alone is the most true and supreme Lord of the world, Whom necessarily all things, whatever they be, must be subservient to and obey, so that whoever possess the right of governing, can receive that from no other source than from that supreme chief of all, God. "There is no power except from God." (Rom. xiii. 1.) But the right of ruling is not necessarily conjoined with any special form of commonwealth, but may rightly assume this or that form, provided that it promotes utility and the common good. But whatever be the kind of commonwealth, rulers ought to keep in view God, the Supreme Governor of the world, and to set Him before themselves as an example and a law in the administration of the State. For as God, in things which are and which are seen, has produced secondary causes, wherein the Divine nature and course of action can be perceived, and which conduce to that end to which the universal course of the world is directed, so in civil society He has willed that there should be a government which should be carried on by men who should reflect towards mankind an image as it were of Divine power and Divine providence. The rule of the government, therefore, should be just and not that of a master but rather that of a father, because the power of God over men is most just and allied with a father's goodness. Moreover, it is to be carried on with a view to the advantage of the citizens, because they who are over others are over them for this cause alone, that they may see to the interests of the State. And in no way is it to be allowed that the civil authority should be subservient merely to the advantage of one or of a few, since it was established for the common good of all. But if they who are over the State should lapse into unjust rule; if they should err through arrogance or pride; if their measures should be injurious to the people, let them know that hereafter an account must be rendered to God, and that so much the stricter in proportion as they are intrusted with more sacred functions, or have obtained a higher grade of dignity, "The mighty shall be mightily tormented." (Wisd. vi. 7.)

Thus truly the majesty of rule will be attended with an honorable and willing regard on the part of the citizens; for when once they have been brought to conclude that they who rule are strong only with the authority given by God, they will feel that those duties are due and just, that they should be obedient to their rulers, and pay to them respect and fidelity, with somewhat of the same affection as that of children to their parents. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers." (Rom. xiii. 1.)

Indeed, to contemn lawful authority, in whatever person it is vested, is as unlawful as it is to resist the Divine will; and whoever resists that, rushes voluntarily to his destruction. "He who resists the power, resists the ordinance of God; and they who resist, purchase to themselves damnation." (Rom. xiii. 2.) Wherefore to cast away obedience, and by popular violence to incite the country to sedition, is treason, not only against man, but against God.

It is clear that a State constituted on this basis is altogether bound to satisfy, by the public profession of religion, the very many and great duties which bring it into relation with God. Nature and reason which commands every man individually to serve God holily and religiously, because we belong to Him and coming from Him must return to Him, binds by the same law the civil community. For men living together in society are no less under the power of God than are individuals; and society owes as much gratitude as individuals do to God, Who is its author, its preserver, and the beneficent source of the innumerable blessings which it has received. And therefore as it is not lawful for anybody to neglect his duties towards God, and as it is the first duty to embrace in mind and in conduct religion—not such as each may choose, but such as God commands—in the same manner States cannot, without a crime, act as though God did not exist, or cast off the care of religion as alien to them or useless or out of several kinds of religion adopt indifferently which they please; but they are absolutely bound, in the worship of the Deity to adopt that use and manner in which God Himself has shown that He wills to be adored. Therefore among rulers the name of God must be holy, and it must be reckoned among the first of their duties to favor religion, protect it, and cover it with the authority of the laws, and not to institute or decree anything which is incompatible with its security. They owe this also to the citizens over whom they rule. For all of us men are born and brought up for a certain supreme and final good in heaven, beyond this frail and short life, and to this end all efforts are to be referred. And because upon it depends the full and perfect happiness of men, therefore, to attain this end which has been mentioned, is of as much interest as is conceivable to every individual man. It is necessary then that a civil society, born for the common advantage, in the guardianship of the prosperity of the commonwealth, should so advance the interests of the citizens that in holding up and acquiring that highest and inconvertible good which they spontaneously seek, it should not only never import anything disadvantageous, but should give all the opportunities in its power. The chief of these is that attention should be paid to a holy and inviolate preservation of religion, by the duties of which man is united to God.

Now which the true religion is may be easily discovered by any one who will view the matter with a careful and unbiassed judgment; for there are proofs of great number and splendor, as for example, the truth of prophecy, the abundance of miracles, the extremely rapid spread of the faith, even in the midst of its enemies and in spite of the greatest hindrances, the testimony of the martyrs, and the like, from which it is evident that that is the only true religion which Jesus Christ instituted Himself and then entrusted to His Church to defend and to spread.

For the only begotten Son of God set up a society on earth which is called the Church, and to it He transferred that most glorious and divine office, which He had received from His Father, to be perpetuated forever. "As the Father hath sent Me, even so I send you." (John xx. 21.) "Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world." (Matt. xxviii. 20.) Therefore as Jesus Christ came into the world, "that men might have life and have it more abundantly" (John x. 10), so also the Church has for its aim and end the eternal salvation of souls; and for this cause it is so constituted as to embrace the whole human race without any limit or circumscription either of time or place. "Preach ye the Gospel to every creature." (Mark xvi. 15.) Over this immense multitude of men God Himself has set rulers with power to govern them; and He has willed that one should be head of them all, and the chief and unerring teacher of truth, and to him He has given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. "To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. xvi. 19.) "Feed My lambs, feed My sheep." (John xxi. 16, 17.) "I have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail." (Luke xxii. 32.) This society, though it be composed of men just as civil society is, yet because of the end that it has in view, and the means by which it tends to it, is supernatural and spiritual; and, therefore, is distinguished from civil society and differs from it; and—a fact of the highest moment—is a society perfect in its kind and in its rights, possessing in and by itself, by the will and beneficence of its Founder, all the appliances that are necessary for its preservation and action. Just as the end, at which the Church aims, is by far the noblest of ends, so its power is the most exalted of all powers, and cannot be held to be either inferior to the civil power or in any way subject to it. In truth Jesus Christ gave His Apostles unfettered commissions over all sacred things, with the power of establishing laws properly so-called, and the double right of judging and punishing which follows from it: "All power has been given to Me in heaven and on earth; going, therefore, teach all nations;… teaching them to keep whatsoever I have commanded you." (Matt. xxviii. 18, 19, 20.) And in another place He says: "If he will not hear, tell it to the Church" (Matt. xviii. 17); and again: "Ready to punish all disobedience" (2 Cor. x. 6); and once more: "I shall act with more severity, according to the powers which our Lord has given me unto edification and not unto destruction." (2 Cor. xiii. 10.)

So then it is not the State but the Church that ought to be men's guide to heaven; and it is to her that God has assigned the office of watching and legislating for all that concerns religion, of teaching all nations; of extending, as far as may be, the borders of Christianity; and, in a word, of administering its affairs without let or hindrance, according to her own judgment. Now this authority, which pertains absolutely to the Church herself, and is part of her manifest rights, and which has long been opposed by a philosophy subservient to princes, she has never ceased to claim for herself and to exercise publicly: the Apostles themselves being the first of all to maintain it, when, being forbidden by the readers of the Synagogue to preach the Gospel, they boldly answered, "We must obey God rather than men." (Acts v. 29.) This same authority the holy Fathers of the Church have been careful to maintain by weighty reasonings as occasions have arisen; and the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased to defend it with inflexible constancy. Nay, more, princes and civil governors themselves have approved it in theory and in fact; for in the making of compacts, in the transaction of business, in sending and receiving embassies, and in the interchange of other offices, it has been their custom to act with the Church as with a supreme and legitimate power. And we may be sure that it is not without the singular providence of God that this power of the Church was defended by the Civil Power as the best defence of its own liberty.

God, then, has divided the charge of the human race between two powers, viz., the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human things. Each is the greatest in its own kind: each has certain limits within which it is restricted, and those limits defined by the nature and proximate cause of each; so that there is, as we may say, a world marked off as a field for the proper action of each. But forasmuch as each has dominion over the same subjects, since it might come to pass that one and the same thing, though in different ways, still one and the same, might pertain to the right and the tribunal of both, therefore God, Who foreseeth all things, and Who has established both powers, must needs have arranged the course of each in right relation to one another, and in due order. "For the powers that are ordained by God." (Rom. xiii. 1.) And if this were not so, causes of rivalries and dangerous disputes would be constantly arising; and man would often have to stop in anxiety and doubt, like a traveller with two roads before him, not knowing what he ought to do, with two powers commanding contrary things, whose authority however, he cannot refuse without neglect of duty. But it would be most repugnant, so to think, of the wisdom and goodness of God, Who, even in physical things, though they are of a far lower order, has yet so attempered and combined together the forces and causes of nature in an orderly manner and with a sort of wonderful harmony, that none of them is a hindrance to the rest, and all of them most fitly and aptly combine for the great end of the universe. So, then, there must needs be a certain orderly connection between these two powers, which may not unfairly be compared to the union with which soul and body are united in man. What the nature of that union is, and what its extent, cannot otherwise be determined than, as we have said, by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobility of their ends; for one of them has for its proximate and chief aim the care of the goods of this world, the other the attainment of the goods of heaven that are eternal. Whatsoever, therefore, in human affairs is in any manner sacred; whatsoever pertains to the salvation of souls or the worship of God, whether it be so in its own nature, or on the other hand, is held to be so for the sake of the end to which it is referred, all this is in the power and subject to the free disposition of the Church: but all other things which are embraced in the civil and political order, are rightly subject to the civil authority, since Jesus Christ has commanded that what is Cæsar's is to be paid to Cæsar, and what is God's to God. Sometimes, however, circumstances arise when another method of concord is available for peace and liberty; we mean when princes and the Roman Pontiff come to an understanding concerning any particular matter. In such circumstances the Church gives singular proof of her maternal good-will, and is accustomed to exhibit the highest possible degree of generosity and indulgence.

Such, then, as we have indicated in brief, is the Christian order of civil society; no rash or merely fanciful fiction, but deduced from principles of the highest truth and moment, which are confirmed by the natural reason itself.