What is the Catholic approach to Church and State?

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Matthew1618

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I recently have been reading about the Americanist heresy and several questions have come up as a result. One such question has been how the Church views the notion of “Church and State,” primarily in regards to their separation. What is the Church’s position on this notion? I’ve seen it written that the Church endorses the approach that such separation is completely valid and just, so long as the Church and other religious bodies are given the freedom to comment and take a stand on matters of political importance and public life (EX: Abortion). Is this a correct understanding of the Church’s position?
 
As far as I know, the only governmental system the Church has condemned is Communism. The Church is critical of all types of government since all forms of government has flaws. From my understanding, as long as the government does not interfere with the Church and is a relatively moral government, the Church is fine with it in theory.
 
The answer to your question is in the official Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published by the Vatican, paragraphs 424-427. Here is the text (I’ve removed the footnotes and internal quotation marks):
The Catholic Church and the Political Community
a. Autonomy and independence
424. Although the Church and the political community both manifest themselves in visible organizational structures, they are by nature different because of their configuration and because of the ends they pursue. The Second Vatican Council solemnly reaffirmed that, in their proper spheres, the political community and the Church are mutually independent and self-governing. The Church is organized in ways that are suitable to meet the spiritual needs of the faithful, while the different political communities give rise to relationships and institutions that are at the service of everything that is part of the temporal common good. The autonomy and independence of these two realities is particularly evident with regards to their ends.
The duty to respect religious freedom requires that the political community guarantee the Church the space needed to carry out her mission. For her part, the Church has no particular area of competence concerning the structures of the political community: The Church respects the legitimate autonomy of the democratic order and is not entitled to express preferences for this or that institutional or constitutional solution, nor does it belong to her to enter into questions of the merit of political programmes, except as concerns their religious or moral implications.
b. Cooperation
425. The mutual autonomy of the Church and the political community does not entail a separation that excludes cooperation. Both of them, although by different titles, serve the personal and social vocation of the same human beings. The Church and the political community, in fact, express themselves in organized structures that are not ends in themselves but are intended for the service of man, to help him to exercise his rights fully, those inherent in his reality as a citizen and a Christian, and to fulfil correctly his corresponding duties. The Church and the political community can more effectively render this service for the good of all if each works better for wholesome mutual cooperation in a way suitable to the circumstances of time and place. …
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Read more.
 
The split between church and state was necessary in my opinion. I have seen no legitimate authoritative Catholic document condemning the separation. If there is i would like to see it.
 
From The Syllabus of Errors by Bl. Plus IX:
  1. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. - condemned
 
Catholics

The document met with a mixed reception among Catholics; many accepted it wholeheartedly, others wanted a clarification of some points, and still others were as shocked as their Protestant neighbors by the apparent broad scope of the condemnations.

Catholic apologists such as Félix Dupanloup and John Henry Newman said that the Syllabus was widely misinterpreted by readers who did not have access to or did not bother to check the original documents of which it was a summary. The propositions listed had been condemned as erroneous opinions in the sense and context in which they originally occurred; without the original context, the document appeared to condemn a larger range of ideas than it actually did. Thus it was asserted that no critical response to the Syllabus which did not take the cited documents and their context into account could be valid. Newman writes:

The Syllabus then has no dogmatic force; it addresses us, not in its separate portions, but as a whole, and is to be received from the Pope by an act of obedience, not of faith, that obedience being shown by having recourse to the original and authoritative documents, (Allocutions and the like,) to which the Syllabus pointedly refers. Moreover, when we turn to those documents, which are authoritative, we find the Syllabus cannot even be called an echo of the Apostolic Voice; for, in matters in which wording is so important, it is not an exact transcript of the words of the Pope, in its account of the errors condemned, just as would be natural in what is an index for reference.

In the wake of the controversy following the document’s release, Pius IX referred to it as “raw meat needing to be cooked.” However, others within the church who supported the syllabus disagreed that there was any misinterpretation of the condemnations.[citation needed] The syllabus was an attack on liberalism, modernism, moral relativism, secularization, and the political emancipation of Europe from the tradition of Catholic Monarchies.

 
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“3. That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.“ - Vehemnter Nos - St. Pius X
 
Arkansan said:
“3. That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.“ - Vehemnter Nos - St. Pius X
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The context being the word “must”, which in itself does not imply that at any time where there is a split between church and state that something immoral has happened or that there must be a Catholic theocracy at all times. In fact there may be a time where a spit between church and state is necessary depending on the situation.

context
ˈkɒntɛkst/
noun
noun: context; plural noun: contexts

the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood
 
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On further reading, i admit that it cannot be ignored in principle that the traditional perspective of the Church views the state as deriving it’s power and authority from God and should strictly function within that context alone. The state should function as an expression of God’s divine governance over man as revealed by the church. The Church rejects the secular state in the sense that it derives it’s authority and power only from itself… But even the church seems to admit at least that there is a distinction in how moral truth functions when applied in public life in comparison to how morality rules the human conscience. It seems that even the Church agrees that civil law is essentially a matter of governing and negotiating human autonomy or freewill in a way that best reflects the common good and the dignity of everyone, and that a thing being immoral or being morally binding in the religious life, is not necessarily grounds for criminalization or judgement by the state. That is, even when considered as one in the goal of defining mans dignity under God, they function differently insomuch as one is concerned with mans natural end and the other is concerned with mans salvation through Christ…

In other-words while it is wrong and can even be a mortal sin for a man to get drunk, civil law does not consider a drunk person a criminal unless he or she harms the autonomy of other humans. Similarly the state should not criminalize people for holding different beliefs. So the church does support a distinction between church and state at the very least in terms of functionality. But it does not support the secular definition of it.

This is my understanding. I could be wrong.

Here is further reading.

 
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I more or less agree with that synopsis. The Church and the State are distinct, but the latter’s mission is subordinate to the former, and therefore must be ordered to it.

I’d object to phrasing the justification for state power as a matter of autonomy. The Church has never rejected (and has actively supported and demanded) legislation to protect the morals of society (even though immorality may not impede anyone’s freedom of action).
 
Arkansan said:
I’d object to phrasing the justification for state power as a matter of autonomy. The Church has never rejected (and has actively supported and demanded) legislation to protect the morals of society (even though immorality may not impede anyone’s freedom of action).
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I understand, and it is not for want of getting the last word when i say that some behaviors as a matter of criticism and consequence are properly the domain of moral conscience (the drunk person for example) while the qeustion of security and human dignity in the public sphere is properly the domain of the courts and law enforcement (the drunk punching another person for example).

I do not agree that in a society where the state is properly subordinate to the Church that a person should be judged by the courts for wrapping rubber around his sex organ and having sex before marriage. However i imagine that abortion would be illegal as that would involve the dignity of human life as defined by the church…
 
Private drunkenness (even most secular states have laws against public intoxication) is best left to the realm of conscience and social opprobrium because it doesn’t really harm anyone else and a law against it would be difficult to enforce.

OTOH, contraception has done untold harm to the morals of society (to say nothing of underpopulation). I can’t see any good arguments for not treating contraceptives as contraband, in the same way that drugs are.
 
We support separation of Church and State in as much as there are two powers with two different orbits of responsibility, one governing the temporal and one the spiritual. We do not support the separation of truth and state or God and state. The state’s authority comes from God and must therefore be congruent with God’s law. Likewise, since the state is responsible for the common good and the true religion informs what man’s good is, the state’s laws and structures should be inspired by and measured against the true religion (the true religion being the one taught by the Church). There is also the general social duty toward true worship and the true religion. Since they both have the good of the people as their ends, they should both work together in harmony.
 
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I think we need to be clear when we use words like “subordinated” that we don’t mean a juridical subordination, but rather an indirect one based on the hierarchy of values. The Catholic doctrine is not that the state is subordinate to the Church, rather “Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right.” (Immortale Dei 13).

The state’s orbit is the common good. “The attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.” (Pacem in Terris 54). The common good, however, naturally includes man’s eternal destiny: “Consisting, as he does, of body and immortal soul, man cannot in this mortal life satisfy his needs or attain perfect happiness. Thus, the measures that are taken to implement the common good must not jeopardize his eternal salvation; indeed, they must even help him to obtain it.” (Pacem in Terris 59).

Since it is ultimately “the Church, and not the State, that is to be man’s guide to heaven” (Immortale Dei 11),in its service toward the common good the state as a consequence must have reference to the true religion (cf. CCC 2244) and therefore the Church’s judgment with regard to it (since the Church is the sole interpreter of God’s revelation and law (cf. Dei Verbum 10)). In fact, this is why the Church teaches it can pass judgment on political matters when the salvation of souls requires it (cf. Gaudium et Spes 76.).

It also bears pointing out that ordering the political community toward Christ and the true religion is ultimately the laity’s job (cf. CCC 898-899, Gaudium et Spes 43, Apostolicam Actuositatem 13, etc.)
 
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