Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Church and State

Abstract

I. GOD AND CAESAR VER TWO DECADES, up to the publication in 1951 of his Man and the State, Jacques Maritain sought to develop a new theory of the relation between Church and state.He was aware of previous Church magisterial teaching and canonical regulation that taught or assumed the model of soul-body union-the Leonine model as I shall term it, since it was formally endorsed in recent times by Leo XIII, though it had been proposed for a very long time in theology approved by the papacy and had been assumed by general councils and in ecclesial policy:The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. . . .There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man. 1 Having recognized revealed religious truth, the state should also give it the protection of the laws: All who rule, therefore, would hold in honour the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favour religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety.3 And elsewhere 2 Ibid.6. 3 Ibid.6.Various ecumenical councils have instructed Christian rulers to act as the Church's agents in support of the Catholic faith: these include Lateran IV, Constance (and, following and confirming Constance, Pope Martin V), and Trent.For specific references and discussion see Thomas Pink, "The Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae: A Reply to Martin Rhonheimer," Nova et Vetera (English edition) 11 (2013): 77-121, esp.99-103.Far from being viewed as outmoded by the late nineteenth century, this teaching that the Christian state should act as the Church's agent or secular arm is maintained in the 1917 Code of Canon Law; see canon 2198 discussed below.Authorities cited in the Code for that canon come from the conciliar tradition just mentioned, specifically Martin V, Inter Cunctas, a. 32; and the Council of Trent, Session 25, Decretum de Reformatione Generali, chap.20, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed.Norman P. Tanner (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:795.For a classic theological defense of the model of soul-body union, still cited in theological manuals under Leo XIII, see Robert Bellarmine, Tractatus de potestate summi pontificis in rebus temporalibus, adversus Gulielmum Barclay, translated in On Temporal and Spiritual Authority: Robert Bellarmine, ed.Stefania Turtino (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2012).8 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, D.C.: The

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