Separation of church and state

“ During a hundred and fifty years Sunday laws have been attacked in state and federal courts as disregarding constitutionally demanded Church-State separation, or infringing protected religious freedoms, or on the ground that they subserved no end within the legitimate compass of legislative power. ”

“ Thus to our religious, bishops, leaders, priests, pastors, preachers, imams let me assure you that while I am a stickler for the principle of separation between church and state, I believe quite strongly that there should never be a separation between God and State. ”

“ Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable. ”

“ This is always the arrow which strikes the legislative body determined to dissociate itself with any form of religion, but as in England, where devoted Churchmen are ranged on the side of disestablishment, so in France the national voice that spoke for a severance between Church and State was not that of a people without religion, but rather that of a people unwilling to maintain a system which had fallen away from its duty and its ideals. ”

“ Civil liberty is impossible without religious liberty. But here the founders of our constitution were confronted with a great difficulty. To follow out the old Catholic tradition, and grant freedom to the “church of God,” was impossible. There were so many “churches of God,” antagonistic to one another, that to pronounce for one was to pronounce against all others, and so establish a state religion. ”

“ Just understand what it means to separate Church from State, to dig a gulf between the religious and the civil life.—Here's a country where nobody can be at once a patriot and a good Christian—where the Catholics don't vote for Parliament, and the State schools teach no religion—where the nation is divided into two vast camps, hating and thrusting at each other with every weapon they can tear from life. ”

“ The clergy of the State Church, like the aristocracy, have probably been as a body against you in this struggle. In their case too, not hatred of America, but the love of their own institution, is the cause. If you are a standing menace to aristocracies, you are equally a standing menace to State Churches. A State Church rests upon the assumption that religion would fall, if it were not supported by the State. ”

“ No state allows its government to dictate to any one what church he shall attend or compels him to contribute to the support of any church, the establishment of state churches being everywhere forbidden. ”

“ The opinion radiates, however, a spirit of freedom for religious organizations, an independence from secular control or manipulation, in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine. Freedom to select the clergy, where no improper methods of choice are proven, [23] we think, must now be said to have federal constitutional protection as a part of the free exercise of religion against state interference. ”

“ Nor can we hope happier results either for religion or the government, from the wishes of those who are eagerly desirous that the Church should be separated from the State, and the mutual good understanding of the sovereign secular power and the sacerdotal authority be broken up. It is evident that these lovers of most shameless liberty dread that concord which has always been fortunate and wholesome, both for sacred and civil interests. ”

“ From civil toleration, from ceasing to cut the throats and confiscate the goods of Catholics, and of Protestant recusants, it is passing now to theological tolerance, or what it calls complete religious liberty, though as yet only its advanced-guard have reached it.
The state, unless in the American republic, does not, indeed, disclaim its supremacy over the church; but it leaves religion to take care of itself, as a thing beneath the notice of the civil magistrate, so long as it abstains from interfering with state policy, or meddling with politics. ”

“ They overlook the fact that the same law can bear equally only on denominations that are organized after one and the same model, and that for the state to set up a model, and outlaw all denominations that do not, or in so far as they do not conform to it, is a violation of religious liberty and of equal rights. It is practically to establish one form of church organization and deny its protection to all churches that do not see proper to adopt it. ”

“ But if in any State the Church retains her own right, with the approval of the civil laws, and any agreement is publicly made between the two powers, in the beginning they cry out that the interests of the Church must be severed from those of the State, and they do this with the intent that it may be possible to act against their pledged faith with impunity, and to have the final decision over everything, all obstacles having been removed. ”

“ But they opened very much wider grounds of dispute between Church and State than the mere question of how criminal clerks were to be dealt with. They boldly attacked the whole of the pretensions of the Church; they threatened to rob it of a mass of financial business, to wrest from its control an enormous amount of property, to deprive it of jurisdiction in the great majority of criminal suits, to limit its power of irresponsible self-government, and to prevent its absorption into the vast organization of the Church of Western Christendom. ”

“ It can only recognize them, and protect and vindicate the rights of each only in relation to those citizens who acknowledge its authority. This recognizes and protects the Catholic Church in her entire freedom and independence and in teaching her faith, and in governing and disciplining Catholics according to her own canons and decrees, which, unless we are greatly misinformed, is more than the state does for her, in any old Catholic nation in the world. ”