The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its squalor; but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous than the Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But the very essence of the Catholic Church is that it does not change; semper eadem is its motto: the same yesterday, today and forever—the same in Washington as in Rome or Madrid—the same in a modern democracy as in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is not primarily a religious organization; it is a political organization, and proclaims the fact, and defies those who would shut it up in the religious field, The Rev. S. B. Smith, a Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements of Ecclesiastical Law": Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the right to command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that she is not a perfect society or sovereign state. This theory is false; for the Church, as was seen, is vested Jure divino with power, (1) to make laws; (2) to define and apply them (potestas judicialis); (3) to punish those who violate her laws (potestas coercitiva).
And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated proclamation of infallible popes. Here is the "Syllabus of Errors", issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in precise language that,
The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.
It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power shall require the permission of the civil power in order to the exercise of its authority.
Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are affirmed thus:
She has the right to require the state not to leave every man free to profess his own religion.
She has the right to exercise her power without the permission or consent of the state.
She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and state.
She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others.
She has the right to prevent the state from granting the public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating from it.
She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free expression of opinion.
You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization, ought at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about the matter. Here is Mgr. Segur, in his ............