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.) (2)

The United States undoubtedly bears predominantly a Protestant character, and this is above all noticeable in the very manner of its relation to religion or the church. The essence of the principle of the relation of state and church in the country, as we saw above, consists in the strict delimitation of the spheres of their respective activity, so that to the church belongs entirely the conduct of the spiritual order of phenomena in human life, while to the state belongs the conduct of the material order. In determining the scope of these orders, Catholicism and Protestantism appear as two opposite and irreconcilable principles. According to the view of the former, the sphere of the spiritual order essentially extends to the whole spiritual life of man—the religious, moral, and intellectual—and therefore to the church exclusively belongs the authority to direct not only religious conscience, but also the facts of married and family life, the education of children, and even literature[1]. Conversely, according to the view of Protestantism, the authority of the church extends only to the religious conscience, while all the remaining phenomena of human life, as not having essential significance for the main purpose of the church—the salvation of souls through faith alone—naturally fall under the authority of the state. By its fundamental principle, the United States could not legally become exclusively on the side of one of these opposite views, and therefore of necessity chose a middle position between them, which nevertheless is recognized by Catholics themselves as the most normal compared with the relation of most European states to the Catholic Church. This relation, however, from the Catholic perspective appears already as Protestant because it does not realize the Catholic ideal of the relation of church and state, according to which the state should be merely a simple instrument of the church. But apart from the state’s deviation from the extremes of the Catholic view, it manifests Protestant tendency in more essential respects, so that it not only stands midway between two opposite views but clearly inclines toward Protestantism. This is particularly noticeable in its relation to the question of marriage and public education. According to the Catholic view the authority over matrimonial relations and public education belongs to the church[2], while according to the Protestant view these are social facts and therefore fall within the sphere of the state. What position did the state take on these questions? It completely inclined toward the Protestant view and made both matrimonial relations and public education purely state functions, independent of the church. It recognized marriage as a social act, admitting what is called civil marriage and broad freedom for divorce, and made public education one of its functions. Since Catholicism considers these functions to be essential functions of the church, the state, by seizing them into its authority, thereby deprived the Roman Catholic Church of its belonging rights and thus came down on the side of the opposite view—the Protestant. This naturally led to a collision between the state and Roman Catholicism, and on the question of public education the collision turned into open struggle, which is still being waged obstinately now. Catholicism denies to the state any right to the education of children, as it considers it the matter of parents and the church[3]; but the fierceness of the struggle has been intensified further by the fact that the United States, to avoid the possibility of narrow-confessional education in the spirit of the teaching and beliefs of any one church or community, has secularized the public school, which again coincides with the Protestant view and contradicts the Catholic. Here the state perpetrates a positive injustice against Catholics. Having taken public education under its authority, it to support it collects a tax from the whole population without distinction of confessions, and consequently also from Catholics. Meanwhile, Catholics cannot use this state school, for use of it is forbidden them by their conscience and church, and therefore they are compelled by the state to pay for an object which for them is at the very least useless, and from the strictly Catholic perspective is directly harmful, for the secularized school from this perspective is the negation of a true school, is the product of Protestantism and therefore hostile to Catholicism. Not recognizing the state school, Catholics are forced to establish and maintain their own parish schools, and thus bear a double tax compared to Protestants, which is already a direct state injustice.

Besides the realm of public education, the state either willingly or unwillingly aligns itself with Protestantism in many other respects. It has under its jurisdiction numerous diverse institutions, the existence of which is caused and conditioned by social needs, but the achievement of whose goals is unthinkable without religion according to the state’s own understanding. Such are institutions as prisons, houses of correction, facilities for juvenile delinquents, asylums for homeless children, and similar establishments. They contain persons of different faiths, both Protestants and Catholics. The state, not only not denying them the right to freely practice their religious obligations, but even considering religion an essential element for achieving the very goal of these institutions, has taken care to supply them with religious attributes and priests, whom it supports on public salary. To avoid favoring any single confession at the expense of others, the state everywhere adheres to the so-called non-sectarian system, by which religion is recognized and practiced only in its general Christian features, without denominational distinctions. The state maintains the same system in introducing religion into its institutions, and therefore supports priests who essentially belong to no denomination but are preachers of “general Christianity.” Catholic priests, as representatives of a strict, concrete denominational system requiring full and undeviating observance of all its parts and details, naturally do not fit the state’s outlook, and therefore it is Protestant priests who enter these institutions to preach in prisons and teach “general Christianity” in houses of correction. For Catholicism, it is already disadvantageous that Protestant priests enter these institutions, and further, the very “general Christianity” preached by them is to Catholicism nothing other than pure Protestantism. Catholicism recognizes no other Christianity except that embodied in a concrete historical form, and considers any deviation from it as Protestantism, and all the more so such an abstraction from any concrete ecclesiastical form, as “general Christianity,” which a Catholic publicist directly calls a humbug[4], that is, a deception that diverts the eyes from the true nature of the matter. To compel Catholic inhabitants of state institutions to be present at the practice of this “general Christianity,” according to the Catholic view, means to do violence to their conscience. Yet this is exactly what happens in most institutions. In New York State, for example, there are three state prisons “and not in one of them is there a state arrangement for satisfying the spiritual needs of Catholic prisoners”[5]. The state has seven penitentiary prisons, and in only three of them is the Catholic mass celebrated; it also boasts of four reform schools, and in only one are mass celebrated and sacraments administered[6]. In the rest, all prisoners without exception are compelled to attend religious services according to the “general Christianity” system, which, “in the view of a Catholic publicist, is for Catholic prisoners the most brutal violence to conscience imaginable, because the worst Catholic in the world would never voluntarily wish to participate in any religious service other than their own”[7]. Recently a Catholic priest was permitted to visit one of the state prisons in the state, to hear confessions and preach on Sunday afternoons, but Catholic prisoners were also required to attend Protestant services[8]. Throughout the country, according to the assertion of a Catholic publicist, only in Minnesota “freedom of conscience and equal rights in religious matters for those held in state institutions” are fully assured, and only by the most recent act, of March 5, 1874[9]. Thus the state acts not only with respect to criminals, who, though they need religious consolation more than all others, have by their own actions brought themselves to deprivation and restriction of their freedom, but also with respect to those unfortunate ones who are taken under state care because no one cares for them, such as the homeless, abandoned, street children. For them the state appears not as a punisher for evil deeds, but as a guardian and occupies, in a manner of speaking, the place of parents. It takes care to supply these establishments with religious attributes, but here too it again introduces its cherished “general Christianity,” which, as we have seen, is completely rejected by Catholicism. One of the most ancient and well-known such institutions in New York State is the “Society for the Reform of Juvenile Offenders,” which has an educational and charitable character. According to the 1875 report, during the past fifty years it had received 15,791 persons, of which at least half were children of Catholic parents. Yet the priest serving there was always a Protestant chaplain, who preached “general Christianity,” and there was never a Catholic one. According to statistics, the average age of these children was thirteen years and eight months. “Consequently,” explains the Catholic publicist, “the children were at just that age when they could already distinguish one faith from another, and six years older than the average age appointed by the Catholic Church for receiving the sacraments of confession and communion, for preparation for confirmation and attending mass on Sundays and feast days, under pain of mortal sin”[10]. The natural consequence of such exclusion of Catholic children from the rites and beliefs of their church could only be the complete weakening, if not eradication, of the Catholic spirit in them, and thus these establishments take on a directly proselytizing character in favor of Protestantism. In view of this, the following tirade of a Catholic publicist does not seem exaggerated: “In our public institutions, with respect to Catholics, there is constant violation of the state constitution concerning freedom of religious confession and worship[11]. In these institutions there is a stereotyped system of religious confession and worship, which all persons held in them are compelled to accept and observe, whatever their confession. They have no freedom of choice in this regard. They cannot have relations with the pastors of their church except in impossible instances according to that stereotyped plan. Practically they cannot have such relations at all. Once they become members of these institutions, the freedom of religious confession and worship which they enjoyed or could have enjoyed before entering them is completely annihilated, and a new form of religious confession and practice is substituted, which they are compelled to accept and observe as their religion until they leave the institution, whether they like it or not, whether they believe in it or not. Whatever name is given to this form of worship and instruction, whether it is called “non-sectarian” or not, it is a monstrous violence against human conscience, not to mention the letter and spirit of this state’s constitution. Its true name would be: a church established in public institutions. From the day a Catholic child crosses the threshold of such an institution until their departure, in most cases they are not even allowed to see a Catholic priest; they are completely forbidden from practicing their religion; they are not permitted to attend mass or receive sacraments. Their religion is entirely taken away and blocked from them, and their soul is left dry and barren. Injustice does not end even there, because all the while they are subjected to non-Catholic influences, and a direct system of anti-Catholic instruction and worship. They are forced to kneel and believe in the established church of the institution”[12].

Thus, even with the legal equality of Catholicism and Protestantism, the latter has many advantages over the former, solely thanks to its numerical superiority, which necessarily influences the direction and spirit of government and the state, inclining them toward Protestantism. The Protestant tendency of the state is so strong that Catholicism must be in constant struggle for its legal rights and constantly defend them from the encroachment of Protestant authorities. But this situation of Catholicism within a Protestant state, on the other hand, has taught it to be wise as a serpent, and it has used this wisdom to advantage in those respects where the state, by force of social necessity, had to recognize equal rights to it alongside Protestantism. Particularly important results Catholicism achieved in the realm of monetary relations with the state.

One of the spheres of public life in which the state cannot in practice separate itself from the church, despite the most complete legal separation, is charitable activity. Conditioned by the inner state of public life, it concerns both the church and the state equally. The church is called to charitable work by the very essence of Christianity, one of whose principal teachings is the alleviation of the suffering and misery of the destitute and unfortunate human race. The state is called to the same by the very essence of the state idea, according to which the state is founded as a collective defense against private evils, the struggle against which would be beyond the power of individuals. But if neglect of charitable activity for the church would be only a violation of Christian principle, for the state it would result in incalculable public disasters, since the inevitable social evil not counteracted by charitable activity, in the form of homeless children, fallen women, persons destitute by nature, and similar beings, would be a dreadful scourge for society itself and would undermine the very foundations of the state. Therefore, both the church and the state are equally interested in charitable activity, and moreover in such proportion as generally determine the relations of church and state, as principle and fact, soul and body. The church in this regard acts as the moving principle, and the state as the one implementing this principle in practice. Such relations developed between church and state in the realm of charitable activity in the United States. Charitable activity owes its beginning to the church or to various private religious societies, which, from purely religious and Christian motives of benevolence, founded charitable institutions to aid suffering humanity. The state soon recognized their beneficial activity for society and to support and develop their work began giving them subsidies from public funds collected through the ordinary state taxes[13]. At present, these relations of church and state to charitable activity have reached such a state of full development that the state has assumed the budget of charitable institutions in the majority of cases, while the church or private religious societies retained only the administrative authority over their management. Charitable establishments are divided into Catholic, Protestant, and municipal. The latter are maintained exclusively on public funds, while the former receive only subsidies. For equal distribution of public funds among them, a rule was adopted by which the amount of subsidies is determined by the number of persons maintained in the charitable establishments. This rule was used to excellent advantage by the Roman Catholic Church.