4. The Relation of the States to the Government of the Union. The Federal Constitution and its Relation to the Constitutions of Individual States. The Subjection of Religious Questions to the Particular Governments of Individual States. The Significance of This Fact for the Development of Religious Equality. The Slow Development in the States of the Principle of Freedom of Religious Conscience. The Present State of the Question. The Position of Catholics. The Inevitable Privilege of the Strongest Confessional Forms. Public Charity. Concluding Conclusions. (Cont.)

Thus, only through a slow and gradual process did the idea of freedom of religious conscience and religious equality before civil law make its conquests in individual states, despite the fact that the federal constitution had accepted and proclaimed it at the very dawn of American political independence. Only over time, and by force of the constant moral pressure of the federal constitution, did sectarian intolerance of Protestantism toward Catholicism gradually weaken and retreat, and at the present time the idea of freedom of religious conscience has factually gained full currency. But this freedom is not equivalent to complete license. It still finds legal, and indeed strict, limitation in many states, which even conditions the enjoyment of civil rights. Thus, by the constitution of Maryland for election to office a declaration is required recognizing the Christian religion, and for a Jew a declaration of his faith in a future state of reward and punishment[1]. By the constitution of Vermont no religious test is required, but nonetheless “every sect or profession of Christians must keep the Sabbath or the Lord’s Day and have some form of worship which shall seem to them most agreeable to the revealed will of God”[2]. By the constitution of Pennsylvania, “no man who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of public trust in this republic”[3]. By the constitution of Tennessee, “no man who denies the being of a God or a future state of rewards and punishments shall hold any office in the civil department of this state”[4]. Finally, by the constitution of North Carolina, “no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Christian religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testament, or shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom or safety of the state, shall be capable of holding any office or place of public trust in the civil department of this state”[5]. Other states make no legal determinations concerning religion. But this does not mean that the state in them completely ignores religion and severs all connection with it. If this connection has not been expressed in written law, as in the states named above, it nevertheless exists, is recognized by the state, and is expressed in unwritten common law. This connection constantly makes itself known in judicial proceedings concerning religion. Both the courts and individual jurists are always guided by this common law and confirm by their decisions the connection of the state not only with religion in general, but even particularly with Christianity. Thus, the supreme court of Pennsylvania, whose constitution only indirectly concerns religion, positively recognizes the inseparable connection of the state with Christianity, when it declared in one judicial proceeding: “Christianity is part of the common law of this state… Its foundations are broad, firm, and deep; they lie at the foundation of the power, interests, and feelings of the people. Apart from all the particular questions involved, it is the purest system of morality, the firmest aid and the only stable support of all human laws. It is impossible to administer laws without accepting the Holy Scripture as their foundation… An oath, in its usual form, before a discredited book, would be the idlest ceremony”[6]. But even more remarkable in this respect are the declarations of the supreme court in New York, whose constitution does not at all legally determine the connection of the state with religion. “Christianity,” he said in the person of its chancellor Kent, “in its broad sense, as the religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is not unknown to our legislation. The statute for the prevention and punishment of immorality consecrates the first day of the week as a sacred time, and its violation is deemed immoral… The act concerning oaths recognizes the customary way of administering an oath through the laying on of hands and kissing the Gospel.” “What undermines Christianity plainly tends toward the destruction of civil government,” he declares quite clearly about the inseparability of the state from Christianity as the universal church. And further he says: “Blasphemy, according to the most precise definition, consists in wicked ridicule of God or religion… in the ridiculing of Christianity through its Founder… Such crimes have always been regarded as independent of religious establishment or church rights. They are considered as acts concerning the essential interests of civil society.” “Blasphemy against God,” he says in another place, “and reviling and profane mockery of Christ or the Holy Scripture, which are deemed equivalent to blasphemy, are crimes punishable by common law, whether expressed in words or in writing.” “But we are not at all bound to punish similar attacks on the religion of Mohammed or the great Lama, and this on the simple ground that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply rooted in Christianity, not in the teachings or worship of these impostors”[7]. It is clear that the state in New York not only recognizes its inner connection with Christianity as a church, but therewith denies its connection with all other religions. The action of this general, unwritten law makes itself known in all states. – The general meaning of these constitutions is obviously that freedom of religious conscience is granted only insofar as it remains truly freedom of religious or even Christian conscience, and ceases where it passes into the denial of all religious or Christian conscience. This must be firmly remembered by all advocates of freedom of conscience, and particularly by those who love to appeal to America.

And so, only toward the end of the century of American political independence did the Roman Catholic Church legally and in fact become equal in its rights with all other confessions in America. At the present time, it, together with all other confessions and communities, has been recognized as possessing those inalienable rights which were proclaimed a hundred years ago in the historic declaration of the freedom of the American people, in the “Declaration of Independence,” namely the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and also the provision of that same declaration has gained full significance for it, that government is established for the purpose of securing the enjoyment of these rights and protecting the free exercise of them. “The right of liberty,” explains a Catholic author the Declaration of Independence in its application to the Roman Catholic Church[8], “includes the freedom to keep the commandments of God, observe the law of His Church, employ all the means granted to us for obtaining grace, acquiring virtue, and fulfilling the purpose of our being. The right to happiness includes the unobstructed enjoyment of all the advantages of our religion, which alone can make us truly happy in this world and give us the means to attain eternal bliss. The right of liberty and happiness gives every opportunity to all who wish to consecrate themselves to the sacred duties of the altar and monastery. It gives freedom to perform all the rites and ceremonies of religious worship, to dedicate our wealth to the service of God and our neighbors, to establish and govern our churches according to our canonical law, to found and maintain in our possession colleges, seminaries, monasteries, and charitable institutions, to educate our children, to profess and practice the Catholic religion fully and wholly. The purpose of government is to secure these rights, so that if it does not provide actual protection for their free and peaceful enjoyment, it is negligent in the performance of its duty; and if it invades these rights or violates them through any tyrannical legislation, it commits a positive act of injustice and usurpation. Government, the supreme power in the state from which government receives its authority, is equally accountable before the eternal law as individual citizens, and it can violate it through neglect of the securing and protection of, or through direct violation of the rights of conscience granted by the Creator. Therefore, it is necessary to strictly guard these rights, proclaim and defend them loudly when they are in danger of violation, and by all lawful means prevent any attempt to interfere with the exercise of them through unjust legislation or tyrannical exercise of power by the government and its official agents. The supreme power in the state has a general and constant tendency to seize unjust power and violate the rights of subjects. The freedom of individual persons or classes which are under government is always in danger, and therefore eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. This is equally true both where supreme power is entrusted to a monarch or an aristocracy, and where the people retain it for itself. It would be a great error to suppose that popular forms of government and republican institutions constitute a perfect and complete guarantee of freedom in general or of freedom of conscience in particular. The political majority or the ruling party can tyrannize over the minority or the weaker party and over private citizens. Magistrates elected by popular vote can abuse their power and oppress those whom they should protect. Legislative assemblies elected by the people can enact the most unjust and despotic laws. Athenian democracy exiled Aristides the Just and poisoned Socrates, the wisest man of pagan antiquity, the father and founder of philosophy. In our own time we have witnessed the most treacherous violation of guaranteed rights and the most tyrannical oppression of religious freedom of Catholics, perpetrated by the Swiss republic. Catholics are always subject to oppression wherever they constitute the weakest party, and never have sufficient guarantee for acquiring and maintaining their religious freedom except in their own number and strength, gaining significance through energetic activity in behalf of their cause”[8]. “According to the principles and spirit of our laws and political institutions,” continues the same author, “the Catholic Church possesses in the United States a greater degree of freedom belonging to it by divine right than in most other countries. And in practice this freedom has been secured to it in considerable measure, thanks to the justice of the people generally and the faithfulness of those entrusted with the administration of the law. Nevertheless, we cannot and should not be content with anything less than full and perfect freedom and equality, which are justly ours and in no way violate the same rights of those who profess a different religion. There are things in respect to which we are bound both by our duty and by right to demand a greater degree of justice than has hitherto been shown us, and to strive to prevent any further diminishment of our rights as Catholic citizens”[9].

From the presented tirade of the best, by general and official recognition, expresser of Roman Catholicism in America, it is evident that Catholics recognize their equality before civil law with all other confessions and communities as legally and in fact established, but that in the state there is nonetheless a tendency toward the curtailment of these rights, the defense of which Catholics are called upon to undertake. This tendency finds justification in actual facts and flows from the very conditions of the position of Roman Catholicism in the state. The United States, by its history and composition of population, is in essence a Protestant state. The Catholic population in it constitutes a weak minority, one-seventh of the whole population. In republican states, where the composition and character of government is determined by popular vote, governmental power necessarily resides in the hands of the majority. Since this majority in the United States is on the side of the Protestant population, naturally the composition of the government appears predominantly Protestant. A “Protestant government” is in essence a logical and internal contradiction in a state where government and church, state and religion are legally separated from each other. But it is such the organic nature of man that he cannot extract and remove from his being his soul, even when the question concerns only his body. So too, the Protestant representatives of the people, to whom the government of the country is entrusted, involuntarily and of necessity bring with them into the administration their Protestant views. This is an inevitable fact and it is confirmed by reality.