Oct 22, 2023 English

 
The relationship between the state and the church has been varied and often tumultuous, especially with regard to the extent of their powers within each other’s sphere of activity. After the first three centuries of the church’s heroic struggle under persecutions, religious freedom was finally warranted, but there were two different developments in the Roman Empire. In the East, the church supported the emperor, who also claimed to represent divine authority. By accepting these claims, the church in turn endorsed Caesaropapism, that is, subordination of the church to the religious claims of the dominant political order.

In the West, however, because of the decline of Western imperial authority, the church became a relatively independent authority in temporal and eternal matters. At the beginning of this period, the “two swords” doctrine (spiritual and temporal) was enunciated by Pope Gelasius I, in which the church and the state were coequal in status.
The religious upheavals of the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation in particular, reflected the political tensions between emerging national groups and centralized imperial authority, as well as the many other social and economic forces at work in late medieval Europe.

Where separate authority structures exist, many relationships are possible. At one extreme is the subordination of politics to religion, as in a “hierocracy.” The other extreme entails subordination of the religious institutions to the political regime, as in Caesaropapism. Between these extremes are various relationships ranging from a state-dominated church to a theocratic political order. The phrase “church and state” represents a framework for understanding how religion and government are related when these different institutions make formal claims within the same society.

In saying “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,” Jesus implicitly condemns every attempt at making temporal power divine or absolute, because God alone can demand everything from man. At the same time, temporal power has the right to its due.
 
But it is from the moral order that authority derives its power to impose obligations and its moral legitimacy, not from some arbitrary will or from the thirst for power. “In their proper spheres, the political community and the church are mutually independent and self-governing (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 76).” The church is organized in ways that 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 mutual autonomy of the church and the political community does not entail a separation that excludes cooperation (cf. Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 2004, 164-183).
 
The Church exists within and for the world. Through God’s definitive self-giving and self-enactment in Jesus’ incarnation (enfleshment), the Church is entrusted to continue the work of Christ as the sacrament of salvation for the world. That is our noble identity and mission as Church, the Body of Christ.

Fr. Paul D. Lee